Problem with florite

[Bryce]

I have a question. I been keeping shrimp for a few years now but this one has me scratching my head. I normally use sand or gravel or bare for my neos. I got a small colony of black rili.  I set up a 20 long for them. While at the LFS I picked up a bag of Florite. I use salty shrimp gh kh + just like I always do. Set my tds at 140 gh of 6 kh of 3. No problem . I had this up and running about a week. This morning was checking all my tanks like I do on Sundays. And my tank was Tds of 220 Gh of 10 kh of 4. I did a 50% wc of strait ro and got my numbers back where I like them. I am at a loss to explain why . My tanks are very simple no rocks or anything in tank to raise it. The only difference is the florite. Anybody have any clues? 

 

[Bryce]

I may have a plausible explanation. I called up a guy I trade shrimp with. He is a an old timer and I told him what happened. He said he couldn't remember if he read it, or talked to somebody at a show about it but he said that florite acts as chemical and mechanical binder. That on a atomic level  calcium and magezium and other minerals are attracted to florite.  You Get all these extra particles when you rinse it. My horrible Arizona water. Tds 600s. As the florite becomes stable it releases the particles into the water . This makes a lot of sense.  Where else  would I have gotten all that extra calcium and magezium at? The few articles I found on the people said there water parameters returned to normal after a few large water changes. My tanks all run like machines, and I never used florite before. He also said they used florite in waste water treatment plants and landfills  for this very ability.  This is easy to test, but it's not going to be me I ripped that junk out and went with my old standby sand.  I have no idea if this is true or not but it does explain and fit . Food for thougt.

[Revaria]

Hmm, your using seachem's flourite red right and I believe I read somewhere that the planted tank substrates can all hold onto minerals on a microscopic levels which is why they are used as substrates for plants to begin with and that if you you use liquid fertilizers the fertilizer would eventually work its way into the substrate from the water column over time and vice versa, so what you said is quite plausible. Taking that into account, since your flourite is brand new, it may have a higher amount of "leakage" into the water column and increase your kH and pH to those levels. I have it currently, in my planted tank, but I haven't checked the gH or kH in there for a while cause there isn't anything in there except a bunch of plants. The TDS was 190 last time I checked, up from 160, but I thought that was a result from me using a bunch of fertilizers. 

[Bryce]

It's actually brown and tan lol bad pic. I wouldn't be so mad but it killed 11 shrimp. Basically when you wash it with you tap water, it gets absorbed by the florite.  And then dissolves back out into your water . Hence your high gh. I  thought it was completely inert .it didn't really raise my kh. 1 point

 

[Revaria]

Wow sorry to hear that hopefully it didn't set you back to far. The flourite seems to be inert in terms of pH, but not for gH. I tested my water today and the gH was around 8-9 and the kH was 2-3 with a TDS of 226, so if its not the ferts it could be due to the flourite. 

[ShrimpP]

If I am not mistaken, Fluorite is inert, but it has been enriched with nutrients. It also has a low CEC value. So pretty much it shouldn't absorb/lower GH or KH, due to it's low CEC, but the nutrients it already does have contained, may leach out into the water, raising GH. If you look at the chart below, it shows Fluorite (#19) does have Calcium (Ca) and Magnesium (Mg) which would raise GH. Obviously TDS would raise as well. I am unsure if the amount of Copper (Cu) in it, is deadly to inverts... I am not sure if Fluorite leaches out/contains Ammonia or Nitrates as a Nitrogen nutrient for plants either.

Bryce, the info you got from the old timer isn't exactly correct.

[Bryce]

Hey thank you very much for that chart. Yeah that's why I said I don't know if this is true or not. I just can't explain what caused this, but I'm over it now. It's a funny puzzler. Thanks everyone for your help and time. I'll check back from time to time.