What is kh in chemistry

Skip to content. September 10, No Comments. Reading Time: 2 minutes. What Is KH? Examples of KH. Ideally, freshwater aquariums have a GH between dGH or ppm. All animals need some minerals, but certain fish like livebearers, goldfish, and African cichlids prefer higher GH levels. Symptoms of low GH include:. When you add a natural source of minerals, it tends to release multiple types of ions, which then affects multiple types of water parameters.

For example, limestone contains a high percentage of calcium carbonate, which contains both calcium and carbonate ions and therefore raises both GH and KH. If you want to increase only GH but not KH, you must increase the specific ions for GH calcium and magnesium without including ions that affect KH carbonates and bicarbonates.

In fact, African cichlid keepers often buy or create specific salt mixes to individually raise KH or GH. As mentioned before, KH directly relates to pH because it prevents your pH from changing as quickly. In aquariums, pH levels tend to drop over time, so when KH is raised, more acid is neutralized and pH tends to stay higher. However, if you have a lower pH and add crushed coral, both pH and KH values tend to increase. There are many, many ways to lower and raise the pH, KH, and GH in your aquarium — some that are less effective and others that can be dangerously potent.

We prefer to err on the side of caution by using gentler methods. If you want to lower pH, KH, and GH and soften your water, we recommend letting the tank acidify over time by managing minimal water changes and gradually mixing in water filtered through an RODI reverse osmosis de-ionized water system. If you wish to raise pH, KH, and GH and harden your water, our first choice is to add crushed coral — either mixed into the substrate or as a bag of filter media in your hang-on-back or canister filter.

In water with a low KH value, say under dKH This is called pH shock and it is due to lack of water buffering or KH. A seneye device will alert for sudden pH changes and crashes every hour of every day.

Testing pH at the same time once a day will not always show if the pH has a cycle as a result of low KH. It is therefore important to get this figure reasonably high to stabilise the water. To people keeping fish from the African Lakes this is the life and death of their fish. Those fish live in very stable high pH conditions, they do not like change and the conditions can be difficult to imitate. Fortunately turtles are not quite so sensitive.

However, I do think that basic fish keeping can teach the aquatic turtle keeper a thing or two about water. Adding sodium bicarbonate baking soda. One teaspoon of baking soda added to 50 liters of water can raise the kH of the water by approx 4 deg dH without a major affect on pH.

Adding an air stone to increase surface turbulence driving off carbon dioxide CO2 Adding commercially available products to increase buffering capacity. You can mix tap water with reverse osmosis water to achieve the desired kH. Adding commercially available products to decrease the buffering capacity. Do not use distilled water as it has no dissolved salts and hence no buffering ability.

Add a small amount of acid eg uric acid and it will shift the pH very rapidly. It is also highly osmotic and will react with the turtles renal system.

This is essentially a measurement of Magnesium and Calcium ions in the water. Again it is measured in the German degrees of hardness scale or parts per million.

This is what is generally meant by soft and hard water which are terms people should be familiar with. The table below shows comparisons between parts per million, the dH scale and the generalised concepts of soft and hard water.

Adding limestone to the aquarium this will also increase kH which in turn will increase pH Adding calcium carbonate will raise gH and kH. Adding peat moss to your filter Use commercially available water softening pillows or a water softener this removes calcium and magnesium ions and replaces them with sodium ions.