FloraPride softening water?

dfreas wrote:
I was adding FloraPride to my tank today via my usual method of pulling
half a gallon out of the tank, mixing in 10mL of FloraPride and then
dripping the water back into the tank again. Half way through I decided
to see if the FloraPride was raising my GH any out of curiosity. To my
suprise I found just the opposite. My tap water is 4dGH, the half
gallon of tank + Flora was 2dGH, and my tank (after the Flora addition)
is now at 3dGH. Unfortunately I didn't think to test the water
immediately before adding florapride to it so I don't know for sure
what it was but two days ago it was at 4dGH.

From these numbers it seems like the FloraPride is actually lowering my
GH. Is this right? Anyone else with this experience? For reference the
ingredients of FloraPride are (from the back of the bottle):

Potassium Sulfate, EDTA, Iron Chloride, Sodium Hydroxide, DTPA,
Potassium Iodide, Ammonium Heptamolybdate, with Demineralized water up
to 100%

The only other change I've made to the tank was to mix a new batch of
yeast for my CO2 generator. The dissolved CO2 (from charts) was at
about 5ppm before the change and is up to between 20 and 25ppm now.
Incidentally no amount of reading about DIY CO2 prepares you for the
end of that first batch of yeast! My pH jumped from 6.8ish to off the
limit of my test (7.8) overnight when CO2 stopped without me realizing
it. There was a notable difference in fish behavior when I got the CO2
running again - with the pH down to the mid 6s again they are much more
active.

-Daniel

Your GH test kit could be pH or CO2 sensitive. OR your plants could now
be absorbing Mg+ and Ca++ since they're growing faster.

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__