# water hardness, what levels.. test results included



## mveale (Oct 25, 2005)

Okay *** got stupidly soft water, and a fetish for tangs
*** recently set up a fish room to cater for this so it's mainly
tangs im keeping apart from a pair of cyt moorii.

so my fishroom setup has a 100 gallon header tank
where i buffer my stupid tap water
so all these readings and measurments are based on 100 gallon or 400 liters of water.

So here's my tap water as it comes into the house

pH 7.2
gH 80 ppm
KH 40 ppm 
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TEST ONE, i add the follwing and leave it 48 hours to mix (powerhead and airstone)
before testing again

60ml of Sodium Bicarbonate
120 ml of Epsom salts 
15 ml of marine salt
...
After 48 hours i get the following readings
pH 7.92
gH 180 ppm
KH 55 ppm

---------------------------------------------------
still low, so im wondering if i add some more marine salt, to the same amount of sodium bicarb, 
will this increase the KH a more desirable level..

TEST 2:
45 ml of marine salt added, again left for 48 hours

Results
pH 8.08
kH 110 ppm
(note didnt test gH here)

---------------------------------------------------
okay still not quite there

So instead i added another 15ml of Sodium Bicarb
and another 15ml of epsom salts.

and i get my final readings of

pH 8.07
gH 200 ppm
kH 110 ppm

So the last few days the ph levels arent exactly stable, but close.
*** got a digital pH monitor in there and it fluctuates from 8.02 to 8.11
almost daily. Basically i need to know what levels i should aim for.

What are your KH pH levels in your tang tank
what levels work best for you or what levels do you
strive to maintain.

thanks


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## boredatwork (Sep 14, 2007)

When it comes to water parameters there is a tendency to make things too complicated.

I have a similar situation. My tap water comes out at a pseudo 8.8 and then drops to less than 6.0 due to a KH of about 30. I also have very soft water with the GH reading almost zero.

I actually followed the buffer recipe steps found in the library article with a lot of success. If you do a search for "buffer recipe" on this forum you should find lots of threads that make a worthwhile read.

In short, you should get a 5g bucket (or so) instead of testing on a 100G tank. It will make it a lot easier. Fill it with dechlorinated water and experiment with the buffer recipe in the Library article. You should be able to adjust it to whatever you want.

Most people advise against a buffer, but when you have un-usable water for cichlids you have to do something. I buffer all the way up to the max pH of 8.3, a KH of 200, and GH of almost 400. I follow the buffer recipe almost exactly. But again, use a 5gallon bucket to figure out exactly what amounts of baking soda and salts that you need to use, and then adjust it to 100G and you should be good.


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## zugbug (Dec 12, 2005)

mveale,
your water is not that terribly bad.

I keep my tangs at pH 8.7, 250ppm alkalinity, 350 total hardness. 
Using baking soda will only get the pH so high (not to 8.7 I dont believe) to get it higher you'll need a carbonate salt (sodium carbonate)


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## prov356 (Sep 20, 2006)

I'm with boredatwork. Keep it simple. Use a little sodium bicarb to get the KH up and the pH will rise to about 8.2 as well. Raising GH is optional. I used to, but stopped. Actually stopped adding sodium bicarb too, but my pH and KH are a bit higher than yours. Monitoring with a pH meter is nice, but not necessary. That fluctuation doesn't mean anything to the fish.

Do as boredatwork suggests and test in a bucket of water and find a simple formula that gets things into that range you're looking for. IMHO a KH that's high enough that it doesn't get dangerously low is all you need. Mine's around 80 right now with a pH of 7.8 - 8.0. That's how it comes out of the tap. I do frequent enough water changes and filter cleanings to maintain it. If you're one that likes to plug in those canister filters and leave them for a year between cleanings, then you may need to buffer more. Up to each to work out what works for them.

Bottom line, I'd suggest just adding enough sodium bicarb to get the KH up to 100 or so. If the pH is around 8 or so, then you're good to go. I wouldn't use marine salt in a freshwater tank, even small amounts.

HTH


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## mveale (Oct 25, 2005)

prov356 said:


> ...I wouldn't use marine salt in a freshwater tank, even small amounts.


Im following the buffer receipe but just on a bigger scale. 
its quite vague about how much marine salt to add, but as its mostly tanginikans 
im keeping and my water is so soft, i think i need to buffer a lot more than normal.
The problem is i guess that i dont know how far to go with the buffer...

I found this 
http://malawicichlids.com/mw01011.htm

Note how Tanganyikan water differs so much from Malawi in regard to pH, Sodium and Magnesium.


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## prov356 (Sep 20, 2006)

The confusion comes in with the term 'salt'. I'd agree with buffering when needed to stabiize pH, but 
adding 'salts' like commercial marine salt is something different. I know it's in the buffer recipe, but 
much debate about the need to add 'salt' to freshwater tanks. At any rate, if anyone is considering 
adding marine salt, I'd suggest doing some research to determine exactly what you're adding and 
whether or not it's really needed or beneficial. Consider different sources of info. Then if going forward 
with it, be very careful about amounts added. Less is more IMHO.


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## boredatwork (Sep 14, 2007)

There is an article about this in the Library
http://www.cichlidforum.com/articles/aquarium_salts.php

I normally hate to point people to the library articles on this site because in general they are awful. This one is no exception, but it does give a list of "ingredients" in marine salt. Also note that there are two types of salt used in a marine tank: marine salt and reef salt. I think the major difference is that reef salt has calcium.

Like prov said there is a lot of "confusion" about adding salt to a cichlid tank. I personally started doing it after reading several articles, and I am using it in place of the commercial Cichlid Salt products. I will say that I have no legitimate reason to be doing this, but at the same time I say that to myself about the other way around (and for that matter I would tend to roundaboutly disagree with less is more...) There are certain ingredients that I have found convincing arguments for adding, one of them is iodine (or idiode, i forget). But I must say that I am also considering not using salt anymore since there is no easy way to measure the concentration of the stuff the salt is adding to your tank. Right now I am just blindly following the Rift Lake Buffer recipe as far as salt goes.


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## smellsfishy1 (May 29, 2008)

Here's a cool site on some water chemistry in the rift lakes.
It explains the properties and components of the lake water.
It also discusses the anions and cations and the form they are in.
It discusses the use of marine salt and different trace elements found in the water.
http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/CO2/rift.html


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## boredatwork (Sep 14, 2007)

One thing against thekrib is that everything on there is usually at least 10 years old. This is not to say its bad, but the fish community seems to be always evolving so sometimes I worry about outdated information.

Here is a quote that I found most interesting from that article


> And then, after all this work to approximate tanganyikan water you should be aware that some studies on tanganyikan fish indicate that a few of the species studied do BETTER, grow BIGGER, spawn MORE frequently, spawn LARGER clutches, and have HIGHER infant survivability in water which is more like Malawi water, and LESS like tanganyikan water. By and large, it is my personal opinion that pH is the most important factor, and dissolved salts are secondary considerations.


As for relevance to the salts...


> Of all the major salts present in Tanganyika, for example, Sodium (as in what you get from table salt, NaCl) is one of the lesser players! You would do much better to worry about Calcium, Magnesium, and Potassium, each of which contributes about 100+ mg/L to the lake's water. And even if you did want Sodium, why not get it from baking soda and get the carbonate hardness which you also need rather than the useless chlorides?


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## smellsfishy1 (May 29, 2008)

I actually only posted it to show the mineral contents of the lakes and what not.
Only as an analysis of what is in the water in each respective lake.
I really didn't intend on the whole page being relevent to this topic.
I agree boredatwork, some of the opinions stated can seem outdated and also inaccurate with some of the more recent and proven scientific findings.
The salt reference just happened to be mentioned on the page and then one can refer to the contents of marine salt in the link found in the library.


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