Does it make sense to have the following scenario:
50% Water Change with tab water @ kH = 9
6 days after Water Change tank kH = 3
Thanks
OK totally forgot about this thing with test kits & kH. Thank youYou are probably being misled by test kits....They don't actually measure kH, but alkalinity. Alkalinity is also affected by things other than kH, ammonia, dead fish etc, so relying on test kit result is heading down the path to disaster.....
That is what the drop checker does.How can I measure kH accurately to understand better whether the co2 pumped into my tank is mostly dissolved or mostly dissipated?
Actually you dont need to know the kh. The ph drop due to co2 is independent of the kh. This is why a 1 unit ph drop is recommended to get 30 ppm of co2 in the water. You are better buying a ph pen than anything else. Do a search on this topic specially at thebarrreport.com. If you aerate your tank through the nigh at the morning you measure ph. Then you have to lowe your ph to 1 unit less than that if you want 30 ppm of co2. You can push it further if you want with fish as indicators(dont recommend this myself).
Yes I know this & agree that it's not as simple as it sounds ... but what is also true is that the amount of CO2 needed in soft acidic water to drop the pH by "1 pH unit" is reflected in that linked table (at the Krib)Ive gone through this fact a couple of times in this forum but 99% of people just dont get it
I still like the Larry Frank article on the Krib as well, I've not seen a better explanation.It's likely The Krib is before your time but the chemistry still holds .
Why do you think that the pH measure is so less prone to error than KH?So for whichever tank youll need a ph drop of around 1.1 to 1.2 units to get 30 kppms of co2 in the water. Why bother measuring kh if its another source of error?