Hard Water?

[f111shy]

hey there my water hardness couldnt be any higher is there any way i can lower this ?
as i dont fancy a cichlid tank as they get along best in hard water
any tips / experience welcome as im going to try everything to get the hardness down

Karl.

 

[fivestarsellers1]

Well my man A simple way to do this would be Co2 injections. I made a topic about a DIY Co2 injection for under $15 dollars.

What fish do you plan to keep? How large is your tank?

What is your waters hardness exactly?

 

[f111shy]

i would like to keep the tetras or corydoras maybe gouramis but it is a blank canvas atm and its at gh 180 and kh 240 its a 60 litre
hope you can help

Karl.

 

[DrRob]

You have to be very careful with messing with water parameters. It's a route to difficulties.

Whatever you do, you'll have to be consistent. CO2 won't make the water any softer, just more acidic, and can be quite variable in how much. The advantage with hard water is that it tends to be fairly stable in it's pH.

You'll find that most of your choices of fish will do fine in the water you have, so long as they're slowly acclimatised to it. It's worth checking with the lfs you're planning on using what water they're keeping their fish in, as it's often tap water and their fish will be used to your local water.

If you're really keen on changing water parameters there are plenty of posts in the scientific section on it. Options include rain water, if you can find a safe source, DI water or RO water.

 

[Tonyb111111]

I perform my 10% weekly water changes with RO from LFS at £4 for 25 litres. GH came down from 13 to 7, and now alternate between RO and tap to maintain. I also add Mineroll weekly to supplement vitamins and minerals taken out of RO water.

 

[f111shy]

ro water is that jus water put through a filter system that makes it safe to drink ?

Karl.

 

[Tonyb111111]

RO (Reverse Osmosis) water is passed through a permeable membrane under pressure to remove ions and larger molecules, giving a very pure pH neutral water. You can buy this from good a good LFS or buy home systems but they are quite costly.

 

[f111shy]

ok, will look into tht from the lfs and ask how much 60 litres are cheers

Karl.

 

[Prime Ordeal]

The easiest way is to use peat granules in the filter. They drop KH and pH (and add other beneficial chemicals). Add in some wood (as a feature) and that will drop the pH a little too.

 

[f111shy]

brill cheers

I hope all this prep and care leads to a fab tank

Karl.

 

[Whitey_144]

i bought a RO unit for £100. I use 50 tap 50 RO that way my PH stays around 7, rather than 8PH and very hard tap water. trial and error.

i also have bogwood, because i like the look!

 

[Prime Ordeal]

brill cheers

I hope all this prep and care leads to a fab tank

Karl.

Good luck. When you finaly decide which method to use let us know about it and how easy or hard it turned out to be to achieve what you want.

 

[f111shy]

i deffinately think i will because this water is something else ive never seen such hard water to be honest and within four days the gh and kh has dropped together between 120 - 180 as im using strips to test the hardness. i added some friends plants to the tank and a bit of his filter media and there was some of his water in the bag since adding these the levels have dropped i dont know if they would have dropped anyway but i have a feeling they have helped

Karl.

 

[DrRob]

We don't live too far from you, and have pretty similar water, except ours seems to have ammonia and nitrate in it as well.

I use remineralised RO in my tanks, and the fish seem brighter, happier and the water clearer, plus there's far less algae now.

 

[twodoctors]

If your water is metered then RO unit can be costly to run. Unless you use a lot of RO water (ie large tanks) then it might be cheaper to buy. This is because only a fraction of what goes through the unit comes out as RO water, and the rest runs into the drain.

Hard water has lots of mineral which can buffer your water, keeping the pH stable. This also means that adding bogwood, peat ball, pH down etc wouldn't do much to your pH, because they will all be buffered back to your original pH (until you exhaust the buffer). If you use loads of chemical it will then affect the osmolality of the water which may also have detrimental effect on the fish.

Stable water parameter as mentioned before is the best way forward. If your pH is very high and water very hard, then consider going down the mbuna route. They prefer alkaline hard water in the first place. No messing.

Adrian