The Puffer Forum

pH is not water hardness.

Pufferpunk wrote:pH is not water hardness.

I know that. pH measures acidity/alkalinity of the water, GH/KH are general and carbonate hardness --if I am not mistaken.

I combined to many thoughts into the previous post I made. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused. I should have written.... If marine salt raises pH and you already have hard water with a pH of ~8.6 or higher... will the salt raise your pH out side the range of the "high pH" test range? If so, is a pH that high dangerous to fish or live rock? Other than a sudden decline or crash. If it is dangerous to the fish or live rock is there a way to lower it to a safe range without too much instability?

I appreciate your answers and again I apologize for my error in the earlier post.

It's OK.

RTR would be better to explain all this.

what type of test would accurately read hardness.

Quite a number of the chemicals involved in our hobby test kits are the same for FW and SW, but, big BUT, the color scales are not the same. In BW and SW, the increasing mineral content of the water distorts the colors of our colorimetric tests. SW test kit charts correct for this discrepancy, but linearity is not perfect. That means that we have a hard time getting exact info at varied BW levels. The tests are pretty good and highly reliable or repeatable (if your techniques are OK) at FW & low BW, and again at very high BW and low SW to full SW. In between we have problems but we deal with them. The manufacturers do not give us a lot of support in mid-BW, but that is not callous, it is just too expensive for then to make a whole set of test ranges accurately. Very, very few folks would buy 3-5 full sets of tests to cover FW through BW to SW, so the manufacturers don't produce them.

The best suggestion I can offer is to use both SW and FW kits and guestimate the mid-range results, knowing that neither kit is going to do the job alone, but together will get through the range where it is uncertain. Because the nitrification switch-over is ~ 1.008 -1.012, that is the single most worrisome area. We generally suggest that folks go very slowly through that range. Outside of that, the accuracy of the other readings in less critical.

HTH

Ah well, I'm just gonna wait till high end brackish to get a kit. I've done fine without them so far.

Not smart. How do you know your tank is fine if you don't test? I've had tanks with fish that looked crystal clear. Then found dead fish in the morning. This was before I tested or did regular WC.

Pufferpunk wrote:Not smart. How do you know your tank is fine if you don't test? I've had tanks with fish that looked crystal clear. Then found dead fish in the morning. This was before I tested or did regular WC.

I suppose, I mean my fish seem fine. I would hate loose fish though.

I am a scientist and as such, compulsive. I hate to guess, I want to know. Even if the test is less than perfect it is better than TLAR (that looks about right). "About right" works for horseshoes and hand grenades, but it is not very effective for tank chemistry.

I can and have made a tank in bad OTS (old tank syndrome - essentially biologicl collapse) look pristine with diatom filtration with a bit of carbon mixed with the diatom powder, plus a good glass cleaning while the diatom was running). It looked fine, but if you added a new fish it would soon be dead. A few tests told the real story. Appearances can be highly deceptive.

Know, do not guess. Even if the knowledge is not perfect, some data beats none.

I could never understand why in a beautiful, crystal clear, clean tank, every time I'd add a new oranda to my GF tank, another one would die... Never tested the water or did many WC (many, many years ago).

So as of last night my gravity is about 1.011.