General Hardness.. should i lower it?

according to my tests, my water is VERY hard. its somewhere in between the colors of 150ppm and 300ppm. The color looks closer to 300.
So what exactly does this mean? what is ideal hardness for my fish? I know plants are supposed to go in softer water. Shoud i do something to lower it? When i add my driftwood, i was told it will lower my pH, making it more acidic, but will it lower or increase hardness?

[greenmaji]

the driftwood does lower [acronym:33e477ee1f="power head or Measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions, depending on context"]ph[/acronym:33e477ee1f] by releasing acids into the water but it does not reduce the general hardness of the water. it sounds like your test kit for general harness is not very precise. Im not so sure that you have a problem because it seems like you might not have a very good idea what the actual general hardness of the water is.. [acronym:33e477ee1f="Parts per Million"]ppm[/acronym:33e477ee1f] is alot higher than [acronym:33e477ee1f="Carbonate Hardness"]KH[/acronym:33e477ee1f] levels.. 150-300 [acronym:33e477ee1f="Parts per Million"]ppm[/acronym:33e477ee1f] translates to 8.5-17 [acronym:33e477ee1f="Carbonate Hardness"]KH[/acronym:33e477ee1f]... most of the tests ive used usually gave you a result within 10ppm im not sure what your using... hope this helps

right now im using a dipstick... i tried the [acronym:8d0a83b819="Carbonate Hardness"]KH[/acronym:8d0a83b819] test kit and i kept putting drops in and the water never changed color, so im pretty sure its very hard water, weather the results are very accurate or not.

[greenmaji]

There are very few ways of lowering the general hardness of the water.. how long have these fish been living in your water.. if they are doing well and have been doing well for a long period of time then changing the hardness is most likely a bad idea.
the ways of lowering the hardness is to filter out the minerals that are dissolved in it... reverse osmosis, [acronym:ebfd2170b8="Deionization"]DI[/acronym:ebfd2170b8], and distillation are the only methods of doing this that I am aware of.

oh, well the fish are living very good, i just didn't know if i needed to do something about it.. thanks

[greenmaji]

how long have they been living in your water? and are you getting your fish from a store that would have the same water? Im just thinking that if you get any new fish they will have to be slowly adjusted to your water if the hardness is that different.

[hashbaz]

How hard is your tap water? If your tap water is significantly softer, you can soften your aquarium by changing water more often and/or more at a time.

I bought a [acronym:8197fb5e4c="Reverse osmosis"]RO[/acronym:8197fb5e4c]/[acronym:8197fb5e4c="Deionization"]DI[/acronym:8197fb5e4c] system to soften my water, but now I wish I had just gotten fish that liked hard water.

[Bearfan]

There are also water softening pillows on the market that do the trick:

Small 40 gram
Extra Large 200 gram

I used them with success when I was living in an area with very hard water.

[greenmaji]

ahh.. forgot all about them bearfan.. thanks..

If your tap water is significantly softer, you can soften your aquarium by changing water more often and/or more at a time.

My tap water is very hard and alkaline... i do weekly water changes and more often if i think its needed... like right now i just added new fish and i think i added to many at once, so im changing 30% of the water everyday... no trace of ammonia for the past 3 days so i think im doin ok.