# How do you make yours soft?



## tayloss (14 Jan 2019)

I have a heavily planted tank with Crystal Red Shrimp, which are doing very well, and thriving!

My question is, how do you guys that live in a hard water area use to soften your water? I have a full RODI setup and use Bee Shrimp GH+ with Dennerle scapers soil to give my tank a nice soft ph of 6.5-6.3 give or take during CO2 injection!

I’ve heard some people just use tap water, but living on the chalk downs near Portsmouth means it only just flows out the tap before turning to chalk and rock...

Interested in other method, I’ve used 50/50 mix but exhausted the substrate fairly rapidly... it’s only a 25ltr tank, so only mixing 10ltrs during a W/C and dosing EI Micro/Macro alternates days..

Thanks,
Chris 


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## J@mes (14 Jan 2019)

Hi Chris, I have a 100l tank, heavily planted & add fertilisers daily. The only other addition being prime with water changes. I too am in a hard water area (near Guildford) and my red stripy & black stripy shrimp are breeding happily. There are some catappa logs in the tank also.


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## tayloss (14 Jan 2019)

J@mes said:


> Hi Chris, I have a 100l tank, heavily planted & add fertilisers daily. The only other addition being prime with water changes. I too am in a hard water area (near Guildford) and my red stripy & black stripy shrimp are breeding happily. There are some catappa logs in the tank also.



Hi James,

Interesting... I guess the catappa logs will help bring the PH down a little.. have you tested to see what it is out of interest? I do find CRS breed slower than RCS,  but could be just me!

Going to buy a couple of extra shrimp to boost the population as to limit the interbreed and mix the bloodline.. although I only started with 5, it’s now up to 15... 

Do you have any pictures of your shrimp?

Thanks,
Chris


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## J@mes (14 Jan 2019)

Some phone pics I just took. The red offspring are growing rapidly, I estimate they’re around 3 or 4 weeks old. The black offspring are a week or so & around 3 to 5mm long.


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## tayloss (14 Jan 2019)

This is my shrimp and new light tank, it’s in recovery as being neglected is to various issues!  



Be interested you parameters if you get the chance to test? 


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## dw1305 (15 Jan 2019)

Hi all, 





tayloss said:


> My question is, how do you guys that live in a hard water area use to soften your water?


Could you collect rain-water?

cheers Darrel


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## tayloss (15 Jan 2019)

Hey Darrell....

That’s an option, as long as it rains enough to keep up with demand 

Thanks,
Chris


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## J@mes (15 Jan 2019)

Nice clip, thanks for that. I can’t tell you anything about the water other than the suppliers report which is on my journal. I don’t test the water & now the tanks setup & mature I ditched the drop checker. The only issue I have is damn snails. When I redo the tank I am going to make sure no snails or eggs get by me.


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## dw1305 (15 Jan 2019)

Hi all, 





tayloss said:


> as long as it rains enough to keep up with demand


I have about 1000 litres of storage, but I very occasionally run out. It would just reduce the amount of RO you would need to use. 
It is all down to storage really, if I had a 10,000 litres storage it would still fill up during the winter.

cheers Darrel


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## tayloss (15 Jan 2019)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all, I have about 1000 litres of storage, but I very occasionally run out. It would just reduce the amount of RO you would need to use.
> It is all down to storage really, if I had a 10,000 litres storage it would still fill up during the winter.
> 
> cheers Darrel


Have you ever thought about using the river water in Bath? Surely that quite good water isn't it..?


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## dw1305 (15 Jan 2019)

Hi all,
I live in Corsham, so all limestone and not a lot of streams here. 

In Bath the water from the hot spring is fairly disgusting, and they don’t know where all the sewers are, and at least one discharges into the river un-treated.

Our tap water is good quality, but hard (about 17 dKH) and it rains fair bit.

Cheers Darrel


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## HiNtZ (5 Feb 2019)

J@mes said:


> Hi Chris, I have a 100l tank, heavily planted & add fertilisers daily. The only other addition being prime with water changes. I too am in a hard water area (near Guildford) and my red stripy & black stripy shrimp are breeding happily. There are some catappa logs in the tank also.



Just up the A3 from me - do you sell any of your shrimp?


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