Reducing My High Kh

[mrjezzi]

I live in the Chilterns and my tap water is on the hard side of 240+ ppm. This gives me issues when following EI and injecting co2 (2x Nutrafin co2 yeast with ladders)

Some info on the web suggests the use of resins in the filter media but obviously require changing often. Some suggested the use of rain water (mixed with tap water to achieve the right KH figures) - this is obviously the cheapest idea and might even save the environment a tiny tiny bit!

Is there anything I should know before using rainwater?

 

[Underwurlde]

Your water hardness is the same as mine - doesn't worry me or my plants. In fact I see this as a good thing with regards trace elements...

'Fiddling' with KH can be tricky & expensive. Personally I'd leave it alone and try to choose fauna & flora to suit....

Andy

 

[funkyhoney]

I agree, it'll be a little tough to try and continually adjust it.

 

[dave_gray2077]

Most plants can adapt to a wide range of GH and KH. My tank is fully planted with a range of soft and hard water plants and they all do fine.

My tank is 285mg/l GH so you don't need to change it.

The best way to changing should you want to is invest in an RO machine.

 

[Themuleous]

I live near Oxford so know your pain when it comes to hard water. As said, most plants will do ok in most water so dont worry about it to much. You only really need to mess with the water hardness if you have fish that cant live in hard water, like my clown loaches or discus. Only then do you really need to lower the hardness. I use RO cut with tap, but I only have a 10g and 20g so water requirements aren't high. When I get my 100g I'm hoping to start using rain water. There is a fair bit of advice on the net, but most say have a clean roof and clean water butt, they are simple to install. I'm going to run an internal filter in my water butt filled with carbon to remove any possible nasties as my roof is far from clean! The water is also a bit brown, probably the moss on the roof, so hopefully the carbon will remove that to.

I will add that once you're set up RO doesn't cost very much to keep running, say 25-30 quid a year and then the cost of the tap water itself but thats really not very much, last time I checked it cost around £1.50 for 1000lt (a cubic metre) which if you ran it through an RO unit would give you 200lt pure water, not to bad really. One other thing, the worst thing about RO units is the amount of waste water, in the case above thats 800lt a fair bit! But as I understand it you can add 2 or even 3 RO membrane to a single unit, which greatly reduces the amount of waste water. Check out osmotics for more into, they sponsor TFF as well, so think you can get a discount if you mention it

Sam