Liquid Acid/Alkaline buffer?
- Thread starter Ewest
- Start date
Also, I'd suggest at least a 50% partial water change weekly; possibly more depending on several factors such as plants, stocking density, tank volume, TDS and PH that you wind up keeping the water adjusted, etc.
Mark
Mark
I wanted to aim under 8 probably 7-7.5, can domestics be in water over 8???? I know they are more resilient but ive never seen them being kept at over 8? The tank would probably be 75-180G, again this is a ways out its all just learning and planing at this point. I want to keep either only discus (ill buy adults to start out) or discus and some dither fish such as assorted ram, and carnal tetras.
You can hang a small bag of peat in the holding vessel. This will take some experimentation as your KH is so low.
Mark
Mark
Possibly...take a sample and test the KH with a good test kit to find out. Conventional softeners exchange hard ions for softer sodium ions, so the softener may be removing carbonate. Your RO system will remove both.
Mark
Water softeners remove only "general hardness (GH)" ions like Ca2+, Mg2+, etc. and do not effect "carbonate hardness (KH)." For example, my tap water growing up, after hitting our home's water softener, was super low GH but fairly standard KH for the incoming city water. The general idea is that softeners exchange cation for cation, usually replacing the above "hard" cations with Na+ or K+. So carbonates (anions) shouldn't be impacted.
RO(/DI) systems remove pretty much all of the dissolved solids (TDS) which include the constituents of both GH and KH.
Regardless, the minor issues with using "softened" water are 1) you have no calcium or magnesium, which are still essential elements for plants/fish (although you could argue that feeding or target dosing could make that up) and 2) you're technically increasing TDS, which is what matters most to fish more so than pH/GH/KH. This is because the cation exchange resins swap one 2+ cation for two 1+ cations...thus you get a slight increase in TDS. It may not be much, but many people incorrectly assume that softeners are leaving you "purer" water.
I'd recommend bypassing the softener if you're using your tap water in any form. That's what was always recommended to me...luckily, I found that my kitchen faucet wasn't even connected.
RO(/DI) systems remove pretty much all of the dissolved solids (TDS) which include the constituents of both GH and KH.
Regardless, the minor issues with using "softened" water are 1) you have no calcium or magnesium, which are still essential elements for plants/fish (although you could argue that feeding or target dosing could make that up) and 2) you're technically increasing TDS, which is what matters most to fish more so than pH/GH/KH. This is because the cation exchange resins swap one 2+ cation for two 1+ cations...thus you get a slight increase in TDS. It may not be much, but many people incorrectly assume that softeners are leaving you "purer" water.
I'd recommend bypassing the softener if you're using your tap water in any form. That's what was always recommended to me...luckily, I found that my kitchen faucet wasn't even connected.
Thanks Josh...wasn't sure about the carbonates being diminished by the softener.
Evan, since your water has no alkalinity, it won't resist ph drops when acid is introduced. This assumes that the test result is accurate in the reading of 0dKH. This being the case, acidification with peat may drop the ph farther and faster than you want...with no buffering capability the changes can be drastic. You have time to run some experiments to find out, though.
Mark
Evan, since your water has no alkalinity, it won't resist ph drops when acid is introduced. This assumes that the test result is accurate in the reading of 0dKH. This being the case, acidification with peat may drop the ph farther and faster than you want...with no buffering capability the changes can be drastic. You have time to run some experiments to find out, though.
Mark
