FloraPride softening water?

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

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 '__

Well I did another slightly (and I emphasize slightly) more scientific
test. I took two test tubes of my tap water, to one test tube I added
one drop of FloraPride and the other I left alone. Then I did the GH
test on both tubes. The tube treated with FloraPride was 3dGH while the
other came out as 5dGH. And yes I realize that I just said my tap water
was 4dGH a second ago...I suspect it is somewhere very close to exactly
between 4 and 5, sometimes the test takes four drops sometimes five.
Either this is a result of difference in drop size or my water really
is fluctuating (is that possible?).

Despite the fluctuation of my tap water the fact remains that in a side
by side test there was a difference of 2dGH in plain tap and tap +
FloraPride. One possibility is that in a sample this size (5mL in each
tube) a single drop of mostly DI water was enough to lower the dGH. The
other possibility is that this stuff really is lowering GH somehow.

I'm probably going to test a larger sample of my tap water to rule out
the first possibility but I think I'll wait until I hear a few more
responses to see if anyone has any other ideas as to what's going on
before I start wasting large amounts of FloraPride on my curiosity.

I think this test ruled out the possibility of a CO2 sensitive GH test
kit and though I'd really like to believe my plants are absorbing the
available ions that fast I think this test rules that out as the
responsible factor as well. When I do a larger sample I'll also test pH
in both samples to see if that is the problem.

To recap, current possibilities a
1) Consistent human error (increasingly unlikely as repeated tests come
up with the same result)
2)ph sensitive GH test kit.
3)One drop of DI water is enough to lower dGH by two degrees in a 5 mL
sample of tap water, in which case none of the possiblities Elaine
suggested have been ruled out and this second test was pointless.
4)FloraPride lowers GH

-Daniel