Extremely high kh and ph...

[tsaraber]

Not much new to report, just thought I'd let you know I'm still plugging away. Moved the Betta to his own tank (2.5 gallon) - more on that in another thread as he appears to be having a little bit of a problem.

Anyway - I did a 10% water change for him using the 7:1 mix, the ph stayed the same but the kh actually increased! I'm going to assume I just did something wrong because I don't think that should have happened.

But for now I'm going to give straight distilled water a try. Have got the Fresh Trace ordered and on it's way, and already have Neutral Regulator for the KH and Equilibrium as well (all Seachem) though I'm not 100% sure what this is for. GH? Do I really need to add all three of these to distilled water or is the Equilibrium the same thing as the Fresh Trace? The LFS owner said the Equilibrium is what I add to the water to restore trace elements and such but after doing some reading I don't know that that's true.

Who woulda thunk that a free goldfish given to my kid by her teacher would turn into such madness. (The poor goldfish didn't make it past the end of the first week btw but by then we had already invested a small fortune in aquarium supplies...)

 

[jsoong]

I am not too surprised to see increase in KH. Since you are adding Neutral Regulator & Equilibrium to your distilled water - both of which are buffers so would be reflected in your KH reading. For curiosity, you might want to check the KH of the distilled/chemical salts mix & see what the water parameters are. You'll nedd to do a lot of water changes to change out your old water to the new, & with your hard water, not surprising that there is no pH change yet. But that is good - you don't want to change things too fast.

I am not too keen on chemical doctoring of water, but if you are going to use distilled water, then a chemical buffer is a must. I am not sure if you need to add both (or all 3). I'll leave that to someone who have hands on experience with the products.

Finally, you are not the first one to get in over the head with a "free goldfish". A lot of people got started that way. There was one guy that started with a free goldie, and in a year had multiple assorted tanks, and an indoor POND!

But if you have to be addicted to something, fish-keeping isn't such a bad thing. But be warned - I am already seeing the beginning of MTS!!!

 

[tsaraber]

The straight distilled water with all the Seachem stuff added has a kh of about 3 or so. Ph of exactly 7.0

To be honest I absolutely hate the idea of adding all this junk to the water too but I don't know what else to do. Our water is just horrible for the kind of fish we'd like to keep. When I get the gh test kit in I'd like to do a test on straight tap water just to see how bad it really is.

And MTS - ohhhhh yeah I feel that coming on strong. I would LOVE to get a nice 55 gallon tank and fill it full of angel fish, tetras or something but until I figure out what I'm doing and have a surefire way of keeping the water good I know better than to subject any more little fishies to such torture. Indoor pond though - now THAT sounds like fun!! lol

Speaking of angels, got into a bit of an argument with my dad tonight because he was trying to talk me into putting an angel into the tank we have right now - it's only a 10 gallon remember. He insisted it would be fine and I kept telling him I'd heard otherwise and had no intention of doing it no matter how much I want an angel fish. 8O

 

[jsoong]

The new water para sounds OK. Go with that & see what happens when you changed out the old water. BTW - forgot if I asked already - any chance there might be something in the tank raising the pH - eg. coral, limestone, etc. These would be fairly inert in hard water, but when you change over to soft water, they start to dissolve, raising pH & KH - kinda defeating what you are trying to achieve.

Indoor pond ... that's something we are toying with. My wife would like a sunroom addition to house that pond. That is going to set me back $$$$ ... see what a couple gold fish can lead you!

 

[tsaraber]

Nope, there shouldn't be anything in there that would raise the PH.. We've used regular aquarium gravel (made sure the bag said it wouldn't alter the PH), there is one of those decorative caves and some petrified wood - I guess either one of those could potentially be causing a problem but I kind of doubt it. Oh and one plastic, and three real plants (the plants are potted, maybe the pots are bad?)... The ph is pretty stable so I don't get the impression that anything is affecting it - it's just really high. Since I started this thread the ph has dropped down to 8.0 and the kh has come down quite a bit too (was like 18 last time I checked down from around 25 - due to a slow, 20% water change using straight distilled - was the first time ever our plants pearled!) So we are getting somewhere finally, but like you've said, it's going to be a long process. I'm only doing the 10% water change twice a week.

I love the idea of a sunroom with an indoor pond. I imagine it would be a lot of work as well as a lot of money. I definately don't have the environment for that right now. Not about to try filling a pond with distilled water, not to mention we have 4 cats who I'm pretty sure would make short work of our pond fish.