# Water for EI mixing



## Halley (12 Aug 2016)

Hi - I just go some dry ferts (thanks Aquarium Plant Food ) - what type of water should I mix the salts with - is it ok to use boiled tap water? My water is very hard


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## tekopikin (12 Aug 2016)

I just use boiled water for my mix as suggested on the YouTube demo on my supplier's (APFUK). I believe it's more to stop it going green from algae afterwards.
Hint: If your tap water is high in nitrates you may want to consider reducing that macro when you make up the solution


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## Halley (12 Aug 2016)

Thanks - what about the chlorine if you use boiled tap water?


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## ian_m (12 Aug 2016)

tekopikin said:


> Hint: If your tap water is high in nitrates you may want to consider reducing that macro when you make up the solution


 If I had a £ for every person that runs into plant trouble after "inventing" their own version of IE as they think there is sufficient nutrients in the water, I would be very rich. The water companies water report is for their sampling point on a particular day and is not your tap water today.

The EI ingredients are sufficiently cheap to just always dose as in APFUK. So ignore any tap water parameters. Excess nitrates won't harm anything and is good for the plants. I ran with 350ppm nitrate & 80ppm phosphate, due to pump failure, and all fish and plants were fine.


tekopikin said:


> I believe it's more to stop it going green from algae afterwards.


Blimey if your water has algae in it, you are in trouble.
It is recommended to use boiled water as some people reports precipitation in their EI macro mix if they are using very very very hard tap water.


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## tekopikin (12 Aug 2016)

ian_m said:


> If I had a £ for every person that runs into plant trouble after "inventing" their own version of IE as they think there is sufficient nutrients in the water, I would be very rich. The water companies water report is for their sampling point on a particular day and is not your tap water today.
> 
> The EI ingredients are sufficiently cheap to just always dose as in APFUK. So ignore any tap water parameters. Excess nitrates won't harm anything and is good for the plants. I ran with 350ppm nitrate & 80ppm phosphate, due to pump failure, and all fish and plants were fine.
> Blimey if your water has algae in it, you are in trouble.
> It is recommended to use boiled water as some people reports precipitation in their EI macro mix if they are using very very very hard tap water.


So funny...I never said my water has algae in it mate. I only suggested boiling to make the water 'sterile' once it's sufficiently cooled and in the bottle and the lid on then it's fine...OK so I may have wrong about the reason for boiling water right? However its information which I got from the APFUK site, they never really mentioned why it was necessary to boil. If you're going to make a comment/give advice/feedback then try to be a bit mature about it - this is a forum where people come for advice/assistance isn't it? 
FYI I have tested my tap water parameters down where I live and it is indeed high on nitrates so...


Halley said:


> Thanks - what about the chlorine if you use boiled tap water?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I don't think you have to worry about chlorine after boiling and standing it to cool down for a few hours


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## Halley (12 Aug 2016)

Ok - thanks everyone for the help/advice - I think we'll leave this thread here...


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## tim (12 Aug 2016)

Halley said:


> Ok - thanks everyone for the help/advice - I think we'll leave this thread here...
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Fwiw I've always used boiled tap water it helps dissolve the salts quicker, never had any precipitation or clouding issues for the few years I've been using ei, Thames water so fairly hard.


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