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Re: Hard water and softening pillows

> I tested the GH of straight unfiltered tap water and it was 14dGH..same as
> the tank.
> the substrate I am using is Aquarium Gravel..nothing special here.  I have
> added only one stone in that last couple of days...it was called Pagoda
> Stone...looks like hardened sedimentary or slate.  this is the only thing I
> can think of for the hardness to be so high, but then again, if I didn't
> treat the water for hardness when I added it to my tank would it change?  I
> didn't soften the water, I only dechlored it with Aqua Plus Tap water
> conditioner.  Available at most pet stores.  Today I did some looking around
> at the softening pillows.  I would rather not tear the tank apart if I can
> avoid it.

Well if the tap was 14 GH and the tank is the same nothing is happening----
You won't have to tear down the tank but if you want to soften the tap
water, it will take a lot of pillows:) I'd just live with the hard waters.
Add CO2 according to the pH/KH/CO2 chart on the Krib etc. Look for your KH
and look for a good pH value to fits this range of decent CO2 levels.
That's the thing, CO2, that is the important part of all of this, not if the
water is soft, acidic etc. Plants don't care about that unless very
soft(less than 3 GH and KH). It's about CO2, nothing else really.

> My PH is also kind of high, should I wait until the pillow softener does
> it's thing, before attempting to change the PH?  Doesn't changing the
> hardness also affect the PH..how much will it affect the PH. ( I am familiar
> with the KH buffering role) Is there a direct PH change due to softening the
> water?  and If so how much should I expect it to change?

I promise you, it's much cheaper to simply add CO2 to adjust your pH to a
good range on the pH/KH/CO2 table. Don't worry about your tap being hard.
Your suggesting you are going to use lots and lots of pillows and then have
to measure each time what your KH will be afterwards or worse during, each
water change, measure/fret over sodium levels(it won't cause that big of a
introduction of sodium unless you really want soft water or use lots of them
etc) and you'll still have to add CO2.............and this introduces even
more problems since now you have taken a fairly stable thing, your KH and
started playing with it. Will you be able to hit a stable KH each and every
time? Do you want to mess with all of that?


If you leave it alone all you'll need to adjust is your pH. Use CO2 to do
this. It's that simple. Simple is good.
My GH is 24. KH is about 8. You'll need to use CO2 to drop your pH down to
7.2 or so.
But if you want to climb Mt Everest to get across the street that's fine by
me:) I won't try to sell you a RO unit or a softener. Learning how to use
CO2 is about 75% of this hobby and can trace most of folk's problem to this
one thing.
Regards, 
Tom Barr