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Water Hardness Correction

drsteeeve

drsteeeve

Member
Joined
9 Jul 2023
Messages
37
Location
UK
Hi all, first post, hopefully not a silly question.

I have very hard water, KH and GH, was looking how to reduce and came across the API softener pillow which as far as I can tell seems to just be a bag of DI resin.

On further reading I found cheaper sources of the resin bags on Amazon giving 16x the amount of resin for £20 which seem like it may be a good option, the only question is the recharging of the resin.

The recommended method uses aquarium salt (sodium chloride) but I have seen that home water softeners can also use potassium chloride as the recharge solution, which then will give us usfull potassium in the tank for the plants rather than adding sodium.

Anyone have any experience using this and recharging with potassium by soaking a pillow/bag of the resin?

Thanks!!
 
Hi all,
drsteeeve said:
Hi all, first post, hopefully not a silly question.

I have very hard water, KH and GH, was looking how to reduce and came across the API softener pillow which as far as I can tell seems to just be a bag of DI resin

Anyone have any experience using this and recharging with potassium by soaking a pillows.
Click to expand...
No, not a silly question. I'll add in @MichaelJ as I think he has practical experience.

As you say they work by swapping a calcium ion (Ca++) for two sodium (Na+) , or potassium (K+), ions. The anion isn't involved, this is <"strong acid"> exchange, so you still have the same amount of bicarbonate (HCO3-) ions, the same dKH.

Personally I don't see ion exchange resins as an answer, and my suggestion would be to either stick with your hard, alkaline tap water or use rain water if you can.

I'm a rain water user, and have been for along time.

Cheers Darrel
 
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Not a silly question at all; but I have a question for you;
Is the hard water causing a problem? Are you trying to grow a certain plant or keep/breed a certain fish and having trouble because of the GH?
Or have you read, or been told that hard water is 'bad'?
 
@sparkyweasel ideally I want to keep and breed cherry red shrimp and tetra in a well planted tank, have kept them successfully in the past and bred v well, but I now know their ideal environment would be softer and lower ph.
Will be taking care of the pH and kh with wood, leaves and peat, but would like to also bring the GH down a little at least.
I worry that regardless of water changes or top offs (hoping to go more top off as the tank is huge and will be under stocked) the hardness will just increase over time unless I can remove it or get access to an RO water source. No LFS for miles and miles so would have to install one myself which I'm not keen on.
Thanks for your reply!
 
@dw1305 Hey Darrel, thanks so much for the reply, my chemistry is a hydrated form of iron(III)oxide 🤓, just to confirm, the resin would only affect the GH via the calcium substitution?
I'm hoping that the KH and PH I can take care of naturally with the wood, peet, plants etc.
Thanks again!!!
 
dw1305 said:
No, not a silly question. I'll add in @MichaelJ as I think he has practical experience.
Click to expand...

Hi @drsteeeve, welcome to UKAPS! :) The softener pillows works by exchanging Ca and Mg with Na (sodium) - API recommends so-called aquarium salt for recharging which is essentially sea-salt (sodium). You could instead use potassium chloride for the recharge. Keep in mind though that it will only cap a couple of dGH unless your have a crazy high exchange capacity, so if your water is really hard in terms of Ca it won’t really matter much. Of course, exchanging Ca with Na is a much worse trade than just keeping it as it is. And from a TDS perspective you will end up with a higher TDS (which directly impacts osmoregulation in fish and invertebrates) regardless of the choice of KCl or NaCl. So my advice is what Darrel said above; don’t bother. Your KH/alkalinity will stay unaffected so there is no win for your plants either. If you want to make a meaningful and controllable dent in your dGH/dKH get an RO system or collect rain water.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Michael
 
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@MichaelJ thanks for the reply, and thanks everyone!
Feel like I have a good or at least better understanding now, and has pushed me to take a more detailed look at RO filters, to my surprise there are some fairly cheap units that I can attach to a kitchen tap and run off a quick bucket for top offs and look at storing and mineralising for changes, for the sake of £60 I'm going to take a punt on one and see how it goes, had not idea they were so cheap and easy to use till now!
Thinking about it I'll save that money on chemicals and additives over a year or so anyway so worth a try!

Thanks again for your help, I'll post some progress pics in the next week's and months!
 
drsteeeve said:
@MichaelJ thanks for the reply, and thanks everyone!
Feel like I have a good or at least better understanding now, and has pushed me to take a more detailed look at RO filters, to my surprise there are some fairly cheap units that I can attach to a kitchen tap and run off a quick bucket for top offs and look at storing and mineralising for changes, for the sake of £60 I'm going to take a punt on one and see how it goes, had not idea they were so cheap and easy to use till now!
Thinking about it I'll save that money on chemicals and additives over a year or so anyway so worth a try!

Thanks again for your help, I'll post some progress pics in the next week's and months!
Click to expand...
How big is your tank?
 
@MichaelJ 200 ish litres, will be aiming to stock to quarter of capacity, of course shrimp pop may explode, but will be heavily planted.
 
Hi @drsteeeve , using spotless water maybe an option for you. I am not very good at linking previous threads but if you search for spotless water on here you should find what you need to know. There may be a filling station near you that supplies cheap very low TDS water as an alternative to RO
 
Hi all,
drsteeeve said:
I want to keep and breed cherry red shrimp and tetra in a well planted tank, have kept them successfully in the past and bred v well, but I now know their ideal environment would be softer and lower ph.
Click to expand...
Red Cherry Shrimps are fine in hard water, it is actually <"very soft water"> they don't like. Tetra are slightly more problematic, but there are some that <"will breed in harder water">.
drsteeeve said:
Will be taking care of the pH and kh with wood, leaves and peat, but would like to also bring the GH down a little at least.
Click to expand...
I like <"some tannins">, but they won't really have any effect on <"pH or carbonate hardness">.

The way I look at it is that you can't create soft water by adding things. To use <"the tea / coffee* analogy">, you can add milk and sugar to the tea, but once you've added the tea leaves / coffee you can never get back to water, if that makes sense?
drsteeeve said:
run off a quick bucket for top offs and look at storing and mineralising for changes
Click to expand...
SteveMid said:
using spotless water maybe an option for you
Click to expand...
You can always re-mineralise your RO with <"your hard tap water">.

* You can't search for three letter words on UKAPS, which is one of the many reasons <"why coffee is better than tea">.

cheers Darrel
 
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Thanks again everyone, previous searching had given me ideal neocardinia water as ph7, gh6-7, kh7-12, as a mid range (my tap water is so much harder, East Anglia is a limp of chalk 😭)
Does that look right to you?
Will Def look at spotless, but pretty much sold on getting a RO filter now for ease of use and not having to transport water 😁
 
Hi all,
drsteeeve said:
(my tap water is so much harder, East Anglia is a limp of chalk 😭)
Click to expand...
A lot of us will have <"very similar water"> in the South and East of the UK, the aquifers <"are nearly all limestone"> and fully saturated with calcium (Ca++) and bicarbonate (2HCO3-) ions. Because chalk is very <"pure CaCO3"> you don't get a lot of magnesium (Mg) etc. in your tap water.
drsteeeve said:
but pretty much sold on getting a RO filter now for ease of use and not having to transport water
Click to expand...
A lot of people will use RO, I have <"some environmental issues with it">, but it gives you a clean slate to start with.

cheers Darrel
 
drsteeeve said:
@Aqua sobriquet unfortunately I'm currently in a flat so no easy access to rain water 😔
Click to expand...
That’s a shame.
We have an under sink Brita filter we use for hot drinks and cooking and it does seem to remove some of the hardness? I’ve never measured it but the kettle doesn’t get limescale on it until it’s time to change the filter again.
A filter lasts about 10 months with our use.
Our tap uses the smaller P1000 filter.

BRITA water filter tap solutions | BRITA®

BRITA water filter tap solutions: Innovative under the sink solutions that fulfill all your water needs on demand. Space saving and convenient. Learn more.
www.brita.co.uk www.brita.co.uk
 
drsteeeve said:
Thanks again everyone, previous searching had given me ideal neocardinia water as ph7, gh6-7, kh7-12, as a mid range (my tap water is so much harder, East Anglia is a limp of chalk 😭)
Does that look right to you?
Click to expand...
6-7 pH, 5-7 dGH are good numbers. The KH/alkalinity is mostly a plant consideration.
drsteeeve said:
Will Def look at spotless, but pretty much sold on getting a RO filter now for ease of use and not having to transport water 😁
Click to expand...

Do you have a recent water report? If you so choose, you can likely get away with mixing in 50-60% tap with your WC water making your need for RO water limited to about 50 L weekly (assuming 50% WC weekly with your 200L tank).

Cheers,
Michael
 
According to Affinity we have 110mg/l calcium and 275 total hardness. Maybe not the worst 😭
Time will tell of course, but I'm hoping to get away with a weekly top off and maybe monthly (or less) partial changes. Last tank I had running was really stable and never really accumulated nitrates so I hope I can pull that off again 😁
 
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