Something has raised the hardness of tank water

[paulag]

Will they be ok when I do water changes? I was planning to do regular smaller changes rather than big ones, but I'd be worried about changing the water too much.

I got my 4dKH water for the drop checker today and it's currently nice and green. It's been bright yellow with tank water all week. The CO2 is only running at 30 bubbles a minute whilst the lights are on (was 12 hours but cut down to 10 today).

Paula

 

[Ed Seeley]

They will be absolutely fine. Even with 50% water changes you won't change the water parameters that much. A slight raise in hardness will mean that you'll be adding slightly softer water every water change. I add pure RO water with no or very little remineralising salts, to my tanks eveyr week and the fish love it.

Just make sure at the start of your tank that you do lots of water changes. Every time you syphon out any dirt, dead leaves or, heaven forbid, little bits of algae you are removing soruces of possible future problems! Daily 50% water changes (as you currently have no fish) wouldn't be too much - but you don't need to do that much either.

Water diffuser are you using? To get 30ppm CO2 with only 1/2bps is very efficient! As you haven't got any fish yet I'd run the CO2 at more than 30ppm though. Get the drop checker a nice yellow colour again - the plants will love the extra CO2; we only have to leave it at around 30ppm as much more than that can kill the fish!

 

[paulag]

Thanks for your reply. The JBL drop checker (with 4dKH water) is a bright yellow again this evening. The CO2 and lights were off for 14 hours overnight and have been back on again for about 5 hours today with the CO2 running at about 1 bubble very 2 seconds. You can pretty much see the plants growing in there - the hygrophilia has put on 3 inches since Friday.

The general hardness in the tank today is about 200mg/l, the tap water is about 160mg/l and I have an experimental lunchbox with the gravel and water in it that is about 180mg/l after 3 days. I haven't done the carbonate hardness today as I'm running out of reagent.

My main concern with the constantly bright yellow drop checker is getting everything stable for fish. I'd rather disturb the plants a little now and not have to deal with the problem for the rest of the life of the tank.

I've ordered some inert gravel and am planning to remove as much as possible of the top layer of the problem gravel and replace it with the new gravel withouth throwing away the whole substrate. This may mean that there is a small amount of the problem substrate left behind but it shouldn't be such a big problem. The gravel won't come until well into next week now and I think if I'm careful I should be able to minimise root disturbance.

Paula