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Topping up...

Lance1968

New Member
Joined
25 Aug 2022
Messages
7
Location
Nottingham
I've come over from reef keeping when I topped up evaporated water with RO to maintain a constant salinity.
I mix my planted tank water 50/50 tap and RO to get the desired GH & KH, should I be topping up with RO rather than 50/50 mix...if I top up 50/50 mix will my GH & KH gradually creep upwards?
Also for some bizarre reason I sold my reef tank auto top up...a bit short sighted!
 
Also I think I've just managed to post this in the wrong bit! and can't work out how to move it!
 
The way I see it, there are 2 opposite forces acting on this topic. On one side, you have pure water evaporating, which in theory should be replaced with pure water to keep parameters unchanged. On the other side, you have a potential consumption of calcium and magnesium ions by your system (plants, livestock, microbes) which needs to be replaced, and a consumption of carbonates by the microbial activity. For this second point, there could also be an increase in hardness due to the hardscape leeching ions, depending on the kind of rocks you may have.

In the end, considering that the fine tuning of hardness is not critical for planted tanks, that you are probably changing a lot of water as part of the maintenance routine, and that the evaporated water is probably small enough and constant enough that each choice in this matter will only slightly change the long term equilibrium value of these parameters, then in my opinion it really doesn't matter what you decide to do.
 
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