Crushed Coral...

[Lonewolfblue]

As some of you know, I added crushed coral to my filter, just a handful. After 2 weeks, my kh went from 60 to 70. Now a little over 3 weeks later, my kh is now at 100. And still have my ph at 6.3, lol. Which puts me at 150ppm CO2, lol. Going to adjust my ph controller up to 6.7-6.9.

[Billsgate]

Wow, I wish I could trade with your soft, acidic water! My water's so hard my fish are starting to build calcium caves.
Good luck on hardening up your water and getting pH higher!

[JeffreyL]

Lonewolfblue, sounds like we may have the same water source. lol My tap has a gh of 2. The pH is good at 7ish, depending on the light, how tired my eyes are and oh, the moon phase when I try to match to the color chart. I am also trying crushed coral in the filter. But, it had no effect till I gradually raised gh with epsom salt (mgso4) to around a gh of 9. Then it started to buffer. Guess my extrememly low gh was too much initially. It will be interesting to see how much is needed to finally stabilize it. And real interesting when I finally get an african cichlid tank up & running. And yes, Bill, it has advantages, but man if you don't harden it ....... the pH can crash if a fish so much as sneezes!!

[sith j]

lwb i live in east tenn and my water is hard, i havent been able to test for exact hardness yet but i live in the kidney stone capital so i know its hard. do you think thats why my ph is so acidic. i may need to soften my water as well instead of using crushed coral to raise my ph

[Lonewolfblue]

Originally Posted by JeffreyL

Lonewolfblue, sounds like we may have the same water source. lol My tap has a gh of 2. The pH is good at 7ish, depending on the light, how tired my eyes are and oh, the moon phase when I try to match to the color chart. I am also trying crushed coral in the filter. But, it had no effect till I gradually raised gh with epsom salt (mgso4) to around a gh of 9. Then it started to buffer. Guess my extrememly low gh was too much initially. It will be interesting to see how much is needed to finally stabilize it. And real interesting when I finally get an african cichlid tank up & running. And yes, Bill, it has advantages, but man if you don't harden it ....... the pH can crash if a fish so much as sneezes!!

Actually, out of my tap, my kh is 60 and my gh is 100. So I'm just using a small handful of crushed coral to bring my kh up some, so I don't need to drive my ph down to the low 6's. Now if I set my ph controller to hold it around 6.8, I'll be fine.

Originally Posted by sith j

lwb i live in east tenn and my water is hard, i havent been able to test for exact hardness yet but i live in the kidney stone capital so i know its hard. do you think thats why my ph is so acidic. i may need to soften my water as well instead of using crushed coral to raise my ph

As for hard water, it won't be acidic. Hard water will have a high ph, not a low ph. So your water is very soft I believe, since your ph is so low.