Quote:
Originally Posted by VaughnH
If your KH test kit is working right you have very alkaline water, but just high calcium/magnesiun concentration, and not too high at that. Did you or do you add baking soda to the tank? That would drive up the KH and not the GH. The drop checker will not give usable results unless you use distilled or deionized water in it, with a known KH due to carbonates only. The Red Sea instructions are just a way to measure the tank pH using a drop checker. And, 30 drops per minute are not going to be enough CO2 for a 55 gallon tank. Something like 3 or 4 times that amount might be enough, depending on how the CO2 is introduced and whether you are losing CO2 at the water surface due to agitation of the surface.
You can buy known KH, distilled water solutions, that will make the drop checker measure the CO2 ppm in the tank water from KH Standard |
Thank you very much for your help. I replaced the tap water with distilled in the drop checker and ran air stones all day with no co2 with no change in the co2 reading. I also did a partial water change and the CO2 remains high. The fish are acting fine and not gasping for air so I think my drop checker may be off. I purchased a new KH kit and my reading was 3 degrees. So the test kit was bad. I looked at the link for the Standard, do I need the 4dKH or the 5 dKH?
Thanks again for all of your help!