"battlelance" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 22:23:12 -0600, "Rick"
wrote:

Battlelance, just our of curiosity what size tank do you have that you
use
this recipe on?. I took a look at it and unless I read it wrong I would
have
to add 13 tablespoons of Epsom salts, about 13 teaspoons of baking soda
and
13 teaspoons of marine salt to my 66 gallon tank to get my PH and
hardness
up to about my current levels.

I use it on an 80 gallon tank. I would have to go dig up my original
calculations to find out how much I would need to add to get it to
where it is now (pH 8.0, KH ~200), because once I got it up to this
level, you just have to maintain it based on the amount of water you
remove from the tank. I do know it was nowhere near your numbers. Did
you actually take a bucket of dechlorinated water and see how many
tsp/tbsp's you would have to add to reach your desired levels? It's
not something you could just guess at.

I'm probably being too picky, since my original pH is ~7.5, and the
africans should handle this just fine, but my KH and GH are 10, and
I really wanted to bring that KH up. I also added crushed coral to the
substrate and in the filter, and I'm currently monitoring the results
to see if I can get a higher pH and KH, without altering the formula I
use for the rift lake buffer recipe.

And hey, it's cheaper than the "rift lake in a bottle" you can buy
from the LFS

Oh, I also wanted to mention that it takes time for the baking soda
and epsom salts to work. I was a tad hasty when I first did my
calculations, and my pH shot up in the tank causing my yellow labs to
start scratching, and they eventually both died. sniff



In my tank I initially added one tablespoon of baking soda which brought up
my PH but I want my KH for my Mbunas's to be between 14-17 so I added
another couple of teaspoons. I did some research and using the recipe as
described on that site for my tank would give me an initial PH of 8.2 and a
KH of 322 or something akin to liquid rock. Using my formula would give me
a PH of 8.2 and a KH of 14 to 15, adding two more teaspoons of baking soda
would keep my PH at 8.2 but raise my KH to 17-18 range which is perfect for
me. Adding Epsom salts and or marine salts in MHO is not really necessary in
a African tank although it does add some minerals and trace elements that
some recommend. Research on waters of Lake Malawi will reveal that the PH
range is 7.8-8.0 with very limited number of elements so adding marine salt
introduces a wide range of elements which are not found in the natural
biotope of the fish. Marine salt of course is not a buffering additive
however it does contain carbonates which in my particular example would
raise my PH from 8.2 to 8.4. For Africans from Lake Malawi , 8.2 would IMO
be the upper limit of where one should be. Marine water has a ph of 8.4 and
is already out of the range of Africans. Anyway, nothing wrong with a
healthy discussion as everyone benefits in the end as it should prompt those
interested in doing more research.
Regards
Rick