general hardness issues?

[MoSinister]

Ok, one of three things could be wrong.

1) I'm color blind.

2) The kit I have is old.

3) The tap water at my house is hard as a brick ****house.

Attached is a pic of my GH sample after adding 100(!) drops. This certainly doesn't look green to me. Anyone else? I have no sample of what the GH "green" is supposed to look like, but that very much looks like the red/brown they describe that you get first. I've blown through almost half the bottle on this one sample. Procedure was per instructions.

Oh, carbonate hardness was 5.

 

[7Enigma]

Well I would have stopped after about 20 .

What kit is this? Clearly a liquid reagent (which is good), but it doesn't appear to be the AP kit which I'm familiar with. Are you mixing the liquid between drops (it looks kind of green in the picture at the top of the liquid...)?

Here's what I'd do to avoid using up all of your reagent.

Take 3-4 drops of tap water and place it on a dark surface (top of tank hood, cd case, etc). Let it dry. If you indeed have REALLY hard water you will see the dissolved solids when it dries (white powder). This is a quick and dirty way to see what you've got in the water.

Lets make sure the reagent isn't junk. Go out to the food store and buy a bottle of distilled water. Go home and get out a dixie cup or shot glass (I prefer the shot glass ).Pour a glass of distilled water and put a shot of tap water in the glass. This is a really dilute test that should turn colors in only a couple of drops since the distilled water should have virtually no GH. If it doesn't turn colors in 10 drops I'd trash the kit and get a new one...

If it does work we need to get an accurate number:

Take 1 shot tap water and 4 shots distilled water and mix in a cup. Redo your test but stop if you get to 15-20drops as that level is unlikely. If you get a positive color change multiply by 5 (1:5 dilution) and that is your GH level.

HTH

 

[MoSinister]

Enigma, thanks for the info. My water is hard as hell. Those spots you talk of are all over my dishes after every load.

I've never really worried much about hard water in the past (since it is what it is and I take a "hands off" approach to trying to alter water chemistry other than conditioning new water for PWCs), but have a new tank and just thought I'd get as many parameters measured as I could.

Your suggestions have helped my figure out the kit is shot. In none of the tests did the sample even come close to a "green". Pee yellow was as close as it got (in almost pure distilled water). It was a tetra test kit btw.

 

[7Enigma]

Unless you get your fish from a LFS that has the same water supply you will need to seriously increase the acclimation period to avoid stress. If your water is indeed very hard (which is sounds like it is), you want to VERY SLOWLY do a drip acclimation.

I'd take the bag and float it in the water and add a dixie cup or so every 10-15minutes. I'd wait until the bag is pretty full of water, then dump most out and either add the fish in or do the whole acclimation period over to ensure that the fish have had enough time to acclimate. I'd think about removing a gallon or so of tank water to start and adding a double dose of Prime to it, and then use that water to add to the bag since the bag water will probably have a good bit of ammonia in it from such a long period of time with the fish.

Let us know when you get a new kit.

 

[MoSinister]

Again, thanks for the info. I went as slowly as I could, but this was a difficult situation. I bought the tank, inherited the fish in it, moved the tank and had to go 100% fresh water because of it. I'm sure we have the same water supply, so the hardness they are used to. Now the 100% water change did claim two lives unfortunately. But the others appear to be adjusting nicely after almost a week. Thanks for the concern!