Seiryu Stone Questions

[powerdyne6]

I see that Seiryu Stone will raise GH and PH and to a lesser extent KH.

Driftwood can counter act this… but how much can it help?

I would like to have about 15 pounds of the stone in my 75 gallon tank. It will have a bunch of driftwood and it will be moderately planted.

I also plan on doing 50% water changes every week.

My tap water is as follows

PH 7.0
GH 1 drop 18ppm
KH 1 drop 18ppm

I thought I read something somewhere that if your water was more on the alkaline side the affect won’t be as much.. or could of been the other way around.

Looking for some insight on this topic

Thanks

 

[powerdyne6]

Bump

 

[Byron]

Found this thread, so will repeat what I advised in response to your PM just so other interested members see it and can contribute.

When it comes to hardening (meaning increasing GH/pH/KH) it is easier done by adding calcareous material, whether rock, gravel/sand, coral, shells and such. These all tend to slowly dissolve, though the more acidic the water the faster they dissolve. Regardless of the source water parameters you start with, the GH/KH/pH will increase. How much depends upon the substance, amount, and tank volume.

Softening is a bit different. It depends entirely upon the source water parameters. The higher the GH/KH the more buffering it has, and the pH will not lower. In our water, with basically no GH/KH, the softening effect of organics is much more obvious. The pH will adjust depending upon the initial parameters and what organics are used. Peat and dried leaves work fastest, but here you come to another issue, for how long? This again depends upon the substance, amount, water volume and source water parameters. I did not have a pH test below 5, and from the deep yellow of this test I can well imagine the pH was in the 4's. My fish were all very soft water, mainly wild caught, so this was no problem at all.

Last year when they significantly increased the soda ash, things got dicey, as the pH went sky high, around 8.4, and I had to reduce water change volumes. I was thinking of going to RO, but I had to give the fish away due to cancer treatments so it never got very far.

So, with calcareous rock in the tank, the effect of organics will be much less. When I used a dolomite substrate back in the 1980's, the pH remained in the upper 7's (same source water but pH was 5-6 in those days) because the increase from calcium is more pronounced.