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  • Results 1 to 6 of 6

    Thread: General Hardness reduction

    1. #1
      nicco is offline Super Member
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      General Hardness reduction

      Anyone know of an effective way to soften water (reduce GH)?

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    2. #2
      Bob Hart's Avatar
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      Nicco,
      Not sure there is an easy way to reduce this. GH may be reduced by use of a metals cartridge after a pre filter and then carbon filter. Having not tried this though, I cant say what amount it would be reduced by though.

      Otherwise an RO unit could be used to strip everything from the water. Use of an RO unit though, must be decided upon carefully, as Koi cannot live in just 'pure' water. I mix an amount of purified tap water back in with my RO water, to ensure there is a decent KH to stop the pH from crashing.
      Regards, Bob

    3. #3
      nicco is offline Super Member
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      Am not sure what you mean by metals cartridge but I gather you mean a mechanical fitler that extracts very fine solids.

      However, GH would be caused by dissolved solids in the form of disolved salts and so would not be effected by a mechanical filter.

      I've seen an article where someone used a water softener to swap out magnesium and other ions with sodium ions in salt, and then pass it through a RO (reverse osmosis) to strip the salt. Then he mixed with tap water to bring it back to a livable condition, otherwise the water had a very low pH and low KH, not nice.

      However, RO is so wastefull, even the two pass units. Since GH is thought to be so important to Koi growth and health I was wondering is someone had figured a better way yet.

    4. #4
      bil Guest - Time to Register
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      KH is removed by a dealkalyser, GH by a softner, and RO removes everything.

      My personal advice is not to bother unless you are going to stick the course. A fluctuating system isn't good.

    5. #5
      JgR Guest - Time to Register
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      Why would you want to lower the gh? Mine is about 100 but i'm sure yours is harder and there fore maybe an issue but what types of issues are casued by hard or soft water?

    6. #6
      nicco is offline Super Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by JgR
      Why would you want to lower the gh? Mine is about 100 but i'm sure yours is harder and there fore maybe an issue but what types of issues are casued by hard or soft water?
      Our GH comes out at the tap at over 300. The test doesn't go high enough.

      Not looking to decrease KH, ours comes out of the tap at 180.

      According to some tests in the UK and Japan, High GH slows down koi growth. Don't know if any of this was taken out of context or if I'm reading it incorrectly but there is an articles on the net about it...

      http://www.yumekoi.com/articles/april_2003.pdf

      http://homepage.ntlworld.com/duncan....20hardness.htm

      I don't have much hope of doing anything about our water unless there is an easy way of dealing with it.

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