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GH or KH

hedylogus

Member
5 Year Member
Messages
48
Location
PGH, PA
I have several books on fish keeping, and maybe not surprisingly, their information doesn't always agree. One example would be the subject of water hardness.

In your experience, which component of water hardness is more important to successful fish keeping/breeding?.......and why?

Thanks
Matt
 

Randall

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
1,164
Location
New Jersey, USA
GH vs. KH

Dear Matt,

You ask a most advanced question, if I may say so.

GH refers to the general hardness of water. Most test kits, however, only test for magnesium, certainly a component of water hardness, but not comprehensive. KH refers to the carbonate hardness of water, a main player for breeding.

From what I understand, KH is from 70-90% of GH, but not exclusively. When keeping soft water fish, for breeding KH is more significant than GH. So long as your water is carbonate poor, you should be okay.

Randall Kohn
 

Neil

New Member
Messages
1,583
Location
Sacramento, Ca.
hedylogus,
I agree. Not only is KH more critical for reproduction of many species, it also is the measure that allows you to control your pH more closely. However, these 2 values are usually not too far off in most situations.
Neil
 
R

Roger

Guest
gH and kH

Hello All,

Im still working on getting my head around gH/kH TDS ECS etc ..

From what I have seen and heard of, you can still have a high gH and almost no kH. kH is just a subset of gH, though I dont know how much kH makes up of gH.

The only thing I know for certain is that my water is rock hard, gH 14 kH 4-5 and pH 8.4.

Ive played around with adjusting pH so Ill testify to just what kH is good for or not good for depending on your point of view. If you have no kH or very low kH and you have a low pH, its a lot of work to keep from having a pH crash.

Peace,
Roger
 

Xanathos

New Member
5 Year Member
Messages
97
Hi,

Maybe I can help you a bit more about all those wonderfull chemistry parameters :)

GH refers to general hardness, say, the hardness of the water. It is made mostly from calcium and magnesium ( generally, there twice the amount of magnesium than the amount of calcium ).. There is also some other composants in this, like potassium, but it's careless.. :)

Kh referd to Carbonate hardness ( Kh is german, but I dont know the german word for carbonate.. anyway ). It is mostly the buffer power of your water and it has direct influence over the PH. Think of it as a sponge: it absorbs acid and ph lowering product until it is full. If u add more, then the ph will begin to lower. In short the higher your KH is, the more you must use acid or any ph lowering solution to lower it down and the more your ph will be stable. So, a high kh generally bring a high ph too. If it is really high, your ph will lower down and then begin to slowly move back to it's original position. This is why a lot of people have problem maintaining a correct ph during night when they use CO2 for a planted aquarium :)

Generally speaking, a high Gh is most expected to have a high KH associated with it.

Tds refers to total dissolved solids... I'm a bit confused about explaining it, but you can think of it as the quantity of minerals dissolved in your water. It has nothing to to with GH: u can have a high TDS and a very low GH, if you use plants fertilizer for exemple...

I'm no chimist, but I hope this help you a bit more :)

Phil
 

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