killifan Posted December 5, 2004 Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 how necessary is it to know the hardness or softness of your water? How can you tell what it is? What is KH to do with the water. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_from_nz Posted December 5, 2004 Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 There are two types of hardness 1) gh or generall hardnes, this is a measure of the total dissolves minerals in your water. 20 kh carbonate hardness, this is a measure of how easily your water will fluctuate in ph. It is not essential to know these figures (I went two years without having a gh/kh test kit) but they can help explain certian things (eg. why your tank keeps changing in ph) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killifan Posted December 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 so if you do a test and find out, do you make changes to the water or just use the info to conteract the effects? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_from_nz Posted December 5, 2004 Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 lol I don't really know the answer to that quetion. I guess that is why I left it so long withough buying a test kit. There is a general rule if the water is too hard (gh) you can do water changes with ro or ro/di water this will make the water softer. You can also add peat to make water softer (but i think it also makes it more acidic). If the water is too soft JBL do a product called aquadur, but it is expencive and I have never seen a fish store holding it in stock. I don't think there is a maximum kh should be but generally is always lower than gh (which should be 4-7 dkh or about 60-100 ppm). If you want to increase kh aquarium pharmasuticles do proper 7.0 which is supposed to contain kh additives good luck Daniel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warren Posted December 5, 2004 Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 Use these links to learn a bit about water chemistry and water conditions: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/aquarium-conditions.0.html http://www.fnzas.org.nz/filtration.0.html http://www.fnzas.org.nz/filtration-2.0.html http://www.fnzas.org.nz/filtration-3.0.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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