HELP!Newbie with water problems

[DiscusDuo]

Hi,we are fairly new to the discus hobby. we have been reading the info on this forum, but only registered a day ago... I have a problem with our water. We have no Kh out of the tap, therefor we have no kh in our tank water, and our ph runs about 5.0 but it is steady. Our gh is 196.4/ppms in our tank. out of the tap it is 71.6/ppms. So my question is what is the best way to bring the kh up to a suitable level?

We also have a slight reading of ammonia. Our tank has only been set up for a little over two months. we are running an emperor 400, ac 300, and a merlin sand filter,in a 72/gal bow front. Am i correct in assuming that maybe we are having difficuty getting our bacteria established becuase our ph is low? I read that and was wondering if that would be part of the problem. We read that if you get your kh to the right level it will buffer the water bringing up the ph, establishing our bacteria, thus bringing down our ammonia.

we are new to the discus hobby and would greatly appriciate any help available
thank you :D

[limige]

i believe baking soda is the cheap way, or use buffer solutions sold in stores, but most use baking soda. also, some other things will affect kh, not sure but i think peat and driftwood, or maybe it was a substrate?

others?

[brewmaster15]

Hi,
Baking soda should do the trick. It will bring up your pH as well though. Before you try to alter it though do me a favor and measure your water parameters again...this time take some tap water and age it overnight with aeration and tell us what those values are. Reason is its not unlikely that your tap pH will come out acidic, then shift up as the water off gases. This is important to know before you alter the pH, other wise you could get some really big swings. My reason here for asking this is if your tap is 5.0 out of the tap, and the tank is 5.0 , then your buffer(kH) can't be zero, or you agedwater has a pH higher than your out of tap , and the bio cycle in the tank is driving it down to 5.0 in the tank.

hth,
al

[DiscusDuo]

Thanks for the quick reply!!

Al-staight out of the tap the ph is 7.8, gh 71.6/ppm, 0 kh. Aged and airated 24hrs, the ph drops to 7.0.
we mix aged tap water and DI water half and half. we add electro right which brings up the gh in DI water but does not effect the Kh.

thanks

[brewmaster15]

Hi,
Is there a reason why you are using de_i water. The aged water at 7.0 is fine for discus. In many ways you are doubling your work.... mix with De-I and then adding back with electro right.

-al

[Willie]

I'd agree with Al. Your tap water is fine for breeding discus. You might want to increase KH for raising frys, but otherwise, don't mess with a good thing.

Just my 2 cents, Willie

[DiscusDuo]

we have been using the De-i becuase we heard so many bad things about using tap water. we just started using the aged tap water becuase we learned about it on here.(like i said we are new to discus and are still learning) so do you think using strictly aged tap would be better?
we would like to raise our kh, how many degrees should we raise it?
thanks

[DiscusDuo]

How much baking soda should we use to bring up our kh?What is the level of kh we should try to achieve? Also, should we just add it directly to the tank ( after diluting it of course) or should we just add it to the wc water? once we then acheive the right level in our tank how often should we add baking soda? every wc?

thank you all for the great advice!

[lkleung007]

Hi DiscusDuo;

I too would be concerned about a KH of 0.0; as it does not give you any buffering capacity and you can therefore have large swings in the pH of the water...especially down!!!! Although baking soda will do the trick, the effects do not seem to last long enough in my experience (I am by no means a water expert).

Another way of raising KH would be to put crushed coral in the filter boxes which should also raise the KH. You would like to shoot for a KH of about 100 ppm if possible. Also if you are using barrels for aging water, you could put some crushed coral in a filter media bag and aerate it in that also.

HTH, Lester

[DiscusDuo]

We are going to try the baking soda, (testing in a bucket as we speak)
So if we add baking soda to the wc water every water change will that maintain the right level of kh?

if not and we try the crushed coral, how often do you have to relpace the coral in the filter?
thanks