[AquaticLife] Water Well Question
Jimmy,
How old is your home? Do you still have metal plumbing (copper, etc.) or one of the plastics (pvc, pe, etc.)? While making the water a little harder may or may not be needed for your fish, it may not be needed for you/your home…. although, personally, I prefer harder water to soft water anyhow. Do you have a by-pass valve to get water from your well prior to it going through the limestone hardening system? You should do a two-day baseline test on both waters to see how they do. You also want to check your GH and KH during these baseline tests.
\Steve// and Ray (and any others),
Is limestone the best thing to use for raising the hardness in aquaria? I’ve never had to do it so I’ve never done much research on the issue. My first thoughts is that it wouldn’t be but I’ll wait to see what you guys (and others) say. I know most of the forum threads that I’ve read recommend things like crushed coral and if limestone was a good way, it seems I would have read that somewhere since limestone has to be easier and cheaper to get compared to crushed coral. The snip from the second article does mention limestone as one way to increase GH.
I did a quick Google and found this info from known reliable sites…
http://fish.mongabay.com/chemistry.htm Changing the Water Hardness: Water hardness can be manipulated in several ways. To make the water softer, the water can be filtered through peat moss or filtered through a reverse osmosis system. Ion exchange resins also can be used to lower the water hardness. Boiling water for a period of time can also reduce its hardness. To harden the water, filter the water through dolomite or crushed coral until the desired hardness is reached.
http://www.sydneycichlid.com/aquarium-hardness.htm How to Harden Water which is too Soft: The simplest way to increase the general hardness is to incorporate calcareous material (e.g. limestone, crushed marble, lime sand) into the décor or filter. This will slowly release calcium carbonate into the water. Carbonate hardness can also be raised through the gradual addition of sodium bicarbonate.
Pool salt, non-iodized salt Rift Lake Salt additives (e.g. Seachem products, sera gH - kH plus, sera mineral salt etc.) and some bottled hard mineral water (e.g. Evian) can also be added. Some aquarists even add a small percentage of sea water to the aquarium (around 2%).
Proprietary treatments for raising the level of hardness, in the form of powders (e.g. kH Generator), are also available through the local fish shops. (END SNIP)
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com
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