Water testing kit...

[Kara101584]

I just got a new thing of Test strips....never used them before! I'm only use to testing for pH.

These test strips have a test for the "Hardness" in water.... What should it be at??? Mine is in the very soft section the number says 25... Is this bad?

Also, is my nitrate level OK at 20? It says its in the safe section, but I remembe reading it should be at 0 somewhere.

And... LOL... How often should I test my water?

Thanks again!
Kara

 

[AlexsDaddy]

Hardness doesn't really matter too much. Bettas can take quite a range of that. NitrAtes are ok at 20, it's when they get close to 40 or above that you want to do a water change. NitrIte is what you want to be at 0 along with ammonia in a cycled tank.

Edited to add: I usually test my cycled tanks every couple days. After a while you will learn about how long you can go between water changes, but that shouldn't stop you from testing your water. Things can go wrong at a moments notice.

 

[BettaMomma]

To this point - all my bettas (both home and at the office) have always been in very hard water - in fact if they had a "very very hard" option on the bottle, it'd probably be at that. Their levels are always up at 300, which I guess from everything i've learned, as long as you don't constantly change it up they tolerate it.

Their ph is always up around 8.4 and always has been.
I haven't ever messed with that, either because there's not a lot you can do with pH without harming your fish.

 

[rdd1952]

For your betta tank, the pH level isn't extremely important but they do generally prefer something around 7.0. You shouldn't experience much change in pH between water changes unless you have plants and are adding CO2 to help them grow. That can lower your pH and KH.

 

[BettaMomma]

Yeah, I don't have any live plants - only silkies.
I figure the less in the tank that I can kill, the better