Quote:
Originally Posted by digital-audiophile
Under 7DKH? hmm I'll have to do a little more reserch on that. My tank water tested at 5DKH last night (using two different brand test kits) and I started to panic a bit.
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5dKH might be a little low. Guide says to have it 6.5-7.5 and that any higher "shows no advantage" (which I take to mean, "not detrimental"). Coming from a few years ago when the recommendation for alk was to be 1/10th the Ca in meq/l (ie., 400Ca, 4.0meq/l -> ~11-12dKH), it's hard for me to wrap my head around low Alk numbers.
Nevertheless my alk tests at 8dKH, and unless someone comes out and tells me that it's bad, I'm leaving it there. It's such a pain to dial in different target numbers from my calcium reactor and kalk reactor that I would prefer to leave things the way they are. Plus, rapid changes in Alk I have found to be bad (worse than say low Alk, or high Alk, all on its own .. it's like the change or swing from one value to another is worse than whatever the old value was). So adjust your Alk slowly would be my recommendation.