BBradbury
Aquarium Advice Addict
- Joined
- May 24, 2011
- Messages
- 5,011
Tank Water Chemistry
Apologies. I didn't read anything in the post about the tank going through the "nitrogen cycle". In this case, you need to know how much dissolved ammonia and nitrite you have in the tank water. I'd disagree that you'd need to know whether or not you have specific dissolved minerals in the water.
Aquarium fish and plants have been adapting to public tap water for decades and fretting over the make up the tank water is confusing at best. I'd wager most of the experienced water keepers don't understand the chemical make up their tap water. If I was a beginning tank keeper, I'd ignore things like pH, hardness, alkalinity and those things for now.
B
Actually when a tank is cycling and ph is dropping to a point it will slow or stop the cycle then you do in fact need to know the ph and kh of the tank. It's not confusing. We aren't talking about fish adapting to tap water readings.
Apologies. I didn't read anything in the post about the tank going through the "nitrogen cycle". In this case, you need to know how much dissolved ammonia and nitrite you have in the tank water. I'd disagree that you'd need to know whether or not you have specific dissolved minerals in the water.
Aquarium fish and plants have been adapting to public tap water for decades and fretting over the make up the tank water is confusing at best. I'd wager most of the experienced water keepers don't understand the chemical make up their tap water. If I was a beginning tank keeper, I'd ignore things like pH, hardness, alkalinity and those things for now.
B