raising kh without raising ph?

[Derek Dungate]

I use ro water in my tank now after some time of useing a hmv filter. I use Tropic marine pro- discus to remineralize the water and get a ph reading of 6.8 however when I test for my kh I only get a reading of one!! If I understand correctly to increase my kh will also increase my ph, yet I read other poaple who say they have a kh of say 5 with a ph of 6.4 how can this be sorry I am a bit thick but I am so scared of ph crash and I want to make sure my water is stable Please can you advise

[Tony Vaughan]

Hi Derek

I not a water expert and I personally keep things as basic as possible, due to this I'm not a fan of using minerals to re-vitalise pure RO water. I would prefer to get a bag of crushed coral into the tank (or filter) to act as a buffer. This will depend of course on the tank size, stocking level, water changes etc etc. Therefore if you use pure RO and a have a heavily stocked tank, feed heavily and don't keep on top of the w/c's then even a large bag of crushed coral will not save you. The organics will cause the ph to lower.

Far too often I think people get hung up on maintaining a ph of 6.5 or whatever............Discus DO NOT NEED a low ph........they prefer soft acidic water but even wild fish can get used to a neutral ph. The super soft water is only required for breeding. The main thing discus require IMO is stability. A stable ph and stable water parameters are more important than a ph of a certain value.

HTH.

Best Regards....................Tony

[Mark Evenden]

The theory is the higher the dKH the higher the pH will be, but in practice this is not always the case - as Tony has posted something to do with an enclosed small body of water, biological filtration and so on.

With regard to the Tropic Marin Discus Pro - does indeed add little or no KH to the water, but their product Tropical re-min does.

What more and more people are doing is mixing the two products 50/50 and report back being very satisfied with the water it produces.

As ever with water chemistry, different things work for different areas (source water being inconsistent) so a morning spent experimenting is worth it's weight in gold.

Hudson's lecture in Sweden put a few myths to bed, he catches wild Discus then QTs and acclimatises them in Conductivity 300ms and pH of 7....there are many paths to the top of a mountain..

[Tony Vaughan]

Thanks for your input Mark,

I agree with the comments that trial and error should assist the Discus keeper in deciding and be apparent to the owner and keeper what is exactly wrong.

Hudson did give an awesome presentation in Malmo and I'm currently trying to get him to do one for DPH

Best Regards................Tony

[Mark Evenden]

[Derek Dungate]

Thanks for all your advice, I have spent the day testing . In my ignorance I thought that marine discus would give me all I needed to balance my ro water but thanks to marks suggestion I now reralize my mistake,

[Tony Vaughan]

Hi Derek,

Good to hear you are on the right track

If you have anymore questions then feel free to ask

Best Regards...................Tony