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GH Boost

Hello,
There is no value in boosting your GH just for the sake of boosting. On the contrary, most try to get away with the lowest GH they can.
What you should think about is whether you have enough Calcium and Magnesium for the plants. Since it's difficult to determine how much of each is present, and since GH of most tap water consists mostly of Calcium it's a good idea to add a little Magnesium via Epsom Salts at every water change. A consequence of this Mg addition is that the GH will rise, but this GH rise is a consequence, not a goal of "boosting GH".

Cheers,
 
Thanks for the comment, what dilution would you recommend?
 
Hi,
Well it's better to keep it simple. The first thing is to determine where you live, because you can go online and find the water quality report for the region your water municipality is in.
That sometimes give you a good idea of what may be in your water.
Depending on the size of your tank, I would add a teaspoon or two of the salt at every water change and call it good.

Again, I would not even think about the actual concentration value, because it won't matter. Mg and Ca simply need to be present in the water. There is no real "official" target concentration level.
Too many hobbyists get wrapped around the axle looking for numbers.

Do you take vitamins or nutritional supplements?
How much mass or weight do those vitamins have compared to the amount of meat and potatoes you have for dinner?
A tiny amount right? A couple of pills weighing a few grams or so. Well there is Magnesium and Calcium in those pills and not a whole lot, maybe a few milligrams.
Does it matter if you take only one pill, or two, or even if you miss taking them for a few days? Not really.

Well it's the same for plants. They don't need a whole lot of these metals, Iron, Zinc, Cacium, Magnesium and so on.
This is good news because you can keep it simple and be worry free.
Throw a teaspoon or two in after you replace the water and be done with it.

Cheers,
 
I have just setup a tank in Jakarta. I would assume we have very soft water. It was a while before I could get any GH boost. I setup the tank anyway and things were mostly fine. However after a while the snail shells tend to go paler and almost transparent. I am now dosing GH boost and expect to see them recover over the next few weeks as the calcium levels build. It is something I have seen in other tanks, has anyone else observed this phenomenon?
 
has anyone else observed this phenomenon?
It's welknown snails need Ca else their shells disolve.
I always wondered if hiding a cuttlebone somewhere in the tank would help
TRIM-CUTTLEBONE.jpg
 
Hi all,
I am now dosing GH boost and expect to see them recover over the next few weeks as the calcium levels build. It is something I have seen in other tanks, has anyone else observed this phenomenon?
They can only build new shell <"at the mantle">, but as soon as the water is more calcium rich they will stop losing shell from the older shell whorls.

cheers Darrel
 
I have just setup a tank in Jakarta. I would assume we have very soft water. It was a while before I could get any GH boost. I setup the tank anyway and things were mostly fine. However after a while the snail shells tend to go paler and almost transparent. I am now dosing GH boost and expect to see them recover over the next few weeks as the calcium levels build. It is something I have seen in other tanks, has anyone else observed this phenomenon?
Could it be due to acidic PH slowly dissolving the shell? How is your PH level?
 
I always wondered if hiding a cuttlebone somewhere in the tank would help
My experience was it didn't help enough . . . I put one quite large piece in a 60L cube I keep quite soft, tannined and at roughly 6.8 pH 120ppm for a betta and his cardinal tank mates before I added a couple of nerites. Their shells started to noticeably discolour quite quickly so I moved them to a harder water tank but only one of them recovered :( Had it been a really low pH/low TDS tank I wouldn't have experimented, but I thought the cuttlebone might make the difference. Sadly not.
 
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