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can someone make heads or tails of this please...


malawi4me

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not sure how this should be used and want to be 100% befor throwing it in the tank....

My water ph is 7.8, hardness is 220ppm

water is for Discus so I want to lower both.

Tank is 170 liters only a few discus.

Here is the back of the bottle, Im confused as to the dossage rate..... Shop told me to put in 3 too 5 ml everyday? sound right?

Direction: Apply Biotec Blackwater Weekly, at 0-1 dKH (<17.9 ppm), very soft acidic water to hard water in aquarium / hard tap water.

Apply up to 2-3 times a week in more heavily stocked aquariums. Test pH and dKH hardness regularly, adjust blackwater use to reach ideal level.

Ideally the water ranges from 6.5 to 7.5 ph, 2-8 dKH.

change less than 0.3 units a day.

Discus 0 gH & 3 kH

lost me.....

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so you have a few discus in 7.8 pH and want to lower the pH and reduce hardness

what substrate is in the tank because if you have anything that will buff to alkaline

will just have you going back to the 7.8

water is your tapwater parameters

it appears to be a blackwater tonic and the instructions are pretty ordinary

I would use 5ml and test it after an hour but I don't see it making a huge change in

pH and hardness levels unlike if you added peat

if it drops it by 0.2 over night then continue at that dosage rate

get a 200lt drum and pre condition the water for your water changes if you can

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great water for Malawi , Tangs and Central Americans

you will need to pre condition the water so get yourself a barrel

and to get it to 7.0 pH you may have to look at a water softener

to reduce the carbonate levels or an RO unit

let us know the results of the blackwater extract

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Give it til tomorrow morning, check again. If no change, get some water tested at a local shop. If the shop tests the same, throw out the blackwater extract as it seems to be useless. If the shop shows a different reading, buy a new test kit.

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So it seems like either the blackwater stuff does literally nothing, or it does so little that something in your tank is buffering the water up.
You could try it in a bucket of tank water with just some aeration.
(It could be some stonework, or even some mineral content in the gravel that is pushing the readings up, or something seemingly inocuous like a filter media?)

A CO2 input in to the tank can drop the pH. But can be hard to manage/balance.
"pH down" solutions are generally short term fix as the hardness usually remains to bring it back up once the 'acid' is run out.

I agree with Chris that your best bet is probably treating the water before it gets to your tank. If you cant age/condition it in a barrel you could look at some chemical filtration or a reverse osmosis unit that you can run the water through immediately before a water change - but this is probably going to be a bit more expensive.

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