Hey Wes,
It sounds to me like you may have gotten some of the contaminated
eco-complete. The same thing happened to me, after a few weeks my ph went
from 6.8 to 8 and my KH and GH both shot up. Are there lots of white bits in
your substrate? If so, that is Calcium Carbonate which is not supposed to
be in there. I contacted CaribSea, the makers of eco-complete and here was
there response:

"I have to apologize for the problems. Yes, we did have a bad batch of raw
material come in from the mine. They hit a vein of calcium carbonate, which
geologically is extremely unusual. We never even were looking for this type
of contamination as the scenario geologically speaking was very rare. None
the less, some got out, and though we were able to get back lots of it, some
fell through the cracks. We will gladly replace all the Eco-Complete, with
our sincere apologies. Please advise me how many bags you bought total, and
to what address I should send the proper material. Thank you again for your
contact."

You can contact them he . Just explain what has happened
to your water parameters.

My replacement bags are excellent, absolutely no effect on pH, GH or KH and
my plants are flourishing. And, unless you are doing it for aesthetics,
there's no need to mix it with another type of gravel.

Tim


wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi everybody...
My goal in setting up my 55 has been to get to a point where I had a
well planted tank with discus. I knew this would be work, but it seems
I may have missed a key point... although the KH and GH of my tapwater
are around 5-7 degrees, the eco-complete substrate I use for plants
raises the GH in my aquarium to 16 degrees or so (It may have also
been raised by a dose of flourish I added---I could avoid adding this
in the future). Does this means I have to abandon my dreams of keeping
discus in the tank, short of emptying the tank and ditching the
eco-complete??

My setup is:
55 gallon, eheim 2215 for filtration, eco-complete/gravel 60/40
substrate, DIY yeast co2 (just one bottle now), and the "starter pack"
from www.freshwateraquariumplants.com, with extra plants and two nice
big amazon swords I picked up from a shop the other day.

Thanks very much for any advice,
Wes