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remineralise ro water is 0 kh ok with aquasoil?

13K views 72 replies 18 participants last post by  Greggz 
#1 · (Edited)
hello, can you use seachem equilibrium on its own to remineralise ro water is it ok for plants etc, or do you need anything else
i don't keep specific fish or shrimp its mainly about the plants for me.
i heard that seachem equilibrium was better for plants then salty shrimp. i see no mention of kh on equilibrium, although using ADA AquaSoil should one even worry about kh?

also can i just switch from salty shrimp to seachem equilibrium with no problems to the plants?
 
#2 ·
Yes, remineralising with Equilibrium to increase GH (whilst keeping KH at zero) is the way to go. The main difference between Equilibrium and SS GH+ is that Equilibrium has LOTS of potassium in it whereas SS is almost pure GH with just a small amount of trace minerals.

Any KH you add will be absorbed by aquasoil bringing KH back to zero (or thereabouts) and reducing the life of the soil in the process.

Yes you can switch to Equilibrium with no issues, just take into account that you will now be adding lots of potassium with water changes so you may need to tweak your fert dosing accordingly.
 
#8 ·
No problem injecting CO2 into basically zero KH water. I do it every day.

With very low or no KH, tank KH/pH swing during the week is minimal. In fact, I still use my pH controller as my KH/pH remains stable. Right now I am dropping pH down to 4.90 during the lighting period. Degassed is about 6.3 pH.

If KH was higher, soil would deplete that during the week and it would be more difficult to control CO2 injection. As KH goes down, so would pH. So relative pH drop would be difficult to measure properly. If that were the case, better to set a constant CO2 flow rate and not worry so much about where pH is. And yes, that is more difficult to control.

As to GH boosters like Seachem Equilibrium mentioned above, you are much better off just getting some CaSO4 and MgSO4. All GH boosters are basically a mix of Ca, Mg, and K. You don't necessarily want or need the extra K. Too much can interfere with uptake of other nutrients. You can also fine tune the mix of Ca to Mg. I've had more success with higher Mg than most boosters provide.

As to pH crashes due to low KH/pH, pretty much a myth. Here is a great article about it...............

https://www.2hraquarist.com/blogs/ph-kh-gh-tds/is-low-ph-in-tanks-due-to-aquasoils-softwater-a-concern?fbclid=IwAR0rqZ5z-6DSDYqeWRT-QB_2U3qFDt79A0U4oc7o21mUYjYIniT27bZ5CQg

As to Brighty K, it's basically KHCO3 mixed with water. If you knew how much KHCO3 you can buy for the cost of one bottle of Brighty K, you would never buy it again. You are pretty much paying for water in a bottle.

Hope that helps, and good luck with the tank.
 
#14 ·
I use RO/DI because I bought my unit when I was into reef tanks. I've never heard not to use DI and am very curious as to any reason in the world they might have. I could see it being problematic if people were using it straight, but after remineralizing, I can't fathom there being much difference between two samples. But if there is science (or even compelling anecdotal evidence) I'd be happy to see if I could bypass my DI part of the unit. Just fewer cartridges to buy.
 
#19 ·
Using DI for planted aquariums is unnecessary. Organic impurities are removed by RO carbon pre-filter and minerals are 90 – 95% removed by the RO membrane. The remaining 5 – 10% of minerals is insignificant. However, when DI is used then these remaining minerals are exchanged with acids and bases, buffering each other to 7 pH when the DI cartridge is in perfect condition. But when it is not then it can shift pH to either side and that is not good at almost zero KH.

Aside from that, I’ve been promoting growing plants in zero KH water since year 2000. It wasn’t easy to accept for most because people were horrified and scared of “pH crash”. Today, after 20 years of explaining it, it slowly gains in popularity.
 
#15 ·
Salty shrimp gh/kh+ is excellent for planted tanks. I use it in all my nano tanks and my plants grow faster than I can give them away. I use tropica specialized Fert in conjunction , perfect match.

Bump:
what about with co2 injection at 30ppm what affect can this have with 0kh water
0kh plus co2 is bad news. IF soil is going to eat your buffer down to zero you need more kh.
 
#17 ·
0kh plus co2 is bad news. IF soil is going to eat your buffer down to zero you need more kh.
I think that has been disproven at this point, with all the gorgeous tanks high tech using soils. @Greggz rainbow tank is getting better results with soil than when he was running some KH. His tank journal is really informative about switching over, and the plants are downright ridiculous.
 
#16 ·
Here is some diy water stuff for you.

Diy Remineralizers
I use these for my non shrimp planted tanks as this is way cheaper than salty shrimp and works perfectly.


diy kh booster
1.12 grams baking soda
10 gallon tank by 1dkh
1tsp =4.5 grams
1 tsp raises 10G by 4.5 dkh

diy gh booster
This maintains the golden 3/1 mag/calcium ratio.
CaCl 6 grams
MgSo4 7 grams
1 gram of this mix raises gh of 10G water by 1dGH.


You will Need need a 0 to 200 g scale.
You can get Calcium chloride from marine aquarium stores
Magnesium sulfate (plain unscented epsom salts) from any pharmacy.
I bought a cheap coffee mill for grinding it up fine to dissolve easy for 10$.
 
#23 ·
I should add that DI have two resins, cation and anion. When cation is exhausted first then water just passes through. But when anion is exhausted first then small amount of acid is produced. When both are exhausted then it has no effect on water parameters. So in essence, partly exhausted DI can slightly acidify water.
 
#28 ·
I'm happy I stumbled on this thread.
I have one tank (out of three) that always has me nervous as kh is always less than 1, but the fish are doing better in this tank than any of my others.
I used RO water and equilibrium brought up to 6gh with ecocomplete substrate with a ph that's around 6.6-6.8.
I've been nervous about the reported "ph crashes" but the success of the bolivian rams, wild caught neon tetras and otocinclus have prevented me from changing any of my routine up.

My other two tanks must have substrate that's leaching something in the water as my ph on both of those tanks is 7.6-7.9 with a kh of 4+. My fish don't thrive nearly as well as those tanks and the plants do about the same in all of the tanks. It had been puzzling me with a slight bit of worry about the PH crashes, but after reading this I'm going to redo my other two tanks so that I can get more similar parameters across them all.

A buffering substrate like aquasoil is interesting, but it sounds like you would need to replace the substrate every so often (every 1-2 years) if you notice your PH starting to raise and that doesn't sound fun to me. :)
I'm pretty new to this stuff (only one year in) so am happy to read any corrections to my assumptions.
 
#31 ·
I always use *Pure* Baking Soda ( no caking agents or anything else ) to buffer PH and add KH to my remineralized RO water. Equilibrium doesn't have everything in it - and there are other all in one options like "SaltyShrimp Shrimp Mineral GH/KH+" But I like to have them separate - just depends on how much patience and fun you want to have :D Also good to have an occasional Fertilizer if you see obvious signs of mineral deficiencies.
Its important to Buffer your RO water like this to avoid PH Spikes and wake up to everything dead except the plants. Please look online for proper doses for Pure Baking Soda - Ive been doing it so long I kind of eye ball it at this point XD
 
#33 ·
I love the salty shrimp gh/kh+ product.
My tap water is only 12TDS "RO like" (best water in canada)
I use salty shrimp product in my nano tanks , but use bss as baking soda and my own diy gh booster in my bigger tanks .
diy gh booster
This maintains the golden 3/1 mag/calcium ratio.
CaCl 6 grams
MgSo4 7 grams
1 gram of this mix raises gh of 10G water by 1dGH.
 
#35 ·
Greggs you've seen my tanks I don't have problems other than growing plants faster than i can give them away..
 
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#36 ·
Hey nice to see your tank.

It looks great!

But that brings up an earlier question.

Did you yourself experience pH crash? If so, can you describe it?

Or is it something you read about?

I am asking as I have never know anyone who actually had it happen. I've only seen people refer to web sites that have been saying that low KH is dangerous for decades.

My guess has always been that those who experience anything like a pH crash have underlying problems that bring it on. But just a guess. Would be curious to hear your experience if you had one.
 
#38 ·
I use RO/DI for the same reason Blue Ridge Reef does, left over from when I used to keep reef tanks.

I've been remineralizing with GH Booster and using potassium bicarbonate to bump up to 1 dKH or so (6g to 30 gallons of water). I use aquasoil.

Now I'm wondering if I should cut out the potassium bicarbonate. I was worried about having too low of a pH (it was below 6), but I'm keeping tetras and corys so thinking I should be fine with a pH in the 5's.

I'm also concerned about the issues with using DI (mixed bed cartridges) and potential pH swings as filter starts to get exhausted. My system has goes sediment cartridges ->carbon block -> RO membrane -> first DI cart -> second DI cart -> final product.

Should I figure out how to reroute the flow of the RO and replace the DI carts with additional sediment and carbon blocks, or just remove the DI carts? Is it worth the effort or should I just continue with RO/DI?
 
#47 ·
Extending on the pH discussion, I have results of a research about soil and water analysis of vegetation areas in Ethiopia. It describes the amount of areas divided by pH to

4.5 – 5.5 strongly acidic
5.6 – 6.5 moderately acidic
6.6 – 7.3 neutral
7.4 – 8.4 moderately alkaline

I made a chart showing the three districts and also their combined averages. It demonstrates the scarcity of alkaline and neutral pH. Most of the areas, about 95%, are acidic in nature.



Potassium (K)-to-magnesium (Mg) ratio, its spatial variability and implications to potential Mg-induced K deficiency in Nitisols of Southern Ethiopia
Soil pH-H2O in the study areas ranged from 4.5 to 8.0 where acidic soil reaction was prevalent. About 3.3, 60, 31.3 and 5.3% of the soil samples in the Damot Gale district are categorized as strongly acidic (pH < 5.5), moderately acidic (5.6–6.5), neutral (6.6–7.3) and moderately alkaline (7.4–8.4), respectively, as per the ratings of EthioSIS [13]. In Damot Sore district, about 33, 42, 22 and 3% of the soil samples are rated as strongly acidic, moderately acidic, neutral and moderately alkaline soils, respectively, whereas in Sodo Zuria district, the soil pH was under strongly acidic (26.7%), moderately alkaline (58.0%), neutral (14.5%) and moderately alkaline (0.9%) ranges.

And if you are at it, you can read about K deficiency due to antagonistic effect of Mg. This research explains why it is more difficult to grow plants in higher Mg.
 
#48 ·
Wait, wait - the idea that Mg can cause a K-deficiency is not settled science. It's an interesting idea people are looking into, but I'm not sure it's applicable to planted tanks. At minimum it deals with how concentrations of different cations adsorb differently to the soil, so if you have a substrate with low CEC the proposed mechanisms don't apply. It would also apply to calcium, not just magnesium.

I support your larger point that acidic soil conditions are common though.
 
#51 ·
ElleDee
No problem at all.
Back to topic, some antagonistic and synergistic relationships do exist and the whole area is too complex to have anything certain. Just like you suggested. Still we like the discussion because it stimulates new ideas and creates progress. We are happy to have you here because most of us are only hobbyists unlike you professional horticulturist who has the knowledge to help us understand the topic better.

I think aquatic plants can’t be that different than terrestrial plants because most of the plants we grow in our aquariums also grow seasonally emersed just like terrestrial plants do. So for this reason the studies could also help our plants.
 
#52 ·
I wish I had more expertise in plant nutrition specifically, but the hobby has definitely inspired me to deepen my understanding of that topic.

I agree we have to glean what we can from agricultural studies because our sources of other reliable information is so limited. We have those and we have research done from the ecological side that give us knowledge about aquatic ecosystems, bit about how our plants grow in nature, and some information on their unique physiology. Neither area of research is really sufficient, but hey - look where the hobby was 20 years ago! I think we have more big advances in the years to come too.

I suspect that a big chunk of the handwringing about fertilizer in the hobby is misplaced. Now, I don't know that to be true and might have a totally different opinion with more experience, but the degree that people wrestle over small differences is way out of line with horticulture in most other contexts. I don't think tissue culture is even this bad! Like, didn't y'all have a whole civil war about micro toxicities? Madness!

But it's not like I have the answers either. In the meantime I'm learning a lot and having fun and maybe I'll be able to contribute some actual value to the community eventually.
 
#53 · (Edited)
Like, didn't y'all have a whole civil war about micro toxicities? Madness!
LOL the Microtox wars.

It was brutal warfare. Many are still scarred.:grin2:

Just dropped in to say I have been enjoying the conversation. Whether knowing the absolute interactions between compounds/elements is a game changer with planted tanks is debatable. '

Of all the things that make a tank successful, dosing is not at the top of the list. I spend a good deal of time interacting with what I consider to be the best in the hobby, and this topic is not something that is brought up often at all.

The other issue with any debate like this is how it might affect different species. Too many create "experiments" that only indicate how one plant reacts in one environment. Different species of aquatic plants have different preferred parameters. The trickiest part of this hobby is keeping a wide group of species happy at one time. The reality is that many times one might change parameters to bring out peak health in a certain plant, and the unintended consequence is that others suffer.

But all that being said listening with great interest.

 
#62 ·
@Capsaicin_MFK I think that's true if your tank is more or less balanced, but when something's way out of whack algae can get out of control pretty quickly. I know I have had an algae situation that took more than cleanliness to fix, and I feel for people who are new to the hobby, have a tank they just set up, a bunch of emersed plants they have no experience with, and maybe an active substrate or driftwood dumping organics.
 
#63 ·
Decades ago George Booth was often criticized for his tight adherence to Dupla methods and materials. His defense was that you cannot just take the parts you like from one system and combine them with parts from another system and expect the good results of either system. It is difficult to determine what individual element of a process is contributing to plant/fish health without taking into consideration all the components of a system.

And lets me honest... when we pick and chose elements from different systems and combine them into our own.... it is usually a cost-avoidance strategy... you take this cheap component/element from this system, combine it with cheap elements/components/processess from this system..... etc...

So, I appreciate it immensely when folks like Greggz (here on PlantedTank.net), George Booth, Tom Barr detail their entire systems for us... showing us the interactions and effects of everything they've employed to make their system a success.

Thank you all for taking the time to make such contributions... I'll continue reading and learning....
 
#64 ·
Decades ago George Booth was often criticized for his tight adherence to Dupla methods and materials.
I have to admit I had heard of George Booth but never really did much research about him. When you mentioned him I did some searching and ran across some great pics from many years ago. He had some beautiful tanks back in the day. Bonus was he had Rainbow Fish in many of them!

That let to me an article he wrote about injecting CO2, and that led to learning more about the Dupla'a "The Optimum Aquarium". And so on and so forth and a hour later I had a really good time going back in time.

Interesting that while some of the equipment and techniques are well dated, there are also some that held up very well.

So thanks for the reference. I enjoyed learning more about them.
 
#67 ·
Well, I'm glad to see this is the top post on this section cause I came here looking for this.

I've been out of the hobby for awhile and finally came back and set up a planted tank, low tech and slowly started adding tech as I went. Use 5/2 ratio RODI to purified water because of the crap in my tap water. Had a great aquarium going, added CO2, was adjusting the levels for a few days and all of my invertebrates died in one day. Not thinking to test, I just did a fast water change and tried to figure out was going and then a few days later I had massive die off in one day again. I had a small ammonia spike which I gathered because of all the death, so I did several small water changes and then everyone else died but one. My tank completely cycled. So I moved my last fish to my hospital tank and finally measured my kH and stuff and I had 0 kH, 180 gH and pH of 6.0. I can only figure that I was having major pH swing from the addition of CO2 was ordered alkaline booster to buffer the kH but now I'm reading that shouldn't shift my pH?
 
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