Trying to understand KH

letmec17

I was reading about KH, I know it has something to do with carbonate hardness, i'm really not understanding what that means, if someone could break it down to where i could understand the meaning, cause i was researching tetras and platys and i see that the KH is different in the 2 i was wondering if the tetras were between 4-8 and the platys were 10-25, would that make a big difference if you house the 2 together and how do you measure the KH ?

Feelslikefar

Being new to fish keeping and to the forum, I'll just talk about KH hardness and not about how it relates to fish health. Being new,do not want to over step and post info on fish relationships.

I can understand your confusion about KH ( Carbonate Alkalinity ) and GH ( General Hardness )

I work in a Water treatment lab, and the terms can be somewhat confusing.

First off, I need to say that most testing kits sold, measure 'Total Alkalinity' and report it as KH/GH.

What you are looking for is how 'hard' your aquarium water is and how the PH will be affected.

My take on testing for hardness ( for freshwater aquariums ), is that it gives you a benchmark on what you tap water contains (minerals) and how it will affect the Ph stabilization.

Some great info on the site about raising or lowering your hardness. Remember that adjusting your hardness will also change your PH.

Hope this helped some.

letmec17

well sorry to say, that really did'nt help me at all about what i was trying to get to, i got an API test kit which does fine, just wanted to know in lamens terms about KH.

letmec17

so since only 1 person tried to give me advice on this subject, i guess it really don't matter what the KH is when you're putting tetras and platys toghter, they can live toghter in the same aquarium ?

FordMan

many fish including those can adapt to a reasonable range of parameters KH is just the amount of minerals disolved in the water high amounts of disolved solids tends to buffer the ph meaning it stops the water from becoming acidic. fish from soft water will have a hard time preforming osmosis the process of toxins being removed from the fish's body in hard water fish in from hard water will have a difficult time retaining nutrients minerals along with a calcium deficience in your instance ph should be 7-7.6 and 100-200mg per liter of calcium tricarbonate

letmec17

thanks that makes since to me now