# Water treatment after waterchange



## DaveWatkin (29 Sep 2021)

Hey guys,

My water is very soft out the tap (2-3 Gh 0-1Kh) so my method for w/c has always been to have a big barrel in my shed filled and pre-treated with Equilibrium and Alkaline Buffer to approx 6Gh/6Kh and then I take a 30litre barrel out for w/c as needed.

The problem is I will be losing the space for the big storage for the foreseeable and so will be performing w/cs direct from the tap into the 30litre barrel each time. I don't want this barrel hanging round full of water while treat it so I am thinking of just putting tap directly (dechlorinated of course) into the tanks and then adjusting the tanks as I have seen various people do on youtube. However, how do the livestock cope with this fluctuation in water parameters, even if it's just for a short time?

I have a 60l and a 90l tanks which each get 30l change once a week, so the 6Gh/6Kh tanks will be diluted with 2Gh/1Kh water and then topped back up to the usual levels, I predict a couple points drop in both during the period of the water going in and me adding the powders and them mixing.

What are the thoughts on this?

Side note, thinking of dropping the Kh to 4 to better suit my Rasboras.


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## Wookii (30 Sep 2021)

Hey Dave, not stalking you around these threads honestly! 😂

You KH is perfect out of the tap, no real need to adjust that (I so wish I had that tap water!), and your Chilli's and all your other fish (perhaps with the exception of the Guppies) will love that - ditch the Alkaline buffer!! I have an RO unit running every night purposely so I can reduce my KH from 6dKH to <1.5dKH for the softwater fish I have.

If it were just for the fish, there would be no real need to adjust the GH either, but your shrimp may need more calcium in the water column that that provides. For that you can add some remineraliser, Equilibrium is fine as you're not using a great deal - though doing it DIY with Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom salts) and Calcium Chloride will be cheaper in the long run - and 5-6dGH target as you are currently doing should be plenty.

In terms of physically doing the water change, if you add the Equilibrium at the same time as the dechlorinator, you should be fine. In my system, I pump pure RO into the tank, and then the auto-doser adds MgSO4 and CaCL2 solutions a few minutes later - the variation isn't that great, and will be even less for your water as you're already starting with 2-3dGH.


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## MichaelJ (30 Sep 2021)

Hi @DaveWatkin   As @Wookii said, ditch the Alkaline buffer (or just add a tiny, tiny bit - 1 KH is absolutely fine... my KH is 1-2... probably closer to 1)  Before adding the dechlorinated tap water to the tank, take some of the water into a 1/2-1 liter jar. Add 8 grams of Equilibrium (should raise GH by 4.5 degrees in 30 L totaling your GH to 6.5-7.5  ~ for the sake of your shrimps you want to be closer 7 GH rather than 6 or less... )  to the jar, shake it vigorously to dissolve the Equilibrium as much as you can (You wont be able to dissolve it much as it saturates the small amount of water in the jar very quickly). While adding the dechlorinated tap water to the tank pour the content of the jar into the tank a bit at a time evenly around the tank... This way, the somewhat dissolved Equilibrium will dissolve really fast when it gets into the tank... and will avoid any meaningful fluctuations (if your worried about that - I wouldn't be...) or the Equilibrium clumping up in the tank. Of course, if you go from tap to bucket to tank its easier as you can just add the dissolved Equilibrium to the bucket before adding the bucket to the tank.

Instead of 8 grams of Equilibrium, if you want to go DIY,  you can add 2 grams of Calcium Chloride and 2 grams of Epsom Salt (MgSO4) and get approximately the same contents of Calcium and Magnesium as Equilibrium, and it's easier to dissolve to boot.  You do get a ton of Potassium with the Equilibrium as well, so you might want to add KCL separately - say 1-2 grams of KCL (or 3 grams if you want to match Equilibrium).

Personally, I am using Calcium Sulphate (CaSO4) instead of Calcium Chloride which gives you a bit lower TDS for the same amount of Calcium content -  but its quite a bit harder to dissolve.   

Cheers,
Michael


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## Zeus. (30 Sep 2021)

Can you drop some of your tap water off for me, about 250litres weekly


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## MichaelJ (30 Sep 2021)

Zeus. said:


> Can you drop some of your tap water off for me, about 250litres weekly



Which actually begs the question; How come some people have incredibly soft water? It must be related to the geology in their regions, but there might be more to it.  I don't know how it is in the UK, but I know that some backwoods regions around here in Minnesota and Wisconsin (yeah I know, its all backwoods around here... LOL) where lots of households/cabins draw well water the water is very soft with very low amount of dissolved solids - down in the lower/upper 40 ppm's. Perfect starter water for remineralization. The city water thats fed into our household before it goes through our KCL resin based water softener is around 12 KH / 22 GH with a TDS around 350 ppm.  I am sure @dw1305, among others, will be able to shed light on that 



Cheers,
Michael


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## bazz (1 Oct 2021)

MichaelJ said:


> Which actually begs the question; How come some people have incredibly soft water? It must be related to the geology in their regions, but there might be more to it.  I don't know how it is in the UK, but I know that some backwoods regions around here in Minnesota and Wisconsin (yeah I know, its all backwoods around here... LOL) where lots of households/cabins draw well water the water is very soft with very low amount of dissolved solids - down in the lower/upper 40 ppm's. Perfect starter water for remineralization. The city water thats fed into our household before it goes through our KCL resin based water softener is around 12 KH / 22 GH with a TDS around 350 ppm.  I am sure @dw1305, among others, will be able to shed light on that
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Maybe time for you to start drilling - as for Britain you've pretty much answered the question yourself.




Cheers!


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## MichaelJ (1 Oct 2021)

bazz said:


> Maybe time for you to start drilling


Hi @bazz that might not be such a bad idea!



bazz said:


> - as for Britain you've pretty much answered the question yourself.
> 
> Cheers!


Thats a cool map... I which I knew enough (or anything) about geology, to say what type of geology that promotes soft water 

I found a similar interactive geo map for Minnesota

Cheers,
Michael


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