KH and gh

[tara]

From what I have been reading I think gh and kh have got to do with hardness/softness of water. Can someone tell me what sort of testing kit is used to measure these and what should the readings be? Also besides testing the ph and amonia what else should you test for?

[glstine]

gh is general hardness and kh is carbonate hardness. For discuss I think 5 degrees or less is prefered, but not real critical as long as you keep consistent clean water. Others could probably provide better info on this. There are gh and kh test kits. You also want to test for nitrites and nitrates. amonia and nitrite should be 0 and nitrates should be kept less than 10.