Why do you need RO if your water is soft..(and hopefully not on a water meter if planning to use RO) ?our tap water is soft and lacks anything required to make nice coffee
Why do you need RO if your water is soft..(and hopefully not on a water meter if planning to use RO) ?our tap water is soft and lacks anything required to make nice coffee
It is pretty close to RO already.Should I not bother? Below are the water stats.
Doubt it. Water companies dose 500ug/l to max of 1.5mg/l phosphoric acid or sodium phosphate up to a maximum UK level of 2.2mg/l total phosphate, perfect for plants.In Plymouth we have 5 mg/l of phosphates in the water
Doubt it. Water companies dose 500ug/l to max of 1.5mg/l phosphoric acid or sodium phosphate up to a maximum UK level of 2.2mg/l total phosphate, perfect for plants.
You cannot easily test for phosphate, regardless what ever you measured and what ever test kit you used. Chloride and sulphates and nitrates and dechlorinator and other ions will influence the result and give as much as x10 phosphate reading. This would then nicely match the 0.5mg/l water companies dose as measured by your test kit. As I said I very much doubt your phosphate will be that high.but I did several times the test and coincide with the info my LFS has also
Disadvantage of course with no or little hardness pH kits & pens (and test kits, did I mention test kits) are useless and you are always running CO2 1 or 2 bubbles per second from asphyxiating your fish...
4-8 is a good start to allow some CO2 "cockup" room.I am going to start bringing my KH and GH up.
You cannot easily test for phosphate, regardless what ever you measured and what ever test kit you used. Chloride and sulphates and nitrates and dechlorinator and other ions will influence the result and give as much as x10 phosphate reading
I'm not an "EI fan", never had my best results with it, but if you finally solve the supposed inaccuracy of tests, the question is: and what? For which plants in the tank is this meaningful? How to link this information with other key parameters such as light or co2. IME (I have also used test kits) you don't have much more chances of having a successful planted tank with that info. I just use the online calculators as a rough guide for producing my own ferts and calculate dosing, but then observation makes the rest. When I was a newbie and I used to read this kind of statements, I though "well, this is easy to say when you have experience..." But now with a bit more of experience the truth is that there is not that much difference. You probably can predict some bad things with more advance, but that's all. And you probably can make an overall better assessment regarding your tank. You know what good flow is, good co2, good growth, etc. this last point is IMO much more important than knowing the level of one nutrient in your tank.Thans alto, good answer.
Tom Barr showed some time ago that test kits are not accurate, but to be honest, we do not need that kind of accuracy in our tanks. Plants live usually in environments with oscillation of parameters higher than the error of tests, easily.
Apart from that, Tom also insisted that test kits can be used if you calibrate them, thing that it is really easy to do and easy to verify. I did it so I trust my kits and I also am used to cross-verified them, so I do not deny that parameters of the water can impact in the validity of the results, of course, but from there to say they can produce an error of 10 times, it requires some scientific support behind it, in my point of view.