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hard water testing.

Joined
15 Sep 2011
Messages
151
hi What is the best way to test the hardness of the water coming from my tap? I have looked up my local drinking water report which states 21.44 degrees German but we have a water softener installed when the house was built so im guessing this should bring the value down.Also what affects will hard water have on things like C02, ferts and types of plants i can keep?

cheers
 
Hello,
Unless you plan to keep a tank full of Tonina sp or some of the verticillated versions of Ludwigia the effect will be minimal and will not be worth doing anything about. However, if you have a salt based water softener then it's strongly advised to avoid using softened water output by that system because sodium enriched water is detrimental to the health of freshwater plants. That's what I'd worry about. Hard water is not really an issue.

Cheers,
 
im pretty sure its not a salt based softer as salt has to be replaced over time and the thing under our sink is a sealed unit. it also seems my water is high in nitrates and phosphates!and a ph of around 7.2
 
OK so that might be a salt free catalytic unit which precipitates Calcium out of solution, in which case the water is usable but under very low pH the Calcium crystals will dissolve back into solution. This shouldn't be a problem though.

morefirejules08 said:
it also seems my water is high in nitrates and phosphates!and a ph of around 7.2
Fantastic. That's great news if it's true (which I never believe until the plants themselves tell me that it's true). If so, that means you can save money by not having to buy fertilizer products. The pH is irrelevant for our purposes.

Cheers,
 
Hi all,
I wouldn't worry about the water either, like Clive says it is only if the water softener exchanges Ca2+ ions for Na+ ones that you have a problem, particularly if you use added CO2. It does have an effect on the fish you can keep however, and I would keep away from Rams etc.
and the thing under our sink is a sealed unit
I'm interested in this, it sounds like the softener may be an ion exchange resin, but these still need re-charging etc, or do you have to throw the sink away? the only other possibilities I can think of is a magnet <http://www.ecomagnets.com/h2flow-facts.htm>, but that is quack mumbo-jumbo and wouldn't make any difference to the hardness.
it also seems my water is high in nitrates and phosphates!
It nearly all is in the S and E of the UK, these are from traffic pollution, (just N) agriculture, optical brighteners (just P) and the orthophosphate (PO4) the water companies add to control heavy metal solubility.

cheers Darrel
 
i'll have a look at the unit under the sink when i get home tonight and see if i can work out how it works, we were told when we moved in that the unit will last the life of the house, its not one of those eco magnets though. I have been keeping koi/catfish/barbel/rudd and chubb in the tank with no problems just using tap water so hopefully that is a good sign for converting to tropical in the very near future.
Where i live there is allot of farm land which is i think the cause of the high phosphates and nitrates. I know test kits can be unreliable but when i did use them while working for an aquatics shop nearly all the tests i did for phosphates and nitrates were high.
 
Yeah, no kidding Darrel, the magnet softener idea is maximum mumbo-jumbo. I'm wondering if the unit described by the OP is more of a de-scaler. There are claims by some companies that their salt free units work on the principle of epitaxial crystallization of CaCO3 through some resin. I guess this technique is used in the semiconductor industry but it's not clear to me what material would make this work with CaCO3 in household water. They charge big money for these units as well. Could this be another illusion of The Matrix? I did manage to find this University presentation => https://www.watereuse.org/sites/default ... %20Fox.pdf but this seems to use charged electrode plates, not a resin. What are your thoughts on this?

Cheers,
 
Hi all,
What are your thoughts on this?
I really don't know, that is partially why I'm interested. I can't think of a mechanism that would work, but it is not an area where I have much knowledge.
epitaxial crystallization of CaCO3
I must admit that this is new concept for me all together. It will be interesting to see what the unit is.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi all,
From: http://www.discountedheating.co.uk/shop/acatalog/Scalemaster_Electrolytic_Scale_Inhibitors.html
..... Like snowflakes they can be large or small. In the case of limescale the small ones are known as calcite, the larger aragonite. Calcite crystals in addition to being small tend to stick both to each other and to the inside of pipes etc. On the other hand the aragonite crystals are less sticky and prefer to remain naturally in the water. The key to the scalemaster approach is making aragonite dominant and controlling calcite.....The electrolytic process first pioneered by Scalemaster some 26 years ago works by hindering calcite crystal formation so that the crystals formed are of the more plumbing friendly aragonite variety.
Call me a sceptic, but I'd be pretty confident that the dGH and dKH of your water are exactly the same either side of the "softener unit", so I think you can assume the values given by your water company are about right.

cheers Darrel
 
OK, finally I found some actual data from real scientists instead of regurgitated pseudo-data from the companies that sell the equipment=> PUBLIC WORKS TECHNICAL BULLETIN 420-49-34 15 June 2001 published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, DC.

Page 15 summarizes the results. As Darrel surmises, the test results do not agree with vendor claims. More snake oil looks like, unless there have been further developments in the "technology" within the last decade.

In any case, as mentioned in earlier posts none of this matters to the majority of the plants you'll be growing or the fish you'll put in the tank - except if they are soft water fish you're trying to breed. Again, as I mentioned, the level of NO3/PO4 is a GOOD thing so count yourself lucky.

Cheers,
 
thank ceg
i think my main concern is the supposed difficulty in dissolving co2 in hard water but i've had a hunt around the forum and it seems that this shouldn't be an issue. once i get all my equipment together this will be my first attempt at a planted tank and i dont want to throw lots of co2 at it if i wont gain anything

cheers
 
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