3 Gallon Aquarium Cycled -- Now What?

[MBilyeu]

No, they somewhat work in tandem. The easiest explanation although not 100% accurate is that pH refers to how alkaline(acidic) your water is. kH refers to how much resistance a body of water has against a drop in alkalinity(read pH). So the higher the kH the harder it is to reduce your pH, and on the same token, the lower your kH the harder it is to raise your pH. It is part of mother natures balance between H2O and CO2.

[uluvsweetsdontu]

MBilyeu, How does the GH and KH affect plants?

[tmz]

Originally Posted by Orchidlover

Thanks for the info! I didn't do a fishless cycle. I jumped right in not knowing what I was doing. Took a look at this forum and starting hearing things about cycling. Read up on it and here we are today.

haha thats what i did XD
i think i started like five new topics with rediculous cycling questions. i still have no idea what i was doing, but i ended up with a cycled tank so hoorray! took like three months, but at least it was accomplished.
i do like 40% partial water changes every other day. or something like that. idunno. its not as strict a schedual as id like. i forget sometimes XD (epic fail)

[MBilyeu]

There are some exceptions, but plants don't really care about GH or KH, and really not too much about pH either. Most plants have a broad range of conditions that they will live in. The reason that I said it comes into play with some planted tanks, is that they are parameters to keep an eye on so that if you are dosing your tank for CO2 from chemicals, it could create wild swings that could stress/kill your fish. In general this doesn't happen, but adding CO2 through chemicals could cause a quick drop in KH, which would in turn create a drop in pH. If your pH should get under 6.0, then you would need to know what your KH and GH are in order to know if you should aerate the water more, or add calcium to get your levels back up.

[dramaqueen]

All this talk about chemicals confuses me. lol. I never took chemistry in school: I would have failed anyway. I HATED science! lol.I have GOT to find a book and read up on cycling and learn all the terminology. I test the water in my pool durin the summer and we test the ph and chlorine levels but thats all.