Gh And Kh Results, Are They Ok

[sirichmond]

Hello,

My tank has not started its cycle yet but as we are away soon not going to force it but tested the GH General Hardness and the KH Carbon Hardness last night.
We use Nutrafin test as they are the only ones available at our LFS.

Readings

GH = 220mg/l
KH = 120mg/l

1. GH = 220 means water is very hard is this OK and what can I use to lower it? Fish we hope to have are Cardinal Neons, Guppys to start with then a plec of some kind.
2. KH = 120 is in the excellent range for maintaining buffer capacity.

Cheers
Simon

 

[waterdrop]

Good choice of something to measure and think about since you can't start your cycle yet. Yes, both are in the very hard range. Assuming your pH is also pretty high, I'd guess this should help your fishless cycling to go faster - should be an excellent combination for that.

After fishless cycling is a different story. In most of my reading here on TFF it has been strongly advised that you are better off trying not to attempt altering hardness and pH away from your tap water if possible. Its just a very hard thing to maintain and if you have trouble maintaining it and it moves to quickly, fish don't like it.

But its very good that you've measured and started to think about this now. That should give you more time to gather more opinions from people and make choices. Unfortunately its much harder to lower pH/hardness than it is to raise it. The most accepted way to raise it is via a net bag of crushed coral in the filter, starting small. That can do a very steady job. I think for lowering, peat is used in layers in the filter but perhaps this is less steady and sure - ie. it may fluctuate more and be thus be more dangerous to fish or require more fussing with.

Just my 2cents, ~~waterdrop~~

 

[sirichmond]

Thanks for the reply, my PH is 7.5 but seems to of gone up a little yesterday and touched 8.0. Aslo is my choice of fish going to be limited due to my hard water or is it more likely that the fish from my local LFS will be used to it as the water will be about the same.

 

[waterdrop]

Well, I would say to begin to look at it this way: Choosing your stocking based on the tap water parameters you've been given is always an important option to consider because it could help you have more trouble-free maintenance and less risk to the fish. On the other hand, its easy to imagine that many wouldn't want the choice of which species they can have to be limited by their local water authority or water source limitations. If they really, really want a certain type of fish they might be willing to go to great lengths to alter the water for that species - so it ends up being driven a lot by personal desire I think.

Its just harder I think for a newcomer to know to what degree they will be able to alter the water or how much work they will be making for themselves. I'm in that boat myself, not experienced enough to really know this stuff yet.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[sirichmond]

Yeah I think our thinking is to choose fish that will be suitable to our hard water as I think keeping PH, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate levels will be hard enough to start with and as keeping your water softer etc is hard work I think that will be enough to deal with. Well at least now we can investigate which fish will be suitable for our water conditions.
Cheers
Simon