mattseattle
Well-known member
As many of you know I've been having issues keeping my alk. and calc. and all balanced and up to decent levels. Finally I bought good test kits (Salifert) instead of using Red Sea as I bought when I first got into the hobby. For some reason I also thought the Seattle Aquarium NSW would be balanced in the stuff my tank needed so I didn't test it prior to placing it into my tank for the original fill. I've been doing water changes with this water as well (about every 2 - 3 weeks) except lately and I stopped while I tried to get everything in balance. So this weekend when I did a water change I decided to test it for Calc, Alk, Magnesium, pH as well as SG. My tests came back really low so today I decided to go back to the aquarium and get a liter of water to do tests again to confirm my results instead of thinking maybe it was a weird batch. Here are my results of the water:
Water was tested after bringing it up to 81 degrees and I used Salifert test kits for everything except where noted:
Calcium - 320
Alk - 7.0 / 2.51
Magnesium - 960
pH - 7.8 (test strip)
SG - 1.024 (done with a hydrometer)
Does anyone else use the water from the aquarium? have you had similiar results?
My plan from now on out is to go ahead and buy an RO/DI unit and just start making my own water. Hopefully then I won't have issues with keeping calcium and alk up to par and have to use so many additives to get everything up. Right now I'm in the process of raising my magnesium levels up to between 1250 and 1350 and get my alk and calc stabalized.
Thoughts?
Water was tested after bringing it up to 81 degrees and I used Salifert test kits for everything except where noted:
Calcium - 320
Alk - 7.0 / 2.51
Magnesium - 960
pH - 7.8 (test strip)
SG - 1.024 (done with a hydrometer)
Does anyone else use the water from the aquarium? have you had similiar results?
My plan from now on out is to go ahead and buy an RO/DI unit and just start making my own water. Hopefully then I won't have issues with keeping calcium and alk up to par and have to use so many additives to get everything up. Right now I'm in the process of raising my magnesium levels up to between 1250 and 1350 and get my alk and calc stabalized.
Thoughts?