What Should My Gh And Kh Be

[chishnfips]

Hi folks, as a few of you know I am setting up a brackish vision 180, its ready now for fish so am ordering some BBG for it.

I got a 5 in 1 test strip today to check all the parameters as well as the nutrafin ones I already had,

The gh measured about 16d and the kh around 0d???

are these ok? I vaguely understand gh and kh all other parameters are spot on.

cheers chish

PS other fish to go in will be figure of 8s and possibly green chromides.

 

[BigIan]

your kh is what buffers your water essentially itsthe amount of acid that can go into the tank before it alters th ph...
a Kh of 4 or over is idealy what your looking for,
However i wouldn`t trust those test strips there not very accurate,
get your self some liquid tests

 

[chishnfips]

cheers Iain, what about the Gh reading, how does that look?

So how would I go about raising the Kh? put in some lime stone or tuffa rock?

cheers chish

 

[BigIan]

bicarbonate of soda...

Kh is your carbonate hardness, so adding bicarb will raise your kh.

One teaspoon to 50 litres of water will raise your kh by roughly 4 degrees...

 

[chishnfips]

ok cool, is that just ordinary bi carb for cooking?

Also is the Gh ok?

cheers again iain.

 

[BigIan]

the GH seems fine

ad yes just ordinary bicarb will do the trick

 

[CFC]

Have you added the marine salt to the water? That KH seems frighteningly low even for a freshwater tank and in a brackish tank should be closer to the 15-20 mark than 0.

As said bicarbonate of soda will raise the KH but for the long term you are going to want something in the tank as well to keep it stable, adding some crushed coral to the filter and putting argonite in the substrate will help keep the KH and pH nice and high.

 

[BigIan]

oops i missed the fact that it was a brackish tank, yea the salt should buffer it up..
and crushed clam shell works well in a filter to boost the kh

 

[chishnfips]

Hi CFC,

yeah I have instant ocean salt in the tank, the salinity is at 1.005 for what I want to put in, (measured it the other day) with my hydrometer

I live in inverness the water is really soft up here would that make a difference?

 

[CFC]

To be honest i think that it is going to cause you a lot of problems with keeping the pH and KH stable, with water like that you would be far better off keeping soft water fish than brackish which usually need hard alkeline water, but sods law often works like that, half the people in London want to keep discus when their water is more suited to African rift lake fish (actually its more suited to carving stone statues than keeping fish in its so bloody hard).

Try adding the crushed coral and mixing some argonite sand into the substrate and see how it goes, marine keepers use R/O water which has no KH or GH so it is certainly possible, you just have to get the mix right.

 

[chishnfips]

lol, cant have your cake and eat it I suppose eh lol,

cheers for the info though, I should be able to get crushed coral from an lfs up the road, what about the argonite sand though, where would I find that?


cheers Chish

 

[chishnfips]

Right my LFS has crushed coral and aragonite sand in stock, (£15 a bag, is that reasonable) he was going on about live sand too? whats that, is it the same as aragonite sand? He also mentioned he has some sort of chemical bufer that marine keepres use, some sort of reef bio stuff in a bottle, cant remember the name of it???

He also said tufa rock would do the same job, but the only thing with that is it gets alot of algae build up on it.

cheers chish

 

[andywg]

Live sand is a con for reefers. It contains a small amount of life that is found in Live Rock. normal aragonite sand will be colonised by the life in live rock within 6 months, so it really is pointless.

You don't need chemical reef buffers. They are all about keeping certain levels (KH - or alkalinity/pH/Calcium etc) in the right amounts so as to encourage coral growth, most often SPS coral growth.

Aragonite sand isn't cheap, but for £15 per bag I would want the bag to have 11kg as a minimum. Almost any calcium based objects should aid in raising the KH. Might even be worth trying Crushed Oyster Shell used for birds. I get it for about £4 for 25kg (I use it to make my own live rock).

 

[chishnfips]

Hi andy cheers for the reply, where do you buy your crushed oyster shells from?

 

[andywg]

Hi andy cheers for the reply, where do you buy your crushed oyster shells from?

I buy from a pet shops that caters very much for bird owners. It is used as grit and a feed for farmyard birds.