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Re: [Killietalk] what we use to raise hardness?

John,

I have done post-treatment measurements to make sure my treatment is having the desired results, but I can't remember off hand what they were. Your measurement of 120 ppm, I assume, is made with a conductivity meter. That, of course, reflects all dissolved ions, so I am not sure what your true hardness is. But for reference, my water has a conductivity of about 170 us/cm (equivalent to about 80 ppm). However, most of that is accounted for by sodium and silicate ions. The real hardness is accounted for by Ca (1.2 ppm) and Mg (0.023 ppm). Expressed conventionally (as CaCO3 equiv.) this comes out as about 3 ppm hardness.

The amount of Equilibrium that I add is based on the amounts the manufacturer recommends to add to RO water. My water resembles RO to which socium silicates have been added. The silicates are a nuisance as they (I believe) are the cause of the extremely high pH of my water (10.5). They also favor growth of diatoms on the glass of the tanks (i.e. "brown algae").

Incidentally, I have a tank of L. tanganicanus youngsters, for which I also added cichlid salts. They are doing well.

The topic of treating water using RO, mixed bed resins, etc. comes up periodically and was the subject of a recent thread. A year or more ago I did a search for methods of removing silicates and didn't find anything practical. However, recently I found information on the Kold Ster-il water treatment system. This is a no-waste system that looks interesting to me. They have a special alumina medium that removes phosphates and silicates (and flouride), which I find very interesting. In fact, I have ordered a system and will report back on how well it works. You can find information on this filtration system easily by doing a Google or similar web search.

Barry

At 10:36 AM 9/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Barry,

Just out of curiosity, what does this ratio bring your ppm to? Certainly your
water is not mine, but we have very soft water coming out of our tap
here in St. Paul, (120ppm), and I found the Kent African Cichlid Salt to give a
very balanced hardening using very little product.

Peace
john
On 25-Sep-03 Barry Cooper wrote:
> Of course, often one wants to add more that just calcium ions, things such
> as Magnesium ions and trace minerals. For that reason I opted to use a
> mixed product, namely Seachem's Equilibrium, which I find works quite well.
> In my very soft water I use 500 grams in 300 gals of water.
>

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John N. Alegre                   o
Andante Systems               o
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E-Mail: John N. Alegre <listhub at andante_mn.org>
Date: 26-Sep-03
Time: 10:32:25
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Barry J. Cooper, Prof. Emeritus, Dept. Biomedical Sciences, Cornell University
Adjunct faculty, College of Veterinary Medicine, Oregon State University
Home address: 27505 Riggs Hill Rd., Sweet Home, OR 97386 (bjc3 at cornell_edu)


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