I have a 55 gal. Fresh water tank. I used to have 2 Largemouth Bass and 3 good sized Blue Gill. They fed on about 60 feeder comets a week. I got rid of them and did a 50% water change. I took my water in and it was all messed up from them. I did four 50% water changes since and I have used a ph7 water balancer. Now the tests show that the water is both Alkali and Acidic. I am not a novice aquarium keeper, I have had tanks of all sizes for over 20 years. This has totally confused me and my local pet shop workers. Please help me on this one. Thanks
Don't use test strips for accurate readings. They are highly inaccurate and often give strange readings, especially if they are old or handled a lot.
Never trust water chemistry interpretations from anyone at PetSmart! I agree with the other poster, they are most likely confusing their terms (talking about high alkalinity/hardness of the water meaning buffer capacity and level of dissolved solids instead of an alkali/basic water meaning high pH.) There are test strips that test many things together, and if the results were from one test strip the manager is just getting the terms confused and you have low pH and hard water. If he did two different tests for pH and one was high and one was low, the strips were old or contaminated.
pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com Platy are very easy to breed and will reproduce in all sorts of water conditions. They tend to have less male offspring at the lower pH though. They tend to have mor males or a better even split at higher pH and hard water.
Are you testing alkalinity and pH? Those are two separate parameters you are testing for. Alkalinity is the measurement of buffering capacity of the water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkalinity and pH is the measure of the appearance of hydrogen in the solution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH A tank can have a high alkalinity but low pH. (Hard but acidic water)
So, are you just confusing your terms?
Or are you doing two pH tests where one shows a low pH and the other a high pH, or the result isn't on the chart? That could mean you have the wrong pH test kit for your pH levels (some only test low pH , some only high pH and they give bogus reading if on the high/low ends of the test parameters) or it can mean your test kit it too old and the chemicals are not good anymore.
pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com
Please clarify
It is not chemically possible for water to be both alkali and acidic. Old litmus paper can go bad, giving you incorrect readings.
