Hey Darrel
interesting read! I did prewash my cat litter in london tap water so yes pretty hard stuff, so depending on the adsorption capacity, a fair percentage of the adsorption sites would have already been filled by Ca2+ I would imagine. I wonder if the red colour of the cat litter is also due to high ferric oxide content. My prewashing the JI and adding a few Alder cones to tank was done as you say to dissolve any limestone present. I did a 50% water change with rainwater from allotment yesterday to reduce any hardness present (haven't even tested GH or kH yet though).
So long as the Dragon stone remains inert and I add some peat to filter, I can't really foresee any huge upswings in kH or pH. I am aiming for pH 6 to start with and may drop to pH 5.5 over a period of weeks and months. I don't particularly want to go lower than that and Paro's should be adaptable to that anyway. If I do see upswings though I guess I will either have to change my approach or change fish.
Cheers
Rod
interesting read! I did prewash my cat litter in london tap water so yes pretty hard stuff, so depending on the adsorption capacity, a fair percentage of the adsorption sites would have already been filled by Ca2+ I would imagine. I wonder if the red colour of the cat litter is also due to high ferric oxide content. My prewashing the JI and adding a few Alder cones to tank was done as you say to dissolve any limestone present. I did a 50% water change with rainwater from allotment yesterday to reduce any hardness present (haven't even tested GH or kH yet though).
So long as the Dragon stone remains inert and I add some peat to filter, I can't really foresee any huge upswings in kH or pH. I am aiming for pH 6 to start with and may drop to pH 5.5 over a period of weeks and months. I don't particularly want to go lower than that and Paro's should be adaptable to that anyway. If I do see upswings though I guess I will either have to change my approach or change fish.
Cheers
Rod