High GH in my planted tank, what will be the effect?

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fort384

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On to my next question in my never ending saga...

My GH in my tank is high (above 300 ppm) every time I test it. Obviously the tap water I am using is very hard. Is this going to be a problem for my tank? Do I need to consider switching to RO water?
 
Unless all of it is Ca or Mg, you'll be able to grow lots of stuff in that water. (You should be able to get Ca and Mg ppm (mg/L) from your city's water quality report.) SCAPE is (I guess was, but some folks still communicate or hang out) a club with multiple guys who have placed in AGA and plenty of regular folks who can grow plants, and more than a few of them dump GH booster into Southern California's hard (but less hard than your) water, for example.

Be aware that some folks feel Ca and Mg should be in a ratio to one another. Many folks that can grow practically whatever they want agree some plants simply do better in soft (extremely low KH, usually less than 4 dGH) water, and a lot of those guys don't think those particular plants are cool enough to warrant their mixing or reconstituting RO/DI/etc. I think the majority of experienced folks agree Ca and Mg, assuming they are available, are well down the line of macros (C/CO2 is a macro) and Fe (also as a proxy for "comprehensive trace" levels) when growing a tank.

But you may have read all that already, so here's two cents: I kept a 0KH / varying Ca targets / ~10ppm Mg tank for a while, and plants grew in ways I had not seen before, and I was finally able to grow certain plants I could not grow before. Still, in my weaksauce experiments with Ca in my weaksauce tanks I don't think it really matters. I do think low KH simply grows nicer plants. I still use L.A. tap because reconstituting and more importantly using/getting RO and or DI sucks. :) I'll bet a lot of guys with world class/competition tanks have never even looked at Ca outside of maybe GH Booster because they never had to.

I hope this helps.
 
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i have never worried about that and for the most part for most plants its nothing to worry about.
 
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