Gh & Kh

[seizethecupcake]

I finally received my API GH & KH test kit today, and I've tested my water, but I'm having difficulty understanding the results. I understand two things: 1) I followed the directions, and 2) Failing to interpret these results makes me kind of stupid.

For the KH, it took 1 drop of the solution to make the water a pale yellow, but the leaflet said that it should be a "bright yellow." I added 4 more drops and it is still yellow, but not what I would consider "bright."

For the GH, it took 1 drop of the solution to turn the water a pale green.

Could someone please help me interpret these results? I feel like a moron for having to ask, but I'm really at a loss. I bought this kit because I've recently begun keeping snails, and I want to be sure I can keep them healthy.

 

[Essjay]

Your pic shows the end point colours for both GH and KH. Did the colours not change at all? If the colours are green for GH and yellow for KH after the first drop, it means that you have zero hardness, which is very unlikely.

GH liquid is green in the bottle, the first drop should turn the water very pale orange, then turn back to green when you add more drops. KH is deep yellow in the bottle, it goes blue at the first drop, then after adding more, it goes back to yellow. It's the number of drops that it takes to go orange to green for GH and blue to yellow for KH that you need. The intensity of the colour doesn't matter. If you have soft water, you won't need many drops to change the colour; that means you won't have added much reagent so the colour will be pale. My KH is 4. The colour goes blue after drop 1, stays blue after drops 2 and 3, then goes very pale yellow after drop 4. Because it only takes 4 drops to change the colour, the yellow is very pale.

 

[seizethecupcake]

Thank you for your reply. When I did the GH test, the first drop turned the water a pale orange, like you said. The second drop turned it the shade of green in the picture. When I did the KH test, the first drop turned the water pale blue, and the second turned it pale yellow. The other drops only darkened the shade of yellow. I must have very soft water, though I don't know exactly what those numbers would be. Any actual numbers for me? And what would be a good way to increase the hardness of my waters for my snails. I also keep livebearers in my community tank, and they seem perfectly fine, though I know they prefer hard water. Is there a chemical I should be using?

 

[Essjay]

That means you have a GH and KH of 2 german degrees, which converts to 36ppm. It's very soft. The usual way of making the tank water harder is by using a bag of crushed coral in your filter, if it'll fit. That will dissolve slowly raising both GH and KH. But not by that much. I think you could use the reminerlisation salts that are added to RO water, but I'd wait for someone else to confirm that.

 

[drobbyb]

Your pic shows the end point colours for both GH and KH. Did the colours not change at all? If the colours are green for GH and yellow for KH after the first drop, it means that you have zero hardness, which is very unlikely.

Unlikely yes, but not impossible. In my case, both are >1 degrees and I have to take special steps to ensure that I don't experience a crash.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, essjay has made a good description of it. It's all about -which- drop causes it to change color, not what the color looks like (which makes it very different than the other API tests in the master kit.) In fact, each time you drip one drop in you should give it a little shake to see it that is the one that is going to change the color.

Actually, I think your situation is not all that unusual. It is often those of us that have very soft water (General, Carbonate or both) that are driven to buy the hardness kits and test! So then, we're the ones who end up getting confused because the color seems to change right away.

Anyway, that's what Robby is saying in the post before mine. He is one of the practical masters of this stuff and you can click on the link in his post to get his good article. It contains lots of good info, stuff that he and I have had some direct experience with (he more than I) and also some information and techniques we picked up from TFF and other sources.

Really soft water can be a good basis for some really great Amazonian tanks. You can do great tetra tanks and many others. Moving away from your tap parameters is something you want to think long and hard about.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[seizethecupcake]

I wish I would have done this the proper way and tested my water hardness *before* I bought fish. Now, I realize that I could be the queen of the tetras but I've got a hodge podge community tank. I've got 5 GloFish danios, 5 kuhli loaches, 2 mollies, 2 guppies, and a male betta. My pH holds steady between 6.8 and 7.0. Hopefully my fish continue to do well, and I'm going to research ways to bring up the hardness for my apple snails. Next time around, though, I'll be smarter about selecting fish and would do a nice Amazonian theme, like you suggested. I was looking at a 150 gallon tank recently, and once I'm far more experienced, I might like to try my hand at keeping discus.

 

[waterdrop]

Personally I like the 75G as a nice sized large tank. Reasonable to work in it seems to me.

Yes, your mollies in particular would prefer quite hard water and guppies prefer a higher GH also, although not as much as mollies. The thing you've got going for you though is that all these fish are popular tropical fish and by definition are rather hardy and able to survive in a fairly wide spectrum of water as long as the hardness doesn't change too suddenly on them. The name of the game is to keep it steady. One thing this means is that it will be better if you establish early on the good habit of keeping your substrate good and clean with weekly substrate-clean-water-changes. Trying to keep this habit alive and the habit quite frequent will help to keep your water chemistry more closely matching your tap water.

~~waterdrop~~