About kh?

[DavidH]

I'm using straight RO (chloramines), with RO vital.
I use a little baking soda to try to balance pH but my kh doesn't even measure. Same with my tap. I can stabilize pH with 50% water change per day. Question is everything I read here talks about smaller water changes during breeding. If I try this my pH would crash. If I add more baking soda to raise kh to just to 1 my pH in my holding tank increases to 8.5.
Any ideas

Thx Dave

[DavidH]

Continued, if I were to raise my kh to like 4 or 5 like is suggested my pH would be about 10!! I'm lost. How do you raise kh without putting pH off the charts. Or should I just continue with my 50% changes?

Dave

[Carol_Roberts]

Is there a reason you are not doing a mix of RO and tap? Wouldn't that stabilize your KH?

[DavidH]

Hey Carol, like I said above darn chloramines.
I have 1 ppm ammonia from the tap.

Thx Dave

[angel12]

Crushed coral shell - Tuffa rock are 2 ideas put a small amount either in the filter or in a pair of tights in the bottom of the tank and let the Calcious rock/shell leech into the water bit more long term than adding Baking soda ... but not quite as exact -

HTH

:)

[brewmaster15]

Hi David,
I have been using seachems reefbuilder in one of breeder tanks, a 30 gal with fry on the parents back. I have zip for kH.

so far this stuff works very well. It only takes a little and seems to hold a pretty stable pH. (i'm using about 1/4 teaspoon per 30 gal . Its only been 2 weeks but seems towork well. The pH creeps up a little , but not as bad as with baking soda.

Hth,
al

Hi All,

Al, how would you compare the crushed coral with seachems reefbuilder regarding buffering ability and parameters? Does seachems change the ECT/TDS ?

Thanks in advance
Ronald

[brewmaster15]

Hi Ronald,
I use the coral in my grow outs as there is more water and I use power filters to move the water thru the coral. In my opinion this works well and could easily be done with a water storage tank. The problem is the pH tends to shift up over time as the calcium carbonate in the stone leaches out . I have found this really hard to regulate on small tanks like breeders. The change is slow as well initially, but prone to big jumps in pH.

In a breeder with just sponges..You can use something like reef builder easily... mix it in a bucket and measure the pH and KNOW that it will be close to the tank. Theres a little pH creeping up, but I can accurately measure what I put in. so far its worked well. I started it in this tank as soon as I had wigglers.

I haven't measure the conductivity/TDS as I have lately been of the mind that its not necessarily the most important factor in my tanks...with my water. As a matter of fact, I have recently discovered that even though my conductivity in my tap water is 350us... my fish breed, spawn, and produce viable offspring in it. I think RO will still help me get them to spawn,,, but I am thrilled that I am getting viable fry without it.! I'm still trying to work all this out though.

The downside is I have to really work at putting things in my water to get good growth! :-\ >:(
hth,
-al

Thanks for the info Al.

Looks like I can stick to the crushed coral for the larger Tanks.

lol Don't work toooo hard ;D

Ronald

[DavidH]

Thx guys, really appreciate all the advice!

Dave

[RealFish]

One teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate (banking sodaNaHCO3) per 50 liters of water will increase KH by 4 degrees. pH is a function of CO2 and KH (Carbonate Hardness). Assuming you are not injecting CO2, atmospheric CO2 I believe is in the 8 ppm range. Therefore, you can adjust KH to dictate pH. Use the following table to figure out what your KH should be to get the pH you are shooting for. http://www.sfbaaps.com/reference/table_01.shtml. For example for a pH of 6.8, you would need KH to be approximately 1.5 dKH or in other words, starting with RO water with no KH. You would need to add only 3/8 of a teaspoon of banking soda.

Aeration of your water should stabilize the CO2 in your tank at atmospheric levels. Fish waste and decomposing matter will use up carbonate hardness, but if your changing a lot of water, it probably doesn't come into play.

Reef builder does basically the same thing as baking soda. It probably does add some GH as it is probably using Calcium Carbonate. I believe there is some concern about adding too much sodium to your aquarium, but with our water change, again, I believe it is moot.

Crushed coral does the same thing. My guess is just a lot slower as it needs time to disolve. Most of your calcium reactors use crushed coral to maintain calcium and alkalinity levels in a reef tank.

[DavidH]

Thx Realfish!!

[Nightowl]

Dave, a KH of less than 4 degrees(1 degree= 17.9 ppm.) allows large ph swings, or crashes. Al uses Seachem Reef builder, which pumps up the KH or total alkalinity, the water's ability to maintain a ph level..... I have used Kent African cichlid buffer in small amounts w/ success if ph crashed in a tank and I needed a quick fix(its very potent). In a holding tank, you could use the AF. buffer w/ Kent ph control minus to lock in a certain ph in the
holding tank. As Realfish stated there are other factors as well, so you would have to experiment a bit, but the effect would be similar to the "proper PH" products that target a certain ph.... they are simply a blend of carbonate/ bi-carbonate buffers and ph lowering compounds in different ratios to produce a certain ph.... 6.5, 7.0 etc. My findings are that the Kent or Seachem products don't raise the TDS as much as the proper ph products do....... less "filler" maybe?
Coral/ shells seem to be used as well, but they will pump up the GH as well... not good for breeding. I often wonder how its regulated being that calcium needs to be in an acid environment to dissolve........calcium reactors are usually kept around 6.3. I guess everyone works out their own system...
Good luck!!!!!!!!! J.T.