# Water Hardness Question



## brashears (Jun 20, 2008)

I've read some conflicting information about water hardness for Lake Malawi. The article on "Setting Up a Lake Malawi Tank" on this site says that Lake Malawi has a high alkalinity (say 8.0 - 8.8 pH), but a relatively soft gH and kH hardness. Then I've read, even in the "Rift Lake Recipe" article that we want to have a hard water setup. What's the ruling? I've currently got the water at a pH of about 8.4 and the hardness relatively high at around 350ppm gH and 400ppm kH. Can someone shed some light?


----------



## jsimon42085 (Feb 26, 2008)

both Malawi and Tanganyika are rift lakes. They both need hard water. Tang needs a harder water setup then Malawi, but malawi still needs the hardness.


----------



## boredatwork (Sep 14, 2007)

I would agree that those comments seem a little out of line with the common perception.

The good news is that while it seems confusing it is not really important. Most people do not maintain their water at "ideal" Alkalinity and Hardness, whatever that means. Your pH and Hardness are perfectly fine for any african cichlid.

Although the most important of the three numbers is really the Alkalinity (KH) which you didn't mention. I think the numbers mentioned in the article are probably close to the minimum numbers for Alkalinity.


----------



## dwarfpike (Jan 22, 2008)

I think the comment about 'realitively soft water' is in relation to the high pH. In both Lake Tang and central america, when you have such high pH you also have much harder water. Lake Malawi is still 'hard water' ... just not as hard as you would think given the high pH.


----------



## Bachachi (Sep 8, 2004)

IMO its probably best to choose fish that match your particular tap water chemistry rather than
trying to continually adjust it.

However the two main components of water chemistry are PH and water hardness.
PH is the measure of waters acidity or alkalinity, the PH for lake Malawi varies from about 7.7 to 8.6

Water hardness is the measure of dissolved salts in water, these salts mainly consist of calcium, magnesium, carbonate and bicarbonate. There are two values for hardness 
measured, GH or general hardness. This is the measure of calcium and magnesium.
And KH or temporary hardness which is the measure of carbonate / bicarbonate.

Lake Malawi has some what less dissolved minerals than Lake Tanganyika, the GH should be in the range of 160 - 320ppm and the KH in the range of 180 - 240ppm.


----------



## jsimon42085 (Feb 26, 2008)

I don't think adjusting tap water is as difficult as figuring out how to adjust it.
Once you have a particular recipe or buffer down to a particular science the only necessary procedure is to stick to it. 
I guess if tank mates are chosen well, and habitats are accounted for properly then the chemistry of the water can be graded based on the success of the fish. If everything is supposedly "done" right, but the fish are dieing and not breeding, then something is wrong. If fish are living for years and producing offspring, then everything is good!


----------



## boredatwork (Sep 14, 2007)

I would agree that adjusting tap water is not as big a deal as people make it out to be. But at the same time, most people have water within reasonable parameters to keep almost any fish type. Unless your water is an extreme case, either hardness or pH, then I would say you could easily keep 90% of the fish out there. Usually the only exception, as far as cichlids go, is Discus.

In most cases you don't need to adjust your water. And in most cases you don't need to restrict your fish selection.

Also, if you were to pick the important water parameters, water hardness is really not an important parameter. As for the other two, as long as your KH is at a good value, then the actual pH value is usually not important either. Of course this assumes your pH is not some crazy number like less than 6.0 or greater than 9.0. But that is pretty rare.


----------

