Questions About Water Hardness!

[nukeonekitty]

On sites with fish profiles I find that they rate hardness by Km... my test stripd (Mardel) rate hardness on ppm... the scale goes from 0 to 425, but online fish profiles show fish Km on a scale of 0 to 30 or so... what is a good way for me to translate the hardness of my tank?

 

[nukeonekitty]

I meant KH not Km sorry... what is KH a measurment for? Hardness?

 

[dizzied]

KH is carbon hardness, PPM (parts per million) is how you measure it.

So, it's kinda like..

KH is to weight
PPM is to pounds

 

[nukeonekitty]

How do you translate one into the other? My test strips are ppm and fish profiles seem to be more KH

 

[dizzied]

PPM is how you measure KH.

 

[Bignose]

ppm is one way to measure hardness. But, the lower numbers are clearly in the scale of degrees hardness.

One German degree hardness (dH) is 17.8 ppm.

So, take your ppm number and divide it by 17.8 and you'll get your hardness in degrees hardness.

German degrees hardness are by and far the most common, though unfortunately there are several other national degree hardnesses all around 10-20 ppm per degree. But, again, the German one is by and far the most common, and when someone says "degree hardness" they do mean German degree hardness no matter what country they are from.

To perhaps clarify dizzied's first response:
KH is to mass as
ppm is to pounds and as
dH is to kg.

...in that both kg and pounds are units of mass, just on different scales, ppm and dH are both units of hardness, again on different scales.

 

[dizzied]

Bignose is right in that, nukeone's test kits probably measures in PPM while the site he's looking at is using dH.

There's a chart on this page that might save you some time
http/www.aquahobby.com/articles/e_parameters.php

 

[nukeonekitty]

Thanks guys! That saved me a lot of headache! My kit was ppm and that scale shows me exactly what i needed to know