CO2 level and excel

[Wy Renegade]

Most water vendors (culligan, store vending machines) provide RO for 25-30 cents a gallon. RO removes the hardness distilled doesn't. Walmart has a 5 gallon container for $8 and culligan sometimes has used 5 gallon containers for $7. It costs me $3.00 for 10 gallons of ro every week. Totally worth it since my tap is liquid rock.

Not quite sure what you're trying to say here. Distilling is a process that evaporates water and then recaptures it via condensation. With proper distilling techniques, distilled water is 100% H20 with no ions of any type (including calcium and magnesium, which are the primary components of water hardness). RO or Reverse Osmosis is a mechanical filtration process which removes substances from the water using a very fine filtering process (DI or Dionization is an additional step that uses a chemical resin to react with ions and remove them from the water). Distilled water should have very little to no hardness, whereas RO will have hardness, and even RO/DI is not 100% H20. Distilled water is actually more pure then most RO/DI unless the distiller is using an old copper still which may allow the leaching of metal ions back into the distilled water.

 

[phin]

Actually (at least in my local) most of the vendors run 3 types. RO, DI, and carbon. Where most bottled spring water is only distilled or a combo of distilled and RO. Which is why I use the vendored water. It is the only way I can cut my gh/kh down.

I'm sorry, but this isn't right. Spring water isn't "only distilled" water. Distilled is as pure as you get. Spring water contains the natural minerals found in the spring. It would be pointless to distill spring water. I mean why spend the money to bottle spring water only to go ahead and distill it when the bottler/distiller could just distill their municipal water or well water without the process of acquiring water from a spring (permits, licenses, etc.) ?

My question pertaining to water is if the de-ionized water sold on the shelf at the grocery is "reverse-osmosis & de-ionized" or only de-ionized. If it is only de-ionized I would go with distilled. If it is RO/DI then I would get the cheaper of the two, which IIRC is the water labeled "de-ionized" (assuming it is also RO). Really, I'm talking a difference of like 30 cents so...

 

[Wy Renegade]

De-ionized isn't sold locally here, so I can't help you with that, but I would assume it should tell you on the label. Like yourself, I would assume that it is both RO/DI, but you know what they say about assuming . Remember that you want to make sure you continue to add a mixture of the RO/DI with tap so that you are not depleting all the needed minerals etc. from your tank.

 

[phin]

De-ionized isn't sold locally here, so I can't help you with that, but I would assume it should tell you on the label. Like yourself, I would assume that it is both RO/DI, but you know what they say about assuming . Remember that you want to make sure you continue to add a mixture of the RO/DI with tap so that you are not depleting all the needed minerals etc. from your tank.

I want to move away completely from using my tap water for my planted tank. i want to have a consistent and reliable KH, GH, pH, and nutrient content in my planted tank and relying on my municipal supply to reconstitute is not going to do it. Sometimes I can smell a faint chlorine smell in the tap water, other times I can't. I'm sure the mineral content fluctuates as well.

I plan on changing 1 gallon/week out of the 18 gallon tank. When accounting for the substrate & driftwood, as well as the volume of water in the external canister the total volume of water is 19 gallons. A 1 gallon water change is only 5%, but I've never had nitrates build up before, so I'm removing dissolved organics and other toxins released by the plants and fish in my tank, as well as any sodium that has built up with my current use of a water softening pillow.

I plan on re-constituting the water with seachem equilibrium at a dosage to be determined that will match my water parameters. If necessary I'll add a ratio of acid buffer to alkaline buffer to match my pH. I will wait and see if that becomes necessary.

I kind of became bored with this tank as well as a bad BBA takeover. I want to monitor the tank better, but have consistent, soft-water, low to neutral pH and can't do that with my tap water. Being so anal with this tank will keep me from getting bored with it for a while.

 

[Wy Renegade]

Keep in mind that water contains many necessary nutrients and elements that things like fish require that we do not measure with our test kits. Attempting to eliminate all minerals and reconstitute with something like equilibrium which contains only four elements to me seems a bit over the top. Seachem claims that it contains the essential elements for a planted aquarium, but then go on to state that it is only targeting the GH portion of the element spectrum and if you want to target KH you need to add yet another supplement. Unlike salt for saltwater tanks which contains all the elements normally found in saltwater, including trace elements, these freshwater supplements are not reconstituting your water with everything needed by your aquarium inhabitants. Thus why most discussions recommend a mix of RO water and tap. To my knowledge there is currently no freshwater supplement that adds all the elements back into RO water that is needed by living organisms. If someone is aware of a product that does so, or at least claims to do so, I'd be interested to hear about it.

 

[aqua_chem]

What to prevent you from using a multi-element GH booster and baking soda? That is, assuming that you're also dosing a well rounded micronutrient fertilizer.

 

[phin]

What to prevent you from using a multi-element GH booster and baking soda? That is, assuming that you're also dosing a well rounded micronutrient fertilizer.

Thats my intent. Go with 1 gallon distilled bottles for my water changes and add Seachem Equilibrium as the multi-element (calcium, magnesium, and potassium) GH booster and baking soda to raise KH. I'll be supplementing with either Flourish or FlorinMulti by Brightwell Aquatics (I just used my last dose of Flourish and am thinking of switching to FlorinMulti).