Crushed Coral. Help! :-(

[seove]

Not knowing what I was doing I added 10 lbs. of CC to my sand substrate. I didn't know that you should put it in bags to be removed after a period of time. The volume that I added it to is 85 gallons (FW). My pH is the same as what's coming out of the tap (I think it was 7.6). My tank is tropical (community) with crustaceans and Apple Snails. There doesn't seem to be any stress after 3 weeks. I've been adding calcium at WC's. What should I do?

 

[Cthulhu]

Are you keeping african cichlids? It's the only reason I see why you would want hard water. And in this case, it's good to have crushed coral as your substrat

 

[seove]

Are you keeping african cichlids? It's the only reason I see why you would want hard water. And in this case, it's good to have crushed coral as your substrat

Thanks. I have tropical community tank with Apple Snails (so I've been adding calcium that's used in reef aquariums).

 

[Cthulhu]

OK you really need to get to know what you are doing...

The calcium used in reefs which you are talking about, this is probably calcium carbonate, the stuff which hard corals are made of. You don't want that in a typical freshwater aquarium. It raises pH, KH and GH higher that what most tropical freshwater fish like.

GH = general hardness = measure of calcium and magnesium.
If you need to raise GH there are products for freshwater like Seachem Equilibrium or Barr's GH booster.

But before you go raising your GH, do you know your tap water's parameters? Did you test your GH? Unless you have very soft water, you probably don't even need to add GH.

 

[ScotJudd]

I agree with the post above. Find out what your source water is like, Ph, Kh & Gh before attempting to alter water parameters. If your source water is workable for the fish you want to keep then leave it alone and consider yourself fortunate.
I found my tap was <1 Kh and <1 Gh and I raised them both to 6. Ph was far too unstable with a low Kh and I prefer to match Kh to Gh so I settled on 6. It works for my tank of Tetras, Cory's, RCS and MTS.


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[seove]

Thanks all. We live and learn.

 

[trennamw]

Check your GH and KH. If they're high the coral needs to come out.

I did the same ... My GH and KH were so low I figured I'd never need to remove it. But it didn't help and was messy ... Spent quite awhile trying to pick it out!


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