I want to increase my KH and GH

[colbywebre47]

I have a South American cichlid tank with an oscar and green terror, and I also have live plants including an amazon sword, anubias, java fern and wenditii. I was using tap water for my tank for probably a year until recently when a hurricane struck, I switched to using an RODI system that i use for my reef tank. However after doing water changes on my freshwater tank for months I started to develop algae and my plants and fish werent doing as well as they used to. So I started to do my research and I think its because my KH and GH currently read dead 0, which makes sense since I dont add any minerals back to thew RODI water I use for water changes (I now know this is a bad thing to do and Im trying to fix it).

I want to increase my GH from 0 to 4 dh (which Ive read is optimal for south american cichlids and plants)
and I want to raise my KH from 0 to 3 dh (which ive read is optimal for south american cichlids and plants)

Im using equillibrium and Alkaline buffer to increase the GH and KH so that they can return to optimal health. The one question I have is how would I go about doing that, should I just add the equilibrium and buffer straight to the tank to increase it from 0 to whatever I want? or is it more difficult than that?

 

[SparkyJones]

I have a South American cichlid tank with an oscar and green terror, and I also have live plants including an amazon sword, anubias, java fern and wenditii. I was using tap water for my tank for probably a year until recently when a hurricane struck, I switched to using an RODI system that i use for my reef tank. However after doing water changes on my freshwater tank for months I started to develop algae and my plants and fish werent doing as well as they used to. So I started to do my research and I think its because my KH and GH currently read dead 0, which makes sense since I dont add any minerals back to thew RODI water I use for water changes (I now know this is a bad thing to do and Im trying to fix it).

I want to increase my GH from 0 to 4 dh (which Ive read is optimal for south american cichlids and plants)
and I want to raise my KH from 0 to 3 dh (which ive read is optimal for south american cichlids and plants)

Im using equillibrium and Alkaline buffer to increase the GH and KH so that they can return to optimal health. The one question I have is how would I go about doing that, should I just add the equilibrium and buffer straight to the tank to increase it from 0 to whatever I want? or is it more difficult than that?

what's wrong with your tap water that you can't just use that again?

No you'd need to mix up the water separately then test it to make sure it's right, then add it to the tank but if you been running zeros, you can't just slam it to 4dGH and 3dKH and spike the pH. this has to be done in steps to avoid the fish going into shock from the multiparameter changes of the water.

I really suggest you test the tap water though, find out what that does. like if it's, I dunno 8GH and 8KH, they you just cut your RODI water 50/50 with the tap water you'll get a 4 on each.

What is your pH doing with zero KH? The missing GH can be a problem those nutrients like calcium it provides supplementation to their diet, so over time their appearance and health can decline without it always just there in the water, but they should be getting what the fish need from their diet mostly. The plants need nutrients though, so if you don't fertilize and running a Zero in GH, it's likely something is lacking that the plants need, while there might be something the GH test doesn't test for that is there, and the algae can capitalize on it while the plants, if missing something, can't get really anything. Plants can only do as well as their least available nutrient if one is missing, they can't do anything.

Your pH is run by the KH, this in and of itself, not such a big deal, the fish and plants can adjust over time to a dwindling KH and pH and be no worse for the wear really, however, no KH can get you wild swings of the pH and that can be an immediate problem.

So, realistically to correct the issue, can you provide the following:

The pH, KH and GH of your tap water.
The pH, KH and GH of your tank water.
RODI is gonna be a blank fo GH and KH and around 7pH but unstable pH and could swing up or down with carbon dioxide intorduction.

Depending on the tap water, you can likely just go back to that and do 10- 20% water changes to get the GH and KH out of the danger zones of 0s slowly and bring the pH up slowly also in the process. Hurricane season was a while ago.
this will slow acclimate the fish back up to there, if the tap water is higher than you want it, you could cut it with RODI to get what you want out of it on the way up.

Neither the KH or the GH is all that important to the fish or the plants less than 1 can be bad, but anything between as low as 2, up to 8 dGH or dKH is fine unless the fish are really sensitive to too much minerals / carbonates. it's the extremes of this that are bad is all. ideally to give you a safety net any dGH and dKH between 3 and 8 is fine with the exceptions of maybe Discus or some of the tetras.

Besides the local municipality possibly over chlorinating the tapwater for the hurricane period, I mean, that should be done with by now.

I really wouldn't do the "rebuilding water" thing unless you just absolutely have to for some reason. i've kept South Americans for a long time, there are species exceptions, but it's always more about consistency and stability than it is about dialing in a specific number, in the wild there's going to be rains and droughts, KH and GH are going to go up or down within a range over periods of time as well as the pH also floating around, Super high or super low is distressing, but in that range of like 3-8 degrees for either is fine for most all of the SA cichlid species and most all SAs in general.

 

[colbywebre47]

what's wrong with your tap water that you can't just use that again?

No you'd need to mix up the water separately then test it to make sure it's right, then add it to the tank but if you been running zeros, you can't just slam it to 4dGH and 3dKH and spike the pH. this has to be done in steps to avoid the fish going into shock from the multiparameter changes of the water.

I really suggest you test the tap water though, find out what that does. like if it's, I dunno 8GH and 8KH, they you just cut your RODI water 50/50 with the tap water you'll get a 4 on each.

What is your pH doing with zero KH? The missing GH can be a problem those nutrients like calcium it provides supplementation to their diet, so over time their appearance and health can decline without it always just there in the water, but they should be getting what the fish need from their diet mostly. The plants need nutrients though, so if you don't fertilize and running a Zero in GH, it's likely something is lacking that the plants need, while there might be something the GH test doesn't test for that is there, and the algae can capitalize on it while the plants, if missing something, can't get really anything. Plants can only do as well as their least available nutrient if one is missing, they can't do anything.

Your pH is run by the KH, this in and of itself, not such a big deal, the fish and plants can adjust over time to a dwindling KH and pH and be no worse for the wear really, however, no KH can get you wild swings of the pH and that can be an immediate problem.

So, realistically to correct the issue, can you provide the following:

The pH, KH and GH of your tap water.
The pH, KH and GH of your tank water.
RODI is gonna be a blank fo GH and KH and around 7pH but unstable pH and could swing up or down with carbon dioxide intorduction.

Depending on the tap water, you can likely just go back to that and do 10- 20% water changes to get the GH and KH out of the danger zones of 0s slowly and bring the pH up slowly also in the process. Hurricane season was a while ago.
this will slow acclimate the fish back up to there, if the tap water is higher than you want it, you could cut it with RODI to get what you want out of it on the way up.

Neither the KH or the GH is all that important to the fish or the plants less than 1 can be bad, but anything between as low as 2, up to 8 dGH or dKH is fine unless the fish are really sensitive to too much minerals / carbonates. it's the extremes of this that are bad is all. ideally to give you a safety net any dGH and dKH between 3 and 8 is fine with the exceptions of maybe Discus or some of the tetras.

Besides the local municipality possibly over chlorinating the tapwater for the hurricane period, I mean, that should be done with by now.

I really wouldn't do the "rebuilding water" thing unless you just absolutely have to for some reason. i've kept South Americans for a long time, there are species exceptions, but it's always more about consistency and stability than it is about dialing in a specific number, in the wild there's going to be rains and droughts, KH and GH are going to go up or down within a range over periods of time as well as the pH also floating around, Super high or super low is distressing, but in that range of like 3-8 degrees for either is fine for most all of the SA cichlid species and most all SAs in general.

The reason I stopped using tap water is because of the hurricane, and when i test it the ph is 8 (Too high), Kh is 4 (Fine) and the Gh is 4 or 5 (Fine). However the last couple times ive tried to add it, it always skyrockets my ammonia readings to like 2 ppm, and makes my tank cloudy for days. It just sketchy and I thought it was harming my tank.

My tank readings right now are
pH- 6 (Bad)
KH- 0 (Bad)
GH-0 (Bad)

I clearly need to do something as my tank has only been declining these past few months.
Both of my fish are wild caught by the way.