u/largestcob

so i love my little tank with black sand, i think my red neos pop so nice on it and my (also very dark coloured) driftwood

however! i added some blue velvets and theyve made some blue and wild type babies, some of which are so dark in colour that i can hardly see them on the substrate and i am regretting choosing black sand over white or a natural light brown

i know it would require completely breaking down the tank to replace the substrate so i imagine it probably isn’t worth it, but what do you guys think? has anyone ever done this?

my record is 900 meters, my truck couldnt make it all the way up a hill on a snowy road and it was too narrow to turn around so i just had to reverse nearly a km back to the main (better plowed) street lmao

title mostly, i really would like to not buy a taylor test kit, theyre like $200 here and that is a lot to spend for an inflatable hot tub that my parents bought a few years ago lol

i have tests for kh and gh, and to my understanding those should be maybe equivalent to alkalinity and hardness? i cant find a solid answer anywhere so im hoping someone here will know!

the aquarium test measures in dGh/dKh but that can be converted to ppm, in case thats helpful knowledge

i already have a liquid test for ph and bromine content so im not too worried about that, its just alkalinity and hardness that im stuck relying on crappy strips for