Water hardness.

[ger87410]

Is the water hardness important to monitor? Doesn't it play a part in controlling ph?

 

[Bol]

Depends on which 'hardness' you mean.

GH (general hardness) doesn't have any measurable effect on pH.

KH (carbonate hardness) is closely tied to your pH, and to the stability of your pH.

But, personally, I wouldn't consider either of them something you have to regularly test for... assuming that their values are in the 'safe zone', your water supply doesn't change, and you're not explicitly tinkering with your water chemistry.

For what it's worth, under normal circumstances I check both GH and KH maybe once every six weeks.

 

[ger87410]

Thanks for the reply. I think it's the gh that I was talking about, and straight out of our faucet it's off the scales. The alkalinity is also really high. Is there any alternative other then using bottled water for most of the tank water to get the alkalinity and gh down?

 

[parker313]

Get fish that like high pH waters

Driftwood has helped me. We also have really hard, alkaline water and getting a piece of driftwood has helped. Some also recommend peat in the filter or tank.

 

[leanne]

If you want fish that are kept at a neutral pH (ie most fish) then you could add drift wood. If you want to use water other than your tap water you can get RO water from your LFS (if they sell marine fish). RO water has basically everything removed and is about as pure as you can get. It will be at pH 7 and you won't need to treat it to remove chlorine. I wouldn't recommend using bottled water because if you look at the "ingredients" it contains allsorts of dissolved minerals - some of which aren't good for your fish.

 

[ger87410]

The bottled water that we get is from a water distributor down here. They run their water through a UV filter and carbon filter as well as a microfilter and a few other filters. Can't remember the names. We tested the water and it is the closest think to pure that I've found. Alkalinity is extremely low, and the ph is 6.2. So we have to treat with, of all things, treated tap water. 70% bottled water to 30% tap water gives us just about perfect alkalinity, ph, and hardness. 7.0 pH, alkalinity around 120 I think it was, and hardness around 75 I think. Don't have our test bottle here to tell you for sure. Sorry. My problem is when I do straight tap water the alkalinity is so high that it causes the ph to stay really high.

 

[leanne]

I wasn't thinking pH though, I was thinking more disolved heavy metals and the like. RO water would be cheaper though...

 

[ger87410]

How much is ro water?