Jbl Kh Testing Kit - Stupid Question.....

[Nosnibor]

I know, stop calling you Shirley

Hi all,

Feel silly for asking and frustrated with the rubbish search facility on this forum, but I have just received the JBL KH testing kit and I can't work out how to do it

All the other test kits are not a problem, but this one gets me.

Basically I want to see the CO2 ppm in my aquarium and I believe in order to do this I need to establish my KH reading.

All help is much appreciated.

Thank you

Martin

 

[DevUK]

Quick search tip for you Use a hyphon/minus sign instead of a space to avoid the "4 letter minimum" problem. It treats the hyphon as a space and doesn't complain

So, something like this:

JBL-KH-Testing-kit

Should work

 

[nry]

You need a kH test kit, though to be truthful, I have this kit and now use 4DKH water and bromo blue via www.aquaessentials.co.uk as it is more accurate than using tank water.

 

[SuperColey1]

I've never used a KH kit. In fact the only test kits I've ever owned are Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate and 2 Ph Kits (Wide and High).

All been sitting in their boxes for a long time except for the wide Ph Kit which I use in my drop checker.

Only fish to die have been new arrivals, or fish that are too inquisitive about moss wall mesh. (This does not include the CO2 massacre victims as this happened whilst at work, with a drop checker in the tank and so no amount of testing could have foreseen the problem before ad definately not resuscitated them. lol)

Waste of money if you ask me, unles you think you have problems!!! If the drop checker is green, the fish look and act OK and the plants aren't showing any signs of defficiencies then don't worry about testing.

andy

 

[nry]

I agree - providing you know the kH of your water - green only indicates sufficient CO2 levels if the water in the drop checker has a spot-on kH of 4 and even then only with bromo blue as the colour indicator fluid.

The JBL set uses tank water and some indicator fluid which is not bromo blue - this is only accurate if you know the kH of your tank water which you then use on a colour chart which then indicates what colour the drop checker needs to be in order to ensure you are at ~30ppm (and even then it only states not enough/enough/too much and not actual ppm values).

 

[Nosnibor]

Okay. I have now worked this all out.

Basically (after a nights sleep) I see that what you do with the KH test kit is to collect 5ml of tank water and add enough drops of the KH fluid until the water turns from Blue to a Yellow/Orange (quite amazing to watch really). You count the amount of drops you added and that is the degree of KH you have in your water. You then (by using a calculation) work out with the pH level what your CO2ppm - is which is all I wanted.

It turns out that I wasn't putting enough CO2 in my system even though my dropper was showing a Green, I mean what shade of Green should it be. I have seen photos on this forum of other people's drop checker but my RGB colour space on my monitor is different to your RGB colour space of your camera, so that's no good.

The calculation showed me that my CO2ppm was only 8.5ppm because my KH was only 9 degrees and my pH was as high as 7.5 to 8.0. In order for me to get it to 30ppm I need to achieve around 7 pH and 10 degrees of KH.

Simple when you know how.

Martin

 

[SuperColey1]

I wouldn't trust your KH and Ph kit over a drop checker even with tank water and supplied solution in it.

The drop checker will be a lot more accurate than any hobby test kits.

A lot of people have quoted I thought I had this but I catually have that but at the end of the day the drop checker (with 4dKH and bromo blue is tons more accurate than the test kit way.

I would gauge the colours like this (The colour in my avatar being mid green):

nice bright blue
turqouise
mid green
light green (mushy peas/limeade) <---- This colour
yellow

The best place to be is light green so that you are over 30ppm but not at danger levels for the fish.

If the checker is turquise turn it uplittle by little remembering the checker will be up to 2 hours behind the actual current level.

Andy