Planted Aquarium WATER PARAMETERS & TESTING Masterclass

Aquarium water chemistry for planted tanks is a complex topic in Aquascaping. In this Green Aqua Masterclass, Tommy will explain the different water parameters and water tests in detail, including their meanings and their impact on your tank's water quality. Get ready to learn everything you need to know about maintaining a healthy and thriving planted aquarium.

What You'll Learn:

Types of Water Tests: Discover the different tests available for aquariums, including test strips, drop tests, digital tests, and photometric tests.

When and Why to Test: Learn the best times to test your water, from setting up your aquarium to regular maintenance checks.

Interpreting Results: Understand the significance of GH, KH, pH, TDS, and other crucial parameters in maintaining a healthy aquatic environment.

Fertilization Insights: Get insights into lean versus estimative index fertilization and how it affects your water chemistry.

Troubleshooting Tips: Find out how to address common issues like algae growth, nutrient imbalances, and animal health in your aquarium.

Whether you're a beginner or an experienced aquarist, this video is packed with valuable information. Remember, understanding your water chemistry is key to a thriving planted aquarium.

👍 Like this video? Give it a thumbs up and share your thoughts in the comments below!
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📌 Check out our other videos for more guidance on creating and maintaining beautiful aquariums.

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CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
01:09 Test types
02:30 When to test?
10:01 Ideal water parameters
23:13 Why You shouldn't test
26:14 Measuring our tanks
30:11 Conclusion
32:40 Nutrient ratios
34:28 Outro

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Camera Operators: Csaba Viczián, Áron Tamaskó
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#greenaqua #aquascaping #watertest #aquarium, #plantedaquarium, #waterchemistry, #waterparameters, #watertesting, #aquariumhobby, #fishkeeping, #aquaticplants, #aquariumcare, #aquariumtips, #aquariummaintenance, #aquaticlife, #fishtank, #aquariumlife

[ravscape]

A very detailed guide. Whole Green Aqua good job. 4 years ago my adventure with aquascaping started from your films. When I started, my knowledge was based on my childhood memories, i.e. cryptocoryne gravel and guppy. Now I build a few tanks a year and I want to say Thank you guys for knowledge end inspiration.❤

[mikesfishtanks]

Welcome to the beautiful world of aquasceping!

[FlavioChriste]

I’ve always wanted to listen to your detailed point of view in this matter. This is an endless debate online.
I keep my tank with 5ppm Nitrate, 0, 5ppm of P, 20+ ppm of K. Gh 6, KH 5 (injecting CO2)
For a long time I’ve been a “Crazy Tester”… it’s important at the beggining of the setup as you mentioned. Now my tank is doing fine, so I just observe for possible problems (it’s a 3 year setup).
And the two most important things you’ve said: stick to a form of fertilization and Be Patient! Nature doesn’t change things in 1 or 2 days. Patience, for me, is the key element in the hobby. Is a learning process that can contribute in all aspects of your life.
Great video, thank you so much for this. Regards from São Paulo, Brazil.

[Scott-hqdf]

This was THE BEST ferts video I’ve ever seen! I’ve struggled with my 125g/active bed sump, eco Complete, quartz sand capped set up using Seachem EI and this really helped! I’m about to tear it all down and redo with Dragon Stone, Amazonia v2! Getting that perfect balance has been elusive with 2-3 months of perfection in between. 😁 Thanks again from Arizona.

[attilaszasz]

Nagyon hasznos, szemlélet formáló videó!
Sok dologra a saját káromon már rájöttem, amiket most jó tanácsként elmondtál, de így is tanulságos volt. Kincset érő tippek, köszönöm!

Lassan fél éves a low tech 60p akváriumom, amihez a legtöbb dolgot Tőletek vettem, és most már szépen beállt végre.

Egy apró észrevétel: a magyar feliratban az elején a csepptesztet (drop test) véletlenül tartóstesztnek fordítottátok.

[texfish]

Great vid, your best yet. Totally agree, if the tank looks right and is running right without algae issues, relax and leave it alone. The only test i do is my tapwater every month or so because it can vary occasionally and i like to know whats going in the tank .

[toxichris]

Every time Tommy does a video, you know its gonna get super technical. Great video. So much insight.

[darrenderousse]

This channel is the way I discovered aquascaping! Came up as suggested video on YouTube! Blew my mind! Then I discovered George farmer, Jurijs and MJ aquascaping! I’m thoroughly hooked now, thanks guys 😂 keep up the amazing content and inspiring others to get hooked on this hobby!

[levemsan]

Very interesting and detailed video! Even though it was running for more than 30 minutes, I watched it in its entirety, without skipping any part. This proves how well you explained things and I am very grateful to you! Keep up the good work! 💯

[claymossterrylee]

This is exactly the information I’ve been looking for regarding water parameters, water testing, and fertilizing planted tanks. All in one place!! I’ve finally been able to create a target set of water parameters and a fertilization schedule that reaches those targets. Now I feel I have a confident baseline to use when there are problems with my plants or “tenants” to be able to confidently identify and correct the problems. THANK YOU!

[dddmmm]

There is too much ego online with people claiming “this is the RIGHT approach”! This vid was very balanced, very good.

[ionutsusan]

Aveti cele mai bune emisiuni si deasemenea comentarii detaliate despre întreținerea acvariilor .Felicitări pentru profesionalismul de care dati dovadă. 👍👏

[vargasandor]

Ez egy nagyon hasznos videó volt számomra!
Köszönöm!

[Przemek-zipe]

Thank you. You make me smarter. I really like your publications, you present the information in an accessible way that is easy to understand for a beginner.

[abi]

To me this is at least one of the best videos I watched for green Aqua, and the best without a doubt on youtube explaining in details about these parameters, and it make a lot of sense to me.
One of my aquariums its water for about 1 month or more is cloudy with white color. I think this might be a result of fluctuations in ph due to low kh. This is just an assumption. I may be wrong but I'm going to measure kh tomorrow.

[christopherfassett]

Great video, but a few notes:

Not everywhere has hard tap water, I've lived somewhere that did (18 dGH, 15 dKH, 370-420 TDS), but right now, where I live, I have 2* dGH, 0 dKH, and 37 TDS. Literally, the only thing in my water is the slaked/hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) that my water company uses to avoid plumbing corrosion. There's no magnesium, so the GH test actually isn't accurate since it assumes a certain ratio (3:1), the GH test reads artificially high. The pH out of my tap is 8.7-9.5, but the hydroxide is very unstable and offgasses within an hour or two, and my pH afterward is usually around 6.1. I don't bother aging the water. It really doesn't affect anything except ammonia toxicity, so I dose Prime a little heavy, no other adjustments for the pH. I use a Python to fill my tanks directly and keep many sensitive fish and shrimp with no issues. I do use a GH booster in CO²-injected tanks or shrimp tanks. It's usually not a big deal in "low-tech" tanks.

Anyways, one correction: KH doesn't affect how quickly the pH drops from CO² (carbonic acid), it only affects the starting point. A 1-point drop is still ~30 ppm CO², the difference is, are you starting from say 6.8 and dropping to 5.8, or are you starting at say 8.0 and dropping to 7.0? The only case where KH might affect the pH drop is when there are non-carbonitic sources of alkalinity that are mucking up the test. This isn't really a concern below about 5-10 dKH because other sources of alkalinity would be quickly destabilized and offgass (like the hydroxide in my tap water).

Things can get a little wonky when KH truly hits absolute 0 and other salts/TDS are low enough, pH meters can, in rare instances start reading strange, etc. That's not because the pH is actually fluctuating but rather it's a deficiency in our ability to *measure* the pH. Measuring the pH of pure RO/DI water often requires lab-grade equipment, the pH pen or test simply becomes unreliable. Once the TDS increases, even if KH remains at 0, most of these issues go away, so while measuring the pH or RO/DI water can result in false readings, once it's mixing with all the impurities in the tank, we shouldn't have any trouble measuring the pH.

Running at 0 dKH, but with enough other salts/TDS that my pH meter functions, I have one tank running at 6.1 offgassed, 5.0 with CO². I have another tank running at 5.4 offgassed, 4.2 with CO² (and Neocaridina, Caridina, Boraras brigittae, Microdevario kubotai, and Sundadanio goblinus are all happy and breeding/spawning). That tank used to run with crushed coral in the filter and ran at 7.8 offgassed, and 6.6 during the day (with the same CO² settings, nothing changed on the regulator).

The big thing a lot of people don't understand is that CO² injection is linear, but we're measuring it with pH, which is logarithmic. So the first 0.5 pH drop is only 25% of the target CO². The first 0.8 and 0.9 drop are only 63% and 79% of the 30 ppm CO² target. So people will say that it's really hard to get that last 0.1 or 0.2 drop. That's because if you're at a 0.8 drop, you still need to increase the CO² flow by 1.5x of what it already is, because you're only 2/3 of the way to the target.

Anyways, hope that's helpful

As always, wonderful video, you guys are hands-down the best aquascaping channel on YouTube and such a great resource. I may have had a nitpick or two with the hardness/pH/CO² etc. thing but the final conclusion is spot-on for people who have gone into a thing deliberately with good info.

Often I help people who have no idea what's going on, are just getting into live plants as an afterthought, etc, and in that case I often recommend switching (or starting) fertilization, adjusting to testing, etc, but that's not the same thing as a deliberate scape.

Wonderful stuff

[williammcdowell]

The information on levels of macro nutrients is exactly where my experience has by clumsy trial and error taken me. This is the best, the very best video on water parameters I have seen, and maybe the best item I have encountered from all sources - books, articles on this topic, and yes drop tests every time for me. Overall this video is simply outstanding.
I don't use RO water and don't hit such low KH figures but then I don't grow the full range of really challenging plants. But I do maintain my tank water at least 50% less in KH than my tap water supply and keep KH below my GH and things are good.
I have also sadly killed shrimps by unintentionally lowering my pH too fast.
Nothing but wise information in this video, well done Tommy, I didn't even get to sit chemistry as a distinct subject so don't beat yourself up about a modest pass.
One little aside but relevant, in the summer sometimes, my Nitrate levels rise in my tap water and I do have to keep an eye on them, I find that Nitrate is best kept below 20 ppm but then I don't always hit my Phosphate target of <0.5 ppm.

[chevabubz]

This was perfect! I've been stressing about all this, I do outdoor landscape maintenance (art) for a living. So when I got laid off this year I got into aqascaping.. it's a whole different world and the video is exactly what I was looking for..I was already subscriber ad this gem popped up💯

[salavussalavuswalroos]

This is the most helpful video I have been able to find. Thank you so much!

[npg]

I've only been in the hobby for a few months and I haven't been having a great time; as a beginner, I'm starting the battle against algae, even though apparently all the parameters are in order and I only use ADA fertilizers. However, thanks to this excellent video, it's clear to me that there's a lot, a lot to learn and improve. Thank you very much and congratulations!