shawmutt
Aquarium Advice Addict
Well, after two weeks of searching, learning new chemistry, finding out some cool things I'd like to try (putting pure sodium in a bucket of water for one 
), facing utter frustration, getting 3 pages of notes and then tossing them out, and otherwise gaining knowledge I would have been better off without, I finally came to a conclusion about Lake Malawi and making my water hard...
Let someone else figure it out!
I looked online and found this site http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/buffer_recipe.php . It is a very basic recipe that involves epson salt, baking soda, and sea salt. I used less epson salt and sea salt (only a teaspoon of each in 5 gallons) to get the gH a little lower than the site recommended, about 11 dGH or ~200ppm. The KH was raised to 12 dkh, or ~215 ppm, which is a little high, so I'm going to add less next week. The resulting pH was 7.8, which is perfect for what I was trying to do. Of course, this makes me wonder how to get the pH up higher when I add less baking soda, but I deal with that next week. HTH!
), facing utter frustration, getting 3 pages of notes and then tossing them out, and otherwise gaining knowledge I would have been better off without, I finally came to a conclusion about Lake Malawi and making my water hard...Let someone else figure it out!
I looked online and found this site http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/buffer_recipe.php . It is a very basic recipe that involves epson salt, baking soda, and sea salt. I used less epson salt and sea salt (only a teaspoon of each in 5 gallons) to get the gH a little lower than the site recommended, about 11 dGH or ~200ppm. The KH was raised to 12 dkh, or ~215 ppm, which is a little high, so I'm going to add less next week. The resulting pH was 7.8, which is perfect for what I was trying to do. Of course, this makes me wonder how to get the pH up higher when I add less baking soda, but I deal with that next week. HTH!
