How to make soft water hard.

[nickrcarter6]

I have well water that is super soft and want to know if there is any subtrate I can have that will help raise my kh and th and ph. I want to keep guppys and neo caridina shrimp.

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[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

You can use beach sand, coral rubble and you can put pieces of shell, limestone, sandstone or dead coral skeleton in the tank or filter. They increase the pH and the KH might go up a bit but it won't increase the GH much. And the GH is what you need to increase if you want to keep hard water fishes like guppies.

I used a Rift Lake water conditioner to increase the GH, KH and pH of my tap water so I could keep rainbowfish, livebearers and various other fishes from hard water. Rift Lake water conditioners generally increase the GH by about 400ppm. Depending on how hard your water is will determine how much you need to add.

You need to add the Rift Lake conditioner every time you do a water change. You make the water up before you do the water change so all the minerals can dissolve in the water before it is added to the tank. The new water will need to be dechlorinated if it contains chlorine or chloramine.

Livebearers like guppies, platies & swordtails need a GH above 200pm and mollies need a GH above 250ppm.

 

[nickrcarter6]

Ya that's something I'm trying to avoid is buying something and having to add it every water change.

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[Byron]

Welcome to TFF.

If you have soft water, it is much easier to keep soft water fish species. It makes water changes simpler, as you do not have to prepare water in advance.

There are species of shrimp that will be fine in less hard water.

 

[TO KYO]

Ya that's something I'm trying to avoid is buying something and having to add it every water change.

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I had the same problem as you. My water was too soft for my mollies so they kept dying not Matter how clean my water was. They recommended me Cichlid salt and it worked out great for me. You can also use Cichlid Lake Salt as he mentioned above