Hi all,
I'm hoping someone can help me understand my water testing and identify what i'm doing to cause an increase in my tanks GH. Well I say increase as I'm fairly sure having read up (at a basic level) that my water changes are adding a much lower GH value of water than if I test the tank when full but let me go over my process.
I live in a very hard water area and took the decision because of fish to use a 50/50 mix of pure water and tap water. I use the API KH and GH test kits for all my values so even if they're not accurate, in reality using the differences between values should be.
My tap water provides me with a reading of 21 drops which I think is 375 hardness, I will stick to drop count before the colour change as I don't want to kid anyone that I know about water chemistry. I've checked and my pure water is pure and after 1 drop it instantly changes colour.
I tested my tank a few days ago and the reading was 21 drops for GH and still 6 for KH. This was a surprise as 21 is the same as my tap water but I've been using 50/50 mix for over a year now. So today I completed a water change and before adding the new water I tested it, the 50/50 mix had a reading of 11 drops for GH. I quickly tested the tank after the water change and GH was 18 drops.
So I'm asking myself what am I doing to increase GH?
Some details:
It's a 180litre tank
I dose liquid Co2, TNC Complete Lite and some Phosphate. I also mix in Magnesium Sulphate (MgSO4) into my new water and I'll add that my GH reading of 11 drops was before I mixed this in.
Fluval 307 cannister filter, have in last 6 weeks removed the carbon media and won't be replacing it.
I also switched from TNC Complete to the Lite version because my Nitrate levels went way too high could quite possibly be over 100ppm. Since changing to Lite I'm seeing a much better 20ppm Nitrate in the tank.
Hope that's not too much waffle which could be a fairly easy answer to one of the items I'm adding to the tank increasing the GH.
Thank you
I'm hoping someone can help me understand my water testing and identify what i'm doing to cause an increase in my tanks GH. Well I say increase as I'm fairly sure having read up (at a basic level) that my water changes are adding a much lower GH value of water than if I test the tank when full but let me go over my process.
I live in a very hard water area and took the decision because of fish to use a 50/50 mix of pure water and tap water. I use the API KH and GH test kits for all my values so even if they're not accurate, in reality using the differences between values should be.
My tap water provides me with a reading of 21 drops which I think is 375 hardness, I will stick to drop count before the colour change as I don't want to kid anyone that I know about water chemistry. I've checked and my pure water is pure and after 1 drop it instantly changes colour.
I tested my tank a few days ago and the reading was 21 drops for GH and still 6 for KH. This was a surprise as 21 is the same as my tap water but I've been using 50/50 mix for over a year now. So today I completed a water change and before adding the new water I tested it, the 50/50 mix had a reading of 11 drops for GH. I quickly tested the tank after the water change and GH was 18 drops.
So I'm asking myself what am I doing to increase GH?
Some details:
It's a 180litre tank
I dose liquid Co2, TNC Complete Lite and some Phosphate. I also mix in Magnesium Sulphate (MgSO4) into my new water and I'll add that my GH reading of 11 drops was before I mixed this in.
Fluval 307 cannister filter, have in last 6 weeks removed the carbon media and won't be replacing it.
I also switched from TNC Complete to the Lite version because my Nitrate levels went way too high could quite possibly be over 100ppm. Since changing to Lite I'm seeing a much better 20ppm Nitrate in the tank.
Hope that's not too much waffle which could be a fairly easy answer to one of the items I'm adding to the tank increasing the GH.
Thank you