testing change water

[SassyAngel111]

Just need to find out how soon after making change water can I test it? The reason I need to know is that I think I am haveing problems with Alk and CA, I just went and bought Instant Ocean and need to test it, had tried Oceanic and was getting real high reading for the Alk and CA even with the water setup for 48 hours before I would do a pwc. I am useing R/O water and all of the filters except the main membran is new.

 

[malkore]

give it 12 hours, assuming you have a powerhead or something mixing the new water.

oddly, I found IO salt too low on Ca, and high on Alk, and ended up switching to Oceanic, which was lower alk and increased Ca...more 'balanced' if you will.

 

[roka64]

Do you have well water or city? I have well water and if I premix the water w/soft flow from my PH, I get a lot of CA and Lime buildup on the side of the bucket/thermometer/PH.....If you CA is too high, try it with a low setting on you PH and it will stick to the sides and you can later scoop it up if you need more....

 

[seaham358]

sassy what are the readings your getting from the oceanic? Oceanic is know for high Cal levels.

 

[SassyAngel111]

it is off the scale, just as with my alk. I had made up some water useing instant ocean salt mix and my alk is 6.28 useing the Salifert test. and the cal. is 530 useing the Salifert test, so what I think is that we have very hard well water, even though I am useing R/O water, is there anything that I could safely use to bring these numbers down without haveing to get a water softener?
Here are the other test results:
NO2 = 0
NH3 = 0
NO3 = 0
these three test I used the AP tests
Sal = 1.025
Temp = 77.2