What Do Things Mean? What's Better? Water Testing? Help?

[StaniFish]

I finally got a water testing kit. On my tanks they seemed ok except the nitrate-

It's a TetraTest kit by the way

Nitrate- 50 (Trying to remove this- what is the best way?)
Nitrite-0

But, what does general hardness (GH) and (KH) mean?
Do they need to be at 0?

Also, my PH was between 6.4-6.6
Is this ok and does it need to be more alkaline? If so how would do this?

There's a lot of questions which i'm sure have probably been answered before, if you could help on anything it would be very helpful, thanks a lot!

 

[jennybugs]

Your Ph is good and it all depends on what fish you have as to what Ph they prefer to live in

GH and KH is the hardness of the water look here

Your nitrate isn't too bad, but you can lower it by regular water changes. It wouldn't be a bad idea to do the tests on your tap water so you know what your base references are as well.

 

[StaniFish]

thanks- is there any fish that would not cope with a PH like my tank? if you could tell me that'd be great so when i am stocking my tank again i know what fish to get,

is it best to have "soft or hard" water in the water hardness- does it matter?

 

[kribensis12]

The only fish that wouldnt like that water is Mbuna, and maybe lake Tanginika fish also. Your water is best for angel's adn discus, and just about everthing else availble.

 

[CFC]

Tanganyikan cichlids definitely wouldn't like it, they require a higher pH than the Malawi's (mbuna), a lot of livebearing species wont be very happy with a pH below 7 either

 

[StaniFish]

in one of my tanks with the same PH i have swordtails which seem ok.