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Watering the aquarium plants.
Note: This message has been reposted using a different news server, when it failed to propergate within 24 hours. My appologies in the unlikely event that this message appears twice. Well I have now perfected my water softening technique, where just boiling batches of water in a large saucepan (with the lid on!) for a few minutes on heavy boil does the trick. My previous test from multiple boiled kettle water was this... pH = 7.2 KH = 5 GH = 8 NO2 = 0 NO3 = 50 mg/l I have improved slightly on that, when my latest test on my fully processed (and slowly cooling) water now gives me a General Hardness level of 7. From my water processing the hardness in my water must be due to Calcium Carbonate (lime scale), which also explains the large reduction in the KH (Carbonate Hardness) level. Heavy boiled water is subject to this mentioned film on the surface, a whitened power over the emptied saucepan. And to top that off their is also a white power sediment in the transfer jug. Since I have seen that it is impossible and wasteful to try and manually remove this junk, then I have moved on to filtering. And my filter medium just happens to be coffee machine filter paper, which has been hanging around here for a few years. Well no one here drinks coffee much and would now use the instant kind anyway. This filter paper I am sure is suitable, when there will be none of those paper bits, where it appears to do a perfect job. So later today I will do my first 20% to 30% aquarium water change with this much softened water, where I can only hope that my fish can slowly adjust to living in this water full time. I can always mix it in with some regular tap water I guess, but I see little wrong with this new near perfect water. As it is just a question of if my fish can live fine in it, when my plants sure can. It is sure going to use up a lot of energy with boiling all this water each week or two, but doing so is much better than having my fish and plants living in this calcium carbonate crap. And well you do not have to boil the water for too long to draw it out. So that seems like my water problem solved, without the need for any expensive equipment either, where I just wish that years ago I knew that a little water boiling and filtering could give me great aquarium water. All thanks to chemistry it seems, which makes me wonder where that KH drop in the aquarium level comes from. When clearly something in the tank is eating some of the calcium. Seems almost like magic to me, when with one wave of my magical saucepan, then plant killing water suddenly changes into the water of life. Not even Harry Potter could have done so well. =8- Cardman. http://www.cardman.com http://www.cardman.co.uk |
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