# 16GH & 8KH , Should I be concerned? & Shrimp Help Needed!



## Jafooli (17 Oct 2013)

Hi

So I have 2 questions which are about 2 separate tanks, if you want to help me with shrimp question please skip to the bottom. Anyhow I will start with my most concerning question which is about my fish tank.

I have just tested my tank for the first time on GH&KH , I have had the tank about 3 weeks since I upgraded from a 90l, Its now 200l, I dose EI and inject CO2.

I was shocked to find I had 16GH, "16 drops" and the results are not even on the charts? I also did have a dead fish this morning, but If it's related I don't know as I only purchased the Zebra Danio's about a week ago. "The tank is also cycled from my previous filter" and all other fish are all fine.

My other readings:

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 40ppm which it is all the time even for the previous 2 years on my 90l and even at the end of week, so I guess I either have 80ppm to start with or something very odd is going on with my plants lol.
KH 8
GH 16

313 TDS bucket of new water, 320 with dechlorinator added
PH 8 from tap water.

"I also do not add potassium nitrate to my EI and instead use potassium sulfate"
"I also now only do 30% water changes a week instead of 50% so could this be leaving to many nutrients?" 

I also purchased a TDS meter and it's going up and down like a yoyo, It was 480 yesterday. Here is an example of it jumping up and down.

Before W/C 490 TDS , After W/C 432TDS, After Macro 450TDS
In the morning 359TDS After Micro up to 455TDS, and pattern continues like that pretty much.

Also to add I am new to all this so I have no idea what I am on about, but the reason I am doing all these tests is because of shrimp problems which leads me to my next question on behalf of my girlfriend as officially its her tank

So months back we purchased 10 Yellow shrimp for her new Fluval Ebi which we cycled, they were all babies and we lost about 3-4 over a month, the rest lasted about 3 months and all reached adults until one would die each week, until there was 1, anyhow we decided to go down the cherry shrimp route, which everywhere I seem to read people say there cherry shrimps survive everything, anyhow we purchased 10 once again, and all were babies. only this time it was from a local fish shop as I thought this could give them an advantage as the water could be near enough the same.... anyhow the same thing happened all over again, I think 8 got to adult size, then 1 started to die each week or 2, and we are now left with only 4 adults.

I have done research and more research, which is when I decided to convince my girlfriend to buy a TDS meter and a GH/KH kit, her results were:

TDS 300
12 GH
6KH

Which I believe cherry shrimps should be able to live in from what I've read, I have asked her to let me look after the tank and since then I have changed the layout for her, to make it more clean/simple and also changed the weekly w/c's from 30% down to 20% and have kept these 4 alive for couple of weeks now, so not sure if the problem has been sorted or something is happening? I hope someone can give me some ideas/advice or let me know what's happening.

Sorry for the essay, hope someone can help!


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## ceg4048 (17 Oct 2013)

Jafooli said:


> I was shocked to find I had 16GH, "16 drops" and the results are not even on the charts?


That looks fine to me. I don't see any reason to be shocked.
There are many things that affect TDS. Adding food raises TDS. Adding nutrients raises TDS. The tank itself produces acids, which increase TDS. Soluble components of hardscape or sediment raises TDS. Doing a water change reduces TDS. Keep the tank clean with regular and frequent water changes and then forget about it. This has nothing to do with your dead zebra. The tank may simply be imature and fish might have been added too soon. That is a much more likely explanation.



Jafooli said:


> Nitrate 40ppm which it is all the time even for the previous 2 years on my 90l and even at the end of week, so I guess I either have 80ppm to start with or something very odd is going on with my plants lol.


Why don't people ever consider that there is something very odd going on with their Nitrate test kit? Why is that never even considered?

Cheers,


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## Jafooli (17 Oct 2013)

Hey ceg4048 thanks for the reply,

Phew!!!..... that's a big sigh of relief, I was really worried, and yes I hope your correct about the Zebra but also to add I know the last thing anyone should do when purchasing a tank is immediately buy any fish before the cycle is complete, how ever I did my very best to keep my old filter alive in a bucket of water with an air pump, and all on the same day set my new tank up, I then monitored my water parameters for the next week and all seemed to be in check. I also have another filter running along side which is still going to take time to mature so I have only added 6 Zebra's about a week ago which is now 5, but did keep a real close eye on ammonia and nitrite, but maybe it still is spiking during feeding.

I also did use my API Nitrate kit, but I could do the test again on my girlfriends API Nitrate kit and see how it goes, I'm sure in the past I have tried another kit and still reads high, all though I have once monitored it at 20ppm which was a rare event, maybe I missed a w/c

Thanks again for your help, and if anyone can help with my shrimp issue that would be great, and if in the future more deaths do happen I will be back here lol, also to add its a bit annoying as my tank is mostly of fish in the tetra family or similar small species and I was hoping some would breed in the near future once my tank is heavily planted, but with my water being so high I presume this ain't going to happen =\

Edit:

I have just done the test on another API kit the reading is still the same, but it does have a slight more orange tinge, but it is still red, if anything the lowest I presume it could be is 30ppm, this test kit also does read my girlfriend's fluval ebi at 20ppm nitrate, so either my tap water has really high nitrates and because of the lower w/c on the ebi the plants have had more time to use it, or API kits are just not accurate in general =\

Also to add why would the GH be 12 on my girlfriend's tank and 16 on mine, when its the same house, same water. Maybe I should test the GH of my tap water which could be interesting.


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## ceg4048 (17 Oct 2013)

Hello,
		 The maturation and development of the tank infrastructure is NOT only dependent on the filter media. A large part of what the tank does and of how it behaves is a function of the sediment. Ammonia or nitrite spikes can occur when you are not testing. It can even happen some time after you add food to the tank. It can happen at night when Oxygen levels are low causing a double whammy.

The water chemistry in the tank is very dynamic. It takes about 6-8 weeks to develop the variety and population of bacteria in the sediment. Secondly ALL nitrogen test kits are fake and they cannot consistently tell you the truth. So it can easily be that during one of these spikes, this particular fish was weakened and succumbed. You will only confuse yourself by reacting to the results of a hobby grade Nitrogen test kits. I suggest that you save your cash and stop buying Nitrogen test kits, do more water changes, avoid overfeeding and keep the tank as immaculately clean as possible.

GH is the measure of Calcium and Magnesium, so if there are Ca or Mg sources in a tank, such as hardscape of gravel then that would make a difference. CO2 injection results in the formation of an acid called Carbonic acid. This is the same acid found in Coca-Cola and all carbonated drinks and that's why Cola can be used to clean coins and so forth. This acid can dissolve Calcium containing sources and thus release the Calcium into the water column.

Cheers,


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## Jafooli (18 Oct 2013)

Thanks for your help and reply,

I hope you can just give me some more information, because I might of stumbled upon something that could be the cause, but firstly you mention the fish could of died and that it could of happened at night when the oxygen levels were low, on my old tank I did run a air pump during the night, even though my CO2 was off, I did do a lot of research if I actually needed the air pump, and in the end could not come to a conclusion, as people said if there is surface movement you should be fine but on the other hand if you have a air pump use it. Anyhow with my new tank I am not using a air pump at night, but I have been trying to observe my fish and they seem to be resting in all parts of the tank, so no gasping etc... do you think its worth me adding a air pump? I also do have some surface movement, hence why I left the air pump this time around, + it kept me awake.

Now to the interesting part, I am still trying to take in everything about this GH, KH etc but you mention if there are sources of Calcium and Magnesium in the tank then that could be the reason? Well I never tested my old tank with plain black gravel so I have nothing to compare, but I will test tap water tomorrow which could give me an idea of what it was... which leads me to... the only thing I have done different with my new tank was to add 4 bags of eco complete, and there it says "It contains iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sulfur, and over 25 other elements to nourish your aquatic plants" so could this be the reason for such a high reading of GH? if so where do I go from here? I presume my fish can adapt? as they would all be dead by now but I'm concerned it could rise more. Will the GH slowly fall over time? the tank has only been going for 3 weeks, If I continue to EI dose it might carry on rising especially as I now only do a 30% w/c and I dose Magnesium Sulphate. In 3 or 6 months would there be less calcium and magnesium from the eco?

I'm sure I read Eco complete does not come with many nutrients in it, but has the capacity to hold nutrients from the water column more efficiently, so I thought it had to be better than my plain old black gravel and I also liked the appearance of Eco, now I'm thinking my tank might be overloading with nutrients from this stuff? Not sure where to go from here, hope you can give me some input, and I presume when you say stop buying nitrogen test kits you mean just nitrate?

Thanks again for your help, feel like I am understand things a bit better, now its just a question of If I'm right or wrong and what I do from here and I know I probably not got nothing to worry about but I like to try and understand my water, and especially now I know the eco could be the problem, I'm not sure if carrying on my EI dosing might do more harm, I was already worried changing from 50% to 30% w/c but I presumed the nutrient build up in the long run wouldn't be a issue as no one's ever reported such a problem. =\


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## ceg4048 (18 Oct 2013)

Well, again, the best thing you can do is to forget about GH and KH and TDS. They really are not as important as people seem to think. Fish care more about clean water than they do about any of these three parameter because clean water means better Oxygen supply. That fish can breathe at all is a miracle, but even so, Oxygen does not move or dissolve very well in water so there is always a danger of Oxygen deficit.

If you keep the plants healthy, then they have the capability to saturate the water with Oxygen. At night, they don't produce Oxygen but they are still using Oxygen, so there is potentially a problem, however, I don't see a need for running an air pump if you have already confirmed that they are not showing signs of duress. Probably the worst time for fish is a few hours before light's on, because that's the longest time that Oxygen is being removed from the water. You can use a pump, or a wet/dry filter which does an excellent job of aeration.

But it's not that the problems in a tank are singular. There are often multiple issues that by themselves don't cause a problem, but together the effects are cumulative. As I said, if the tank is immature, it's very possible that a fish's gills become damaged by chronic or acute levels of NH3/NO2. The toxicity of these Nitrogen products is primarily gill tissue damage, which reduces the ability of the fish to breathe. So if a fish has reduce breathing ability and if the Oxygen level falls due to bacterial action upon dirty water, for example, then that fish may struggle to survive. If it is not killed directly by hypoxia, it may be weakened sufficiently for pathogens to attack and defeat the immune and defense system.

Pollution kills fish. We know that, yet we make all kinds of excuses to not change the water in order to rid the tank of pollution. So while you fret over magnesium, which has much less relevance to fish health, it could be that the tank is suffering from poor Oxygen levels, exacerbated by the toxic effects of pollution. Why only a 30% water change? Why not 50% or more?

All people seem to talk about is to maintain some mythical TDS value, which is completely arbitrary. No one ever talks about the fact that these fish come from waters that are pristine and free of pollution, and so we shove them in a tiny bottle and they choke in their own waste.

If you really want to reduce GH and TDS then use less Magnesium Sulfate because this is the largest contributor to TDS and GH. You may not even need to be dosing it if there is a plentiful supply in your tap water. Look at your municipal water report on-line and it will tell you immediately how much Mg is in it.

EcoComplete is an inert substrate. But so what? I guess they might have changed to formula. A long time ago it was a baked clay, but I read somewhere that they have changed it to Basalt, which is a volcanic residue. Weathered Basalt soils often have a high clay content so that might be the reason, depending on where the Basalt was mined, for the higher Cation Exchange Capacity. So almost ALL clays have high CEC, which is the ability to pull nutrients from the water and to pass it on to the plant roots. This is why all inorganic commercial aquatic substrates sold are made of clay.

I really wouldn't worry about the implications of minerals in the EcoComplete though. Stop dosing Magnesium Sulfate if you really are concerned. I just don't see it as a problem. I've kept soft water fish at 25 GH for years and I never have any issues, because the tank is kept immaculate and the plants are kept healthy.

Cheers,


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## Jafooli (18 Oct 2013)

Thanks for taking your time to reply I will really appreciate it as I'm way way way behind you guys in knowledge and experience  , I will defiantly take a breather with all this GH/KH and TDS, I only got my girlfriend to purchase the kits as it seems most people with shrimp problems get asked those three things before anything else, and when testing my tank I just wanted to know what was going on when I had high readings and it really has taught me quite a bit as it made me post here 

I will also definitely concentrate on keeping my tank water clean and keeping everything in tip top order as usual, and hopefully I will be rewarded with healthy plants and fish.

Also to add I did wake up around 6am and noticed most of my fish in the top right hand corner of my tank, but not gasping, so this could be a problem I will keep a close eye, I did how ever see some other fish lower down and the cory's and kuhli loaches seemed happy eating at the bottom. May be worth timing a air pump from 4 till 7 but will see how things go.

I will also take a look at my water report and most likely just continue my EI dosing as per usual, the only reason I now do 30% w/c instead of 50% is because of the water meter and I'm not the bill payer lol, so sadly I didn't have much of a say when I upgraded to a 200litre, but I did read you can get away with a 30% w/c with EI, so hopefully that's true, I've also done a lot of googling and it seem's quite a few people reported Eco Complete raising there GH but a lot of people said it should settle down in 3-6 months and slowly steady its self. So who knows, but like you said its not much of concern, but good to know that is most likely the cause.

I also hope I can keep the shrimp alive in my girlfriends fluval ebi, and I think we will be purchasing another 10 sometime soon, so if any do start dying again I hope someone will be able to help, I thought months ago my girlfriend could start with the easiest shrimp and then maybe we could slowly work our way up to harder shrimp, I already new if we were to do that we would need to look into RO, I just hope that's not to technical for a novice as it seems TDS come's into play a bit more with when working with RO, not that I know much but first things first is to get a healthy cherry shrimp colony which is going to take a while!

Thanks again for your help and informative reply!


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## ceg4048 (18 Oct 2013)

You're very welcome.

Yes, typically there is not a worry about the 30% water change, but just be aware that the more you feed your plants the more waste they produce and the more that waste will foul the water. Plants produce a significant proportion and significant increase of the organic waste in the tank if they are fed enriched CO2.

So you should use say, 30% less dosing in order to reduce the waste production, "somewhat proportionally" to the water change. You should also inspect/clean you filter more often to ensure that it's not getting clogged and fouled by that plant-produced detritus. That's another Oxygen robber. Siphon the sediment after some months, because there will be a faster buildup of Oxygen robbing detritus in the sediment due to CO2/nutrients, as well as due to fish waste and uneaten food. Clean the surface of your plants to remove biofilm buildup which harbors algal spores and detritus, which blocks gas transport across the leaves, further reducing CO2 availability, which then causes the plants to produce less Oxygen.

What I'm saying is that the sediment choice and type are irrelevant at this moment because the sediment is immature and lacks the proper diversity and populations of bacteria to keep the tank healthy. That will not happen for a few weeks yet. So in order to control the toxin production in the tank, more water change and less waste production is called for until such time as the sediment can handle the environmental loads. At this time that factor has a much higher priority than any Mg/Ca issues leeching from the sediment. And in any case, leeching materials from hardscape or sediment, if it is not practical to remove it, is best kept in check by large and frequent water changes.

Unfortunately, I'm not into inverts so I can't give you any specifics there. Hopefully, someone will come along and offer advice on that.

Cheers,


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## George Farmer (18 Oct 2013)

Cherry shrimp do just fine in very hard water.


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## Jafooli (19 Oct 2013)

Hey thanks for the replies,

I presume when you talk about plant waste you just mean dying leaves etc, or is there something I've totally missed all this time? Most of my plants are low light plants so I don't really need to do trims often and I think the plant waste is probably less compared to other members tanks seeing as my plants aren't fast growers, how ever I am aiming to get it heavily planted.

I will also take your advice and put an extra effort in to keeping everything clean and remove as much organic waste as I can, you also mention to lower my EI dose by 30% which make's sense, as I was originally thinking to lower it by 20% to level it out with the 30% w/c. So should I lower the dose by 30% as you mentioned for a couple of weeks then just lower it by 20%? or should I just stick to lowering it by 30% and keep an eye out for any deficiencies, hope that make's sense.

All my other plants in the tank seem fine as of now and are producing new leafs nearly everyday, apart from one of my new carpeting plants "Hydrocotyle Tripartita" which is getting brown around the edges, I know my tank light is probably not suitable for this plant, as I believe it requires 0.5 watt per litre where as my tank is only 0.3 watt per litre, but hopefully I will be more successful with "Stauro Repens" which seems to be growing well.

Thanks again for your help and thanks George for confirming that the cherry shrimp should be fine.


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## ceg4048 (19 Oct 2013)

No, I'm not talking about dying leaves, although that certainly counts. Plants "defecate", and they do so by leeching nutrient, proteins and carbohydrates out into the water through the leaves. If you grab a stem and shake it, look closely at the residues that will cloud the water.

There is no plant that requires 0.5 watt per liter. The symptoms you described are characteristic of CO2 deficiency.

Cheers,


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## Jafooli (19 Oct 2013)

Interesting I never knew that, you have taught me a lot so thanks again for your help!

I thought you might say something about the light lol, it seems a lot of people use random and most likely incorrect guide lines for measuring light including my self, such as wpg - wpl etc, but I don't have a par meter, so I know compared to most people in keeping plants my lights are pretty low and I cant remember reading about anyone who uses T8 bulbs to grow med-high light plants, so when choosing plants I just go by either low-med-high or in this case the "tropica" labels which say 0.25 wpl 0.50 wpl or 1wpl, and my tank worked out at 0.3wpl so it gave me somewhere to start, and sometimes I try more advanced plants because I guess you never know till you try. For example I want to try "Glossostigma elatinoides" which tropica and other sites say it requires 1wpl or high light, but then again people have said they have grown it in window light. But if you was to teach me about light and plants, for example you said no plant requires 0.5 watt per liter, you would probably get fed up lol, and I'm sure there is an article somewhere on here explaining it all, so hopefully I can learn more about that sometime, dam why did they not have an aquarium course at college when I went lol, it would of been an interesting subject and I find it harder to learn from articles, compared to when someone is telling you in your own thread.

Also to add I will lower my EI dose like you mentioned starting from tomorrow after my w/c , I will lower it 30% like you recommended, and I will do this for 2 weeks, then instead of going back to full dosage, I will just lower my dose by 20% so hopefully that will level it out with the extra 20% w/c I can't do. So in theory the plants should feel like there getting the full dose but I'm no expert, anyway its EI so surely they should have more than enough, I will watch for any deficiency symptoms.

Thanks again for your help.


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## ceg4048 (20 Oct 2013)

Yep, I don't think you will have any issues with the dosing changes. In fact, EI _means_ that you can play with whatever adjustments to the dosing you want. Some people restrict the dosing simply because they don't want the TDS to rise. Others because they have a high fish load which produces nutrients. Others have high tap water nutrients already, so it's wasteful to add the full dose. You can do anything you want, but, you have to also understand what the risks are and more importantly, how to recognize the early warning signs of nutrient deficiency if you go too low. It seems you're aware of that possibility and presumably can recognize the symptoms, so that's good news.

Instead of wpg guidelines, have a look at the chart in this post=> Dymax Tropical 36 watt | Page 4 | UK Aquatic Plant Society

Find the line labeled with you bulbs general type and see which color zone you are in. As the zone goes from blue to red and yellow, more CO2 and flow are needed to support life in that zone. It's better for now to stray too far from the blue zone for now. After some weeks you can increase the intensity gradually if you want better growth rates.

Cheers,


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## Jafooli (21 Oct 2013)

Cheers for confirming that I should be fine with the dosing changes, I'm not an expert as I've only learnt about all this aquarium planting in the last year when I got my very first tank, but I soon found out I had a potassium deficiency when starting EI quite early on, and that was because I left out KN03 as I already had high nitrates but little did I know that also had the potassium, so I now use potassium sulphate. I will keep a close eye out for any deficiency's and hopefully I will spot them if they do occur. I also plan to add some root tabs, not sure which brand yet, but hopefully that will boost the nutrient's that extra bit more as-well for the plants.

Thanks for the chart, I had a look and on my tank the Fluval Roma the light distance is just around 15inches, and with the T8 bulbs that puts me just a tiny bit below the blue zone, so as I thought my light is pretty terrible  Its annoying as my tank is quite hard to upgrade the lights, and many people with this tank either just do a DIY job which I'm not great at, or they purchase hanging luminaries which would put out lots of light in my bedroom where I also have my TV so I just have to make do for now anyway, and maybe one day Fluval will bring out a budget price tank with T5's.

Maybe in the future I will see if a electrical shop could change the ballask to T5's somehow, I'm sure someone did that before on there fluval roma, but I'm not a electrician and don't have a clue and I wouldn't want to risk ruining my new tank and its lighting unit.

Thanks again for all your help! If I run into any other issues of any kind I will be sure to come back here.


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