"Pittie" wrote in message ...
Recently learned that my water is soft and is contrbuting to an
unstable pH. Just wondering if anyone knows of any good buffers on the
market that dont contain phosphates. Most dont list the constituents.
Thanks for any info.

John


PS I dont really want to mess with baking soda due to poor buffering
capacity at pH values below 7.

First off, you don't NEED RO water for planted tanks, you may need it
for the fish and if you are a breeder etc, but RO or soft water is not
needed for the plants.

That is simply a plain _myth_.

If you have very soft RO type water, you do not need any pH down acid
"buffers".
All you need is baking soda for the alkalinity(KH)
Got the GH, Ca and Mg is all you needs, MgSO4, CaCl2 work well to
adjust this up.

You can use CaCO3 for both some GH and the KH but it's slow to
dissolve.

Ideally, a 50ppm range or about ~ 3 degrees for both KH and GH is
ideal for plants or HIGHER.

Most folks blend their tap with RO to get the desired KH/GH.

But this is not for the plants, they don't care about hard water.
They do care about CO2.


Regards,
Tom Barr