DIY Rift Lake Salts

[TCL cichlids]

Just wondering if anyone wanted to share their DIY salt recipies???  As a uni student i hate having to fork over heaps of cash to maintain my system and tanks.<
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>Cheers<
>Will  

Pool Salt<
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>Cheers Dave "I believe that sex is a beautiful thing between two people. Between five, it''s fantastic."

Throw in some sodium bicarbonate (baking powder) to raise the carbonate hardness, then add salts with pool salt ( as above)<
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>Baking powder is actually what they use for pH up and alkaline buffers, so its not even dodgy. In my opinion anyone who pays for alkaline buffers, ph up, or pH down is a sucker. <
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>if i have any advice, get a hardness test kit , (for both GH and KH). Its worth the money. Theres no point trying to alter your water parameters if you dont know them. (im assuming you dont have one just in case you dont, my apologies if i am being patronising)<
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>As a matter of fact, you could show off and have you own DIY carbonate hardness test kit. All you need is an indicator mixed with an acid. Only trouble is all measurements are relative, and you will need to find out the exact carbonate hardness of your water, so you can apply it to your own acid.  

Aquarium Salt  

[gasnitro]

pool salt is not rift lake salt, we only wish it was that easy.<
> some advise can be harmful to your fish if it does not explain itself anyway <
>some things to read<
>cichlid-forum.com/article..._salts.php<
>cichlid-forum.com/article...recipe.php

[GTR73]

Check this out:<
>DIY Salts for Malawi Africans<
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>I think there''s also the other Rift lakes somewhere on the same site. Not sure.

[here fishie fishie]

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>As said by Mark.<
>Do as stated in the article, plus you can add calcium carbonate to the substract or as part of the filter.<
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>I do use a Seachem buffer, make use of shop credit. <
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>Frenchy  "A house full of people is a house full of different points of view"<
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[Davies da fishman]

i personally just use pool salt, without iodine in it....it does the job for me. and the bicarbonate of soda for hardness. i also have calcium carbonate as a substrate in all my tanks.<
>being a uni student also i know the constraints...a 20kg bag of salt lasts for ages and you can buy bicarb in bulk pretty cheap. Edited by: Davies da fishman at: 21/6/05 23:19<
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