[sukhkawal]

Hi just got my water quality report faxed. im curious again. here it is:

Alkalinity (Kh) - 177 mg/l
Hardness (Gh) - 235 mg/l
Hardness (calcium) - 138 mg/l

Aluminum - Non-detect
Chloride - 62 mg/l
Copper - Non-Detect
Fluoride - .77 mg/l
Iron - Non-detect
Manganese - non-detect
sulfate - 38 mg/l
TDS - 365 mg/l
Zinc - Non-Detect
Nitrate - 4.1 mg/l
Sodium - 28 mg/l

QUESTIONS??
1) my sodium level is 28mg/l. is that a problem to freshwater planted tanks?? they dont need any salt do they??

2) the report doesnt list Magnesium (Mg).my harness is 235, and calcium harness is 138, so does that mean my Magnesium is 235-138= 97?

3)i dont have any boron,copper,iron,manganese,zinc, or Molybdenum in my water. what can i do about these, as plants need them?? add extra trace??

BTW I do have seachem trace,nitrogen,potassium,iron,phosphate.

THANKS ALL.

 

[Darkblade48]

QUESTIONS??
1) my sodium level is 28mg/l. is that a problem to freshwater planted tanks?? they dont need any salt do they??

I am not sure at what level sodium chloride becomes a problem for plants, but I would imagine it shouldn't be a problem at your current level. Plants do not need any additional sodium chloride.

3)i dont have any boron,copper,iron,manganese,zinc, or Molybdenum in my water. what can i do about these, as plants need them?? add extra trace??

Yes; you can add trace elements to make up for the elements that are not present in the water.

 

[Streptomycin]

That's a pretty high nitrate! Fertilizing with your tap a little.

The EPA MCLG (Maximum Contaminant Level Goal) limit is only 10mg/L.

 

[GTR]

Our water report is all listed as PPM. Nitrate as No3 is reported as 12 ppm with a range of 8.4-23 ppm. They show MCLG at 45. IIRC mg/l and PPM are interchangeable. Our sodium is at 32ppm. Our hardness is mostly from the chlorine generation system they use.

 

[Streptomycin]

I didn't know there were two different ways of expressing the nitrate. I was just going off of my city's water report that reports the nitrogen in nitrate with the 10ppm limit. I guess you've got to make sure which value you are getting reported; good to know.

The MCL for nitrate in drinking water was set at 10 mg/L nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) or 45 mg/L nitrate (NO3-), on the basis of 214 methemoglobinemia cases reported to the American Public Health Association for which nitrate concentration data were available (Walton 1951). Because the current MCL was nominally based on human exposure data, no uncertainty or modifying factors were used, so there is no safety factor built into the MCL for nitrates in drinking water (Johnson and Kross 1990; Walton 1951).

 

[Ariel301]

That amount of sodium is not an issue. I purposefully put some salt into my freshwater tanks at a low level, as it helps to prevent diseases in the fish and my livebearers do better with the salt. I have never had any issues with it bothering my plants. It would have to get really salty, pretty close to brackish, I would think, before it would be an issue.

 

[sukhkawal]

yes i just figured it out. my sodium is 28mg/l. since grams are weight. i converted it to volume by converting mg to tsp. 1 tsp of sodium measures 4708mg. so i have a 36 gallon tank. so 36*3.8=136 liters. and 136L*28=3808mg of sodium per 36 gallon which equalls to a little less than 1tsp of sodium in my 36 gallon tank. yes that doesnt sound bad at all. and i figured out my magnesium levels, all questions have been answered. thanks all