What Can I Do With My Water

[DEL 707]

I'd like to start a fish tank, more specifically, a planted tank
Fish wise I was mainly looking at small community fish with maybe 1 or 2 centre piece fish.

For the tank, I was looking at a 3ft, 30-40 gallons.

However I have a bit of a problem with my water

Nitrate 12.5 mg/l
PH 7.0-7.5 (I called my water commpany and they say it's 7.33)

My major problem is my GH, I'm using a API GH/KH test and my result was off the scale, the test goes up to 12 drops which is 214.8 ppm. Unfortunately it took 19-20 drops for the water in the vial to change colour!

What are my options from here?

 

[minxfishy]

Cant comment on the GH as it means nowt to me, but the nitrAte and ph are no problems at all. Most of the UK (dont know if that includes you) has very hard water, so it shouldnt be a major problem, the green fingered brigade will most likely have ways of dealing with it so you can still have a lush planted tank

 

[DEL 707]

Thanks for the reply, was rather encouraging to hear, and yes I'm in the UK, Kent to be precise

 

[minxfishy]

Ah plenty of Kent fish keepers around here, so they must have the same problem.

If you dont get much of a reply up here, try down in the planted tank section as you may get more specialised responses there

 

[OldMan47]

19 degrees of hardness even beats my liquid rock. Mine is only around 12 to 15 depending on the time of year. What kind of KH are you working with? That will determine how well the water will buffer against pH changes. Many plants do fine with hard water so you should be able to do plants. You will just need to be careful which ones you get. There are lots of nice fish that also work well in hard water such as African rift lake fish and many of the new world livebearers.