I was doing a water change today and something crossed my mind and I totally freaked out.

I know you are supposed to add the pH down and conditioner to water BEFORE you put it back in the tank with the fishies. I have a ten gallon tank and I usually change three gallons of it. All of the chemicals I add into the water say "this much for every ten gallons" Am I supposed to be adding that amount for the ten gallons, or less because I'm only suppose to be treating the new water. Help my brain hurts ._.

Okay I don't know for sure on this one but I am going to say that u should adding for 10gal because you are going to put water back in at some point ne ways?.....I see what your saying though....
Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, Just thought I would take a stab at it and see if I was correct.....

Every time I do a water change I add the full dose of conditioner.

What is your Ph at normally, anyways?

This has gotten me confused too I only add the dose of the water that I put back in. Like if I change 30 gallons of water,I only treat that and not the whole tank Could this be bad?

Yea I hear on this one coyote ugly!! I swear I read it 10 times to see if I was reading it correctly...Good thing I am not the only one that is a bit confused with this one.....Felt kinda silly even posting back at first...but then I thouhgt, oh what the heck...hoping someone else would know soon!!.....lol

What does your bottle of conditioner say? Mine says to add it to "new water" which I would take as meaning just into the stuff you're replacing.

If you're adding tap water directly into the tank, then you need to add enough dechlorinator for the entire gallons of the tank.

If you're using buckets and are dechlorinating the water before adding it to the tank, you only need to dose for the amount of water you're adding.

Kissy: The thing I'd worry about with the pH down is swings in pH. From what I've read, if your water is well buffered (high KH), adding chemicals to lower pH may initially lower pH and then it tends to rise again.

Goldies can tolerate a wide range of pH, but swings in pH are stressful.

Could you post your tap water parameters?
and those of the tank?

Haha, one of my tetras, Rummert, attacked the test strip when I put it in. Fiesty little guy


TAP:

Nitrate: 10
Nitrite: 0
*Hardness: 10
KH-180
pH: 8.2


TANK:

Nitrate: 20
Nitrite: 0
Hardness: 10
**KH: 300+
***pH: 8

*I have a water softener that automatically softens all the water in my house

** How do I get the buffering cappacity down and where is it ideal? Its been this high for quite a while.

*** GAHHHHHH! Stupid pH. My pH doesn't like to change. If you get the pH ideal with pH down after a water change, after a week will the pH return to the natural pH? I hate adding sulfuric acid to my tank, but the 'Correct pH' stuff I was using before wasn't working. I think I may have stubborn water ._.

The conditioner bottle says "add one table spoon for every ten gallons." It has a measureing ring on the cap for ten gallons and 20 gallons. I use Tetra Aquasafe.

The pH down says " add 1/2 teaspoon for each 20 US gallons of aquarium water. Take another pH reading before adding the next dose of pH down. Do not change the pH more than .2 in 24 hours with fish present in the water." I use Aquarium Pharmaceuticals and it says "contains no phosphates". I don't know what that means, it might help tho

I'm so glad other people are wondering this, I felt pretty stupid posting this question.

Also, my filter uses carbon packets and it is three weeks old. Four weeks is when it needs to be changed.

Any idea why your KH is so much higher in the tank than it is in your tap water? That doesn't make sense unless something's been added that contains buffers. a lot of evaporation from the tank could do it, but your GH would also be higher if that were the case.

I'm sure your pH doesn't like to change with KH that high. Any acids added may drop pH temporarily but there is plenty of KH left to neutralize them.

Phosphate is a buffer. You don't need any. LOL

I think your tap water pH and KH are fine for goldies, tho the GH is too low. I wouldn't dink around with it myself except to increase GH.

Aquasafe is fine. It shouldn't be affecting either KH or pH.

What I'd do is partial water changes to bring the tank KH down to your tap KH levels.. and explore the possibility of using unsoftened water in the tank.

Is it possible to test water that hasn't been thru your water softener for pH, KH and GH? I'm thinking the extra GH there would be a good thing.

and I wouldn't add any more chemicals to reduce pH cuz a pH of 8.2 is fine. The only time the pH would be an issue is if ammonia was showing cuz ammonia is more toxic at higher pH. the plus side is you won't have to every worry about your pH crashing.

Well, I did find one hose spigget in my yard that is not softened and here are the numbers...


Nitrate: 10
Nitrtite: 0
Hardness: 300+
KH: 300+
pH: 8.3


The KH may be a little off on my testings because the little pad on the strips is never a solid color...the outside is a blue that isn't even on the strip and the middle is a greenish blue.

Would combining softened and unsoftened water for my tank be a good solution?

I just got an email back from Tetra and they said that I should be adding their conditioner to only the amount of water I'm replacing, and that is probly the case with the pH down. I am still waiting for the email back from aquarium pharmaceuticals on their pH down. I think I will get the same answer..I'm just having problems stabalizing pH

Yea, the unsoftened water would help bring up GH, but it would also increase KH as well.

If you are bound and determined to lower pH/KH, check out Rourke's site.
http://www.click2roark.com/cgi-win/weborde...document=index2
you'll hafta register to view it. He uses muriatic acid which is sold for swimming pools to lower pH. Much cheaper than the pH products you're using. I think how I'd do it, is to draw up the change water and mix the softened and unsoftened water to get GH around 100ppm. Then I'd dose the muriatic acid to lower KH to 120-150 (He has a formula there for how much acid to add).

OKay, I really want to get this KH right! I looked at the site and it does look a little bit dangerous. I am starting a new thread with this info and see how others look at it.

I believe my new thread idea failed x_x

Couldn't hurt to check for sure.

The pool acid is cheap, so it really couldn't hurt to experiment outside the tank. Tho I'm not sure how critical it is to lower KH. Some of the koi folk on another board have water with pH in the high 8s and don't have any problems with it.

I'm going to try to experiment with the kh in an outside tank if I can...I've got a reply with details to the other post. If I can't get it right than I will just deal with it the best I can Thanks for your help so much!

You're welcome.
Let me know if I can help further.