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RE: A slight correction
Hi everyone,
Yesterday, in my description of the test setup that I am running, I made an
observation based on some early tests of a tank using Steve Pushak's soil
substrate and another tank using Flourite as a substrate. From the inital
tests, it appeared that the soil based tank had much lower Alkalinity and
Hardness than the Flourite tank and I made the comment that perhaps this was
caused by the soil in the first tank's substrate.
Maybe this is a perfect example of "measure twice, comment once".
The original tests were run with old test kits. I just obtained fresh
reagents and re-ran the tests, also the Hardness kit I used for the new
tests is a Hach Hardness, Total and Calcium (Model Ha-4P). The Alkalinity
test is a Hach Alkalinity (Model AL-AP).
My turn to eat crow. The new test kits gave the following results:
Alkalinity Hardness
Total Calcium Magnesium
Tank 1 130 mg/l 140 mg/l 80 mg/l 60 mg/l
(soil)
Tank 2 70 mg/l 80 mg/l 60 mg/l 20 mg/l
(Flourite)
As you can see, these results are in direct conflict with what the earlier
(and old) test kits gave me. I ran the new tests twice, with identical
results. So my earlier comments about the soil tank sucking up Calcium was
premature. The water source for both tanks was the same (50% tap water, 50%
R/O water) and both tanks received 1 tsp. of sodium bicarbonate and 1 -
500mg Calcium Carbonate tablet.
Sorry about the confusion.
James Purchase
Toronto, Ontario
jpurch at interlog_com