Water testing help.

[SDROBBIEFISH]

Hello all! Need help. I just started my tank I put live plants, dragon rock, and Driftwood in a 9 gallon fluval flex. I'm doing test and my ph is about 6.6-6.8 my kh is little too none and my gh is high. I live in San Diego and the water here is hard. I was thinking about putting crush coral in my filter media but I'm worried that it will raise gh. What should I do.

[Fish Folk]

The best advice I ever came across was from "Sunken Gardens" by Karen A Randall: try to work with the water you have instead of chasing other parameters. I think you can be successful if you'll be patient, cycle that beautiful tank, get yourself an adequate light for plants and enjoy designing a lucious garden. Once you've worked through the nitrogen cycle after a few weeks, you can try adding a few fish. I like to use some liquid bio booster to bolster the colony of healthy bacteria. Study up on water changes, and establish a good rhythm for your aquarium.

Adding crushed coral is fine for raising KH. That is a temporary hardness that can benefit certain livebearers, snails, and shrimp. I have crushed coral in a number of my tanks. Different aquarists vary on their experience of how it affects on their water.

Do you have your heart set on a certain fish species or another? 

Edited March 5, 2023 by Fish Folk

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I agree with @Fish Folk. I made the decision early on to work with fish that do well in my tap water. My tap is lower pH, little to no buffer, soft water. It’s one of the best decisions I made in my hobby. 
 

My water simply isn’t set up for livebearers/African Cichlids/etc. that need that higher pH/hardness/mineral content and I don’t want to constantly be chasing numbers and making adjustments. I’ve also had success with snails and shrimp, but I sourced those locally. Instead of trying to make my water match what the internet tells me the species need to have, I’ve found fish that I really enjoy that do well in my water. I simply water change every week, add fertilizer every week for the plants, squeeze a filter every once in a while, and have found lots of success along the way. 

[DeadStang]

Yep -- same advice. There are a lot of cool fish I would really like to have but my well water hits a pH of about 8 when it sits overnight and is moderately hard with an acceptable KH (could be a littler higher). Nitrates are 40 out of the tap and that value never changes in my tanks, which lets the rhizome plants do really well and the fish seem to do OK at that level. I just pick fish that do alright in my water and add other things they might like (like a power head and lots of air stones in the Buffaloes, etc.).

[nabokovfan87]

On 3/4/2023 at 6:11 PM, SDROBBIEFISH said:

Hello all! Need help. I just started my tank I put live plants, dragon rock, and Driftwood in a 9 gallon fluval flex. I'm doing test and my ph is about 6.6-6.8 my kh is little too none and my gh is high. I live in San Diego and the water here is hard. I was thinking about putting crush coral in my filter media but I'm worried that it will raise gh. What should I do.

Similar water to mine. So cal also.

What is the KH reading you're getting? You can use CC without worrying about GH. I use seachem alkalinity buffer to get mine from 40 up to the 60-80 range.

The only reason I don't use CC is because I have black substrate and I don't have a place for any in the filter. (Tidal testing link in my sig)

Finally, what do the fish you're keeping need for PH? What's the upper limit?

[SDROBBIEFISH]

This all great advice. Thank you! I just don't understand that my tap water is hard (SD county 8 ph) but when I test it in my tank after a week ph low. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 3/5/2023 at 8:22 AM, SDROBBIEFISH said:

This all great advice. Thank you! I just don't understand that my tap water is hard (SD county 8 ph) but when I test it in my tank after a week ph low. 

The tap water will change after 24 hours. This is called off-gassing.

Take a same of water from the tap, test it right away for everything.

Aerate that sample for 24 hours and then retest. (This is what parameters your tap actually is when stable)

Compare that to your tank. They should be pretty similar. If they aren't it could point to a maintenance issue.

This is also a good way to track if the water company is changing the tapwater on you.