"NetMax" <[email protected]> wrote:
>To be clear, your source water is 7pH, 6dkH, and after putting it into >the tank at various concentrations, you measure the tank at 8.4pH, >2-3kH. Yes, you understood correctly. That is exactly the situation with this tank. I just can't explain it. Even this evening the pH had climbed up to 7.8 until I did a partial water change for 3 hours; now back down to 7.4. That 7.8 pH is the same level it was when I was using my near-toxic tap water to begin with! Granted that aside from pH and KH I'm having no other apparent water troubles with the new water source. More background on the tank: It has a mixture of planting substrate, laterite, and small-size gravel. I run a lot of oxygen through the water constantly and there is lots of surface agitation. For its size it has medium plant load, medium bioload, exposure to sunlight during the mornings, high, but not extremely high light, and a lot of driftwood about 5 months in the tank (yet I've seen tanks with much more wood). There is no rock other than two or three small pieces of slate the size of large coins. There is nothing in the filters but sponges of various porosities, biomedia (Rena stars and matrix), and a very fine Rena water polishing media pad. There's a mid size sponge filter, 2 heaters, and no CO2 injection. I haven't been dosing any ferts for the plants in this tank. I've been holding off on that until today actually, because I was waiting on the purchase of a CO2 system for this tank first. There's no hood on the tank, but I'm building one. That's pretty muc h it. Do any of those things raise red flags? I'm afraid I might have to buy a second mater test kit to validate the results of the first, and run tests in isolated tanks for gravel and the driftwood. ~nc
