[SupaTank]

Okay so I've been swayed to get the AdA soil (thanks everyone for the help!) and I will be purchasing the new ada amazonia soon but I've read that it lowers your water GH, is that true? My gh is already pretty low. Can anyone also tell me what it will do to my water parameter?

I want to know if I should just buy something else like the akadama- the whole reason Im even purchasing the amazonia is because i want to raise crs and higher grade shrimp in the future. There's no point in me buying it if its not going to help me with what I need it for.

My water param from tap:
ph :7.1
kh :40/80ppm
Gh :30/60ppm
amo:0, nit:0, nitrate:0
tds: 175


Crs shrimp ideal para. (suggested by forum member/research):
PH 7 & lower
GH 4-6
KH1-2
TDS:150-200

 

[mordalphus]

you need a GH booster even if you didn't get amazonia.

Amazonia doesn't lower GH under 5, but if your GH is say... 12, it will help lower it down to 5.

So get amazonia, then get a GH booster, and then you'll be fine.

 

[sayurasem]

Your water is pretty darn good for a californian water :red_mouth
But I'm a little confused on your KH & GH, 40/80ppm and 30/60ppm?


ps. could you change the text back to verdana, kinda hurts my eyes to read xD

 

[SupaTank]

you need a GH booster even if you didn't get amazonia.

Amazonia doesn't lower GH under 5, but if your GH is say... 12, it will help lower it down to 5.

So get amazonia, then get a GH booster, and then you'll be fine.

What's a good booster that won't harm crs shrimp? I've read people used crush coral? From what you stated, could it have the opposite affect and bring gh to 5?

 

[SupaTank]

Your water is pretty darn good for a californian water :red_mouth
But I'm a little confused on your KH & GH, 40/80ppm and 30/60ppm?


ps. could you change the text back to verdana, kinda hurts my eyes to read xD

Actually the local 2012 water company rated from 1-10; 10 being the highest standard of drinking water and & 1 being drinkable... it rate at "1" lolz

 

[sayurasem]

Don't use crushed coral, it will bring the ph back up to 7+. It will defeat the purpose of getting buffering substrate.

Right now I'm using Nutrafin African Cichlid Conditioner. But since the word is out these conditioner is being out of stock because of the cheap price and the same quality as the high-end shrimp conditioner. You can try Fluval Shrimp Mineral Supplement. Although it has gotten some bad reviews of not being "consistent", it works for me and my shrimp breeds fine. Especially if you have a syringe and a TDS meter, your good to go. Just make sure every water change that you put back into the tank is around 150 tds (4 GH degrees & 0 KH ideally).

btw I'm still confused on your GH & KH readings.

TDS of 175 is pretty high for that kind of water.


+side note, if you want to breed your shrimp in the future I recommend using RO water to begin with. It will prolong the substrate buffering life and to have more control on your water parameter. If I'm not mistaken someone from here said tap water parameter can change season to season depending on your water source.

 

[SupaTank]

Don't use crushed coral, it will bring the ph back up to 7+. It will defeat the purpose of getting buffering substrate.

Right now I'm using Nutrafin African Cichlid Conditioner. But since the word is out these conditioner is being out of stock because of the cheap price and the same quality as the high-end shrimp conditioner.

Do you mean making the water safe for shrimp or raising gh? I have a bottle of prime but I concluded that it kill shrimps.

btw I'm still confused on your GH & KH readings.

TDS of 175 is pretty high for that kind of water.

I measure GH & KH with api test strip. I've read if gh is not up to par,
your shrimps can died by having molting issue; after molting they seem to loose all their strength, barely stand and fall to one side & start to twitch.

 

[Bananariot]

ADA Amazonia is the way to go for HQ shrimps.
HQ soil for HQ shrimps lol.

Typical combo is RO water + remineralizer....now if your water has low gH im assuming the pH is pretty low too which you would just need remineralizer.

Then you are set.

 

[danielt]

People, stop screwing them up.

gH = general hardness and it sums up all the bivalent metal ions in the water like Ca2+ and Mg2+

There is no relationship between pH and gH and they surely do not influence each other! Stop spreading such none sense please!

gh is not buffered by anything. The only thing that's buffered is the acidifying effect on the pH which this soil (ADA Amazonia) does not do. Quite the opposite as it contains ingredients that lower the water's carbonate hardness which is the parameter that determines the water's buffering capacity.

gH cannot be lowered by a soil. It is lowered by Ion Exchange Resins or by Reverse Osmosis.

See this article that expands on the subject.

 

[pandamonium]

+1 on danielt, GH and pH are not related. KH and pH are slightly but only because a high KH means a high buffering capacity which means the pH would not swing as much. It does not necessarily translate to a high pH because the water I get from SF tap has a low KH of 1-2 dKH but is still 7.6 pH. My GH is about 5-6 dGH.

Supatank, is your area in California fed by Hetch Hetchy or are you too far south? I am not familiar with the lines that bring water out from up there

 

[Bananariot]

People, stop screwing them up.

gH = general hardness and it sums up all the bivalent metal ions in the water like Ca2+ and Mg2+

There is no relationship between pH and gH and they surely do not influence each other! Stop spreading such none sense please!

gh is not buffered by anything. The only thing that's buffered is the acidifying effect on the pH which this soil (ADA Amazonia) does not do. Quite the opposite as it contains ingredients that lower the water's carbonate hardness which is the parameter that determines the water's buffering capacity.

gH cannot be lowered by a soil. It is lowered by Ion Exchange Resins or by Reverse Osmosis.

See this article that expands on the subject.

Uhh idk what you are talking about but pH and gH can most certainly go hand in hand in the U.S.

Typically when gH is 5 or lower, you will see most water isn't more than 7.5 pH. Typically when you see more basic water above 7.5, gH will be higher.

May not be scientifically related, but it's how the trend is in the U.S. Now if I remember O.P. he mentioned he was like 2 hours out of SF....which the water should be like a gH of 3-4 and like pH of 7.0.

ALSO gH is affected by amazonia. Like some soils such as AKADAMA, dunno if they have THAT in bucharest cause they sure dont have it anymore in the US.....but they strip the gH. However, I suspect the small effect it has on gH is caused by the humic acid present as stated on its website.

 

[randyl]

I agree with you that sometimes people give out information not exactly correct, but I have a feeling you have not used ADA? Whatever you use as your reference, this substrate and many other active substrates do bring down GH. ADA in particular bring GH from 8 (my tap) to 5 in a few hours. This is from my experience.

People need to decide what is true and what is false when reading stuff from internet, including this response of mine.

People, stop screwing them up.

gH = general hardness and it sums up all the bivalent metal ions in the water like Ca2+ and Mg2+

There is no relationship between pH and gH and they surely do not influence each other! Stop spreading such none sense please!

gh is not buffered by anything. The only thing that's buffered is the acidifying effect on the pH which this soil (ADA Amazonia) does not do. Quite the opposite as it contains ingredients that lower the water's carbonate hardness which is the parameter that determines the water's buffering capacity.

gH cannot be lowered by a soil. It is lowered by Ion Exchange Resins or by Reverse Osmosis.

See this article that expands on the subject.

 

[Bananariot]

Oh look at that, didnt even see OP's water params posted, but yeah there is certainly a trend in the US.

 

[pandamonium]

Uhh idk what you are talking about but pH and gH can most certainly go hand in hand in the U.S.

Typically when gH is 5 or lower, you will see most water isn't more than 7.5 pH. Typically when you see more basic water above 7.5, gH will be higher.

May not be scientifically related, but it's how the trend is in the U.S. Now if I remember O.P. he mentioned he was like 2 hours out of SF....which the water should be like a gH of 3-4 and like pH of 7.0.

ALSO gH is affected by amazonia. Like some soils such as AKADAMA, dunno if they have THAT in bucharest cause they sure dont have it anymore in the US.....but they strip the gH. However, I suspect the small effect it has on gH is caused by the humic acid present as stated on its website.

While I don't know about ADA or Akadama, I can believe they lower GH but in the US, GH and pH are not related. GH consists of general hardness or the magnesium, calcium, sulfur, etc present in the water among other things. It includes KH in it but these other ions do not affect pH. Water in SF has a GH of 5-6 but the pH is higher than 7.0, 7.6 actually. According to what you said, this shouldn't be the case. KH directly affects buffering capacity, and GH since it contains KH, I guess it also is linked to buffering capacity but all the ions being measured by the GH are not linked to hydrogen ions in any way, only to buffering capacity.

 

[Bananariot]

While I don't know about ADA or Akadama, I can believe they lower GH but in the US, GH and pH are not related. GH consists of general hardness or the magnesium, calcium, sulfur, etc present in the water among other things. It includes KH in it but these other ions do not affect pH. Water in SF has a GH of 5-6 but the pH is higher than 7.0, 7.6 actually. According to what you said, this shouldn't be the case. KH directly affects buffering capacity, and GH since it contains KH, I guess it also is linked to buffering capacity but all the ions being measured by the GH are not linked to hydrogen ions in any way, only to buffering capacity.

Like I said not scientifically related. But when you see water above pH of 7.5 in a lot of times in the US, the gH is high. With especially your water in mind compared to NY water. The city has a pH of about 7 with low gh and KH. But Long Island has a pH of 7.8-8 and a gH of 9-12! St. BOnaventure pH of 8 and a gH of 12!

I should definitely repeat gH isn't scientifically related to pH but you willl see the trend in the US.

I do believe It's hard to find water with a high gH and a low pH (this will also vary with your definition of high and low) and vice versa in the US. I don't see pH of 7.6 and gH of 5/6 to be high or low......so the trend kinda keeps lolol......

 

[ravensgate]

Just to touch on this since nobody else did, supatank Prime most certainly does not kill shrimp. I use it on all my tanks and pretty sure it's the most popular dechlorinator among shrimp keepers.

 

[Bananariot]

Just to touch on this since nobody else did, supatank Prime most certainly does not kill shrimp. I use it on all my tanks and pretty sure it's the most popular dechlorinator among shrimp keepers.

Yeah I actually heard this random stat from Pandamonium, but apparently its the most effective dechlorinator out there?

 

[mordalphus]

Soil certainly lowers gh, though I don't think it has anything to do with pH. I think it has more to do with the CEC of the soil, even turface will lower GH

 

[danielt]

@Bananariot

JK but is chemistry any different in the U.S? You have noted a TREND. Someone that doesn't know any better might take after it. Which is not good.

P.S.: Plaster/Calcium Chloride + water = hard water at the same pH as it was before. This is what I use to increase my hardness in the shrimp tank. I'm using only RO water in all my tanks for the past 6 months and since I started my shrimp tank.

@Mordalphus

CEC has nothing to do with gH as far as I read because most cation exchangers affect smaller, single atom, compounds. I would believe they can lower gH but in the range of 1-2 dgH maybe. Continuing on your theory, for the sake of discussing this and let's say it does make a huge change, where are all the ions going? Into the soil. Until when? Until it's full of them. Then what?

Ion Exchange Resins are regenerated using salt or replaced. How does the soil gets regenerated after it accumulates all those large, divalent, ions?

Why do we still invest large sums of money in RO units if we can put this in a sump and forget about our liquid stone pouring from the tap?

I'm not bashing any soil just trying to clarify some of the common misconceptions regarding water chemistry. So our shrimp can be happy when we know what to do with the water and what those numbers mean.

 

[mordalphus]

@Bananariot

JK but is chemistry any different in the U.S? You have noted a TREND. Someone that doesn't know any better might take after it. Which is not good.

P.S.: Plaster/Calcium Chloride + water = hard water at the same pH as it was before. This is what I use to increase my hardness in the shrimp tank. I'm using only RO water in all my tanks for the past 6 months and since I started my shrimp tank.

@Mordalphus

CEC has nothing to do with gH as far as I read because most cation exchangers affect smaller, single atom, compounds. I would believe they can lower gH but in the range of 1-2 dgH maybe. Continuing on your theory, for the sake of discussing this and let's say it does make a huge change, where are all the ions going? Into the soil. Until when? Until it's full of them. Then what?

Ion Exchange Resins are regenerated using salt or replaced. How does the soil gets regenerated after it accumulates all those large, divalent, ions?

Why do we still invest large sums of money in RO units if we can put this in a sump and forget about our liquid stone pouring from the tap?

I'm not bashing any soil just trying to clarify some of the common misconceptions regarding water chemistry. So our shrimp can be happy when we know what to do with the water and what those numbers mean.

Have you used a soil in your tanks?

They lower GH, quite well, not just one or two degrees. When the soil is full of stored GH, it is then spent and no longer stores GH. This is generally when a soil has reached its useful end.

I know it's hard for you to wrap your head around, but there is a hardness lowering ability to soil substrates that is very real. Maybe I don't know the entire science behind it, but I know that it is real and not magical thinking.