Water Sources

[Pez]

Hey guys,

I've had just about enough of the water quality coming out of the tap at my place, so I'm looking at other options. My tap water normally measures at:

PH: 8.2

GH:110ppm

KH:140ppm

It's the ph that's doing my head in, seems to take a lot of buffer to become stable. In the 7-7.2 range. My understanding is this will also mess with my hardness.

I've heard of RO (from LFS) but needs minerals. I've heard spring water is bad.

Given this, what are my options? Is there any special filters or something I could use?

[irsacae]

Gday Pez

I use R O water and mix it with varying amounts of tap to achieve the desired water conditions it isn't a cheap way of doing things though for every litre of water you get it wastes 2.You can get water softening pillows from the shops and you can filter through peat if you can get it.I think Les said Jodie -Lea sells it.You really need to get your KH well done before you can easily drop and maintain you PH.

I put a rain water tank in pfff fat lot of good that is still only about 20cm of water in the bottom it collecting off of a 70 square metre roof.I think that the thing that would be wrong with spring water is the shop cant sell it to you if its local water we are on a limestone aquifer so you still might have the same problems.

Not being sure of the size of your set up and how much water you need the 15-20ltr bottles of distilled water wouldn't be a bad start, a clean slate so to speak then there is a stack of water conditioners(Seachem have a great range) you can buy from a LFS to get it where you want it.At some point though it might work out cheaper to buy an R O filter.

Les has no problems spawning and raising fish/bettas in the hard alkaline water.I am going to keep more wild types that is why I have got the rain water and R O set up.

Kev