Re: water hardness

[mjacobs2@tampabay.rr.com]

Jerry.......great question and it is basic to keeping apisto that require some 
low hardness AND pH.  You can get a low conductivity (hardness) by simply using 
RO water......if you use all RO water you would have water that for all 
practicle purposes has no "hardness" but the problem with low hardness water is 
that it is lacking the "buffers" that will hold the pH at wat ever level you 
want......SOOOOOOOO.  That is why these companies came outewith things like RO 
Right......(only in America would you buy a unit to take out the hardness and 
then turn right around and add it back.....;-0 ).....no really....what you are 
adding back with the RO Right product is what THAT company thinks is the 
correct elements to 1) buffer the water enough to hold a pH and 2) to put back 
into the water what THAT company thinks fish need to survive........#2) is 
totally up for question however now that people have been working with some of 
the wild apisto's that are wild and NEED 0 condutivity and a pH of 
4.+ .......that's pretty serious conditions as compared to wha normal aquarist 
are use to........at that conductivity the pH will tend to "bounce" all over 
the place...............is that a problem???????..........that's for another 
discussion!!!

I will tell you this......I have had some apisto's in STRAIGHT RO water 
(totally) and they were not only fine but had fry as well............it is all 
terribly interesting and we don't have the time or the band width to get al of 
this hardness and pH thing all worked out in 1-2-3 messages.

I guess I wandered from the original question...sorry.....don't worry too much 
about getting down to realy low hardness......dependng on the fish....it 
doesn't hurt them like some of the commercial people will tell you....adding 
straiht RO water is in fact exactly what you should do to achieve a low 
hardness and/or pH..........!  Sorry about wandering....this is a favorite 
topic of mine!

Mike 

> Hi All,
>  just curious, How does one get their water down to a trace hardness without 
> adding strait RO? I heard adding strait RO was a bad thing. My logic says 
> that if there is already 150ppm then adding strait RO would bring it down. Is 
> my logic wrong?
>                                                             JerryB
> 






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