Water Hardness

[Briggsy]

Hey everyone,

I am setting up a 6 gallon tank and I just got done testing the water everything checks out but one thing. The hardness is very hard. I used Distilled water, and I have used it in the past and I don't ever remember my water being to hard. It is about 120 on the hardness I believe. I was wondering if I am going to be able to add my betta to the tank, if not what do I need to do to get it down. Let it keep cycling?

 

[JohnPaul]

Distilled water should have zero mineral hardness (GH) and low carbonate hardness (KH). What sort of test did you use to come up with your number?

 

[Briggsy]

It was a test strip test. Maybe I misread it. I more than likely did. It was a Mardel brand 5 test strip. I don't have the money for a master test kit at the moment. I was hoping to get the fish into the tank today or tomorrow.

 

[jsoong]

Stripes are unreliable. Unless you have something in your tank dissolving into the water (rocks perhaps), you should not read that high KH. <BTW, pure distilled water has no buffering capacity at all & might get you into pH trouble down the road ..... most people would be better using straight tap water.>

At any rate hardness of 120 (ppm - I would think) is not that bad. My water is at 180 or so & the betta did just fine.

 

[Menagerie]

Should be fine. Ask the LFS that you will be buying the betta from what the water hardness is there. They are probably using tap.

 

[bs6749]

My KH is over 300 and all of my fish including angels and discus are doing just fine.

If that number (120) is 120ppm for your GH, then you have great water. I'd actually consider that to be moderately hard but not hard. That's about where you want to be for a large number of species. I wouldn't change anything except maybe adding RO water at rate of 1:5 with tap if you are that concerned.