lowering water hardness

I know seachem has a product called AcidBuffer.
I've never used it sorry.

thanks retoid, i dont understand why im having such trouble i assume its my water.
anyone know of another way?

I know that peat from the amazon will help lower it but its not a fast method and it does not lower it very much. Keta peat is the brand.

the water in my tank atm is 6. somthing off hand i cant remember and the ph of tap water is 7.4 it just seems weird that people who use aquasoil and similar params dont have the same problem

Hmm, how yellow is the water? kH - 6 and pH - 7.4 isnt bad.
My well water is kH - 11 and pH - 7.6

What is your nitrate level?

ph 6.6 (was 7.4)
ammonia is 0 .25 (gone up from 0)
nitrate no3 is 5.0
nitrate no2 is 2.0
here are my full parameters
also worth note is im running EI

whats your current water hardness?

my current water hardness as of half 5 is 6.6
the waters pretty damn yellow, take a pint glass out and hold it to the light and it looks like weak tea

how big of a tank? is with worth trying DI/RO water?

Thats an expensive solution evercl92. I'm sure there is a way to clear it up.
Can you take pictures?
I wish I had more experience with ADA AS to know if it would have anything to do with the cause..

my tanks tiny, just a 10gallon to be honest i dont know how or where i would get either RO or DI water but if i could get it it would probably solve the problem of yellow water

Well i dont know about the UK but here in the US you can go to a waterstore and get RO water for .25 a gallon. Other then that you could buy an RO system but those generally run around $100 or so I think. You can try adding carbon also that should take care of the tea color but it may absorb nutrients...or so people say.

retoid said:

Thats an expensive solution evercl92. I'm sure there is a way to clear it up.

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That's why I asked tank size. If it were a 125gal, then it wouldn't be worth it.

As cheap as this filter system is, it worked pretty good for me. Then I got a big tank, and it became not even close to cost effective. But may solve the problem for a smaller tank.

thanks all
im already running activated carbon to no avail admitadly its worse if i dont use it but its still bad with.
thanks for the link evercl92 ive tried looking for one on uk sights and cant find one a RO unit could be the only option, unless anyone knows anything diffrent?

Do you have driftwood in this tank? Is the water straight out of your faucet yellow also? Look at a product called purigen from seachem and see if you can find it available in the UK. It will polish water clean



riverrat

hey riverrat, yes my tank is dominated mainly by a huge peice of drift wood, i have boiled and soaked it and left it in a tub of water for a week with no water changes and i didnt even get a tint to the water so im assuming it therefore must be the aquasoil thats yellowing up my water. my water out of the tap is clear, goes in clear, comes out yellow. ive bought some purigen as a last ditch thing fingers crossed it'll be as good as it claims.

retoid said:

I know seachem has a product called AcidBuffer.
I've never used it sorry.

Click to expand...

Seachem's Acid Buffer chews away at the Kh, not the Gh. Plus it adds a lot of TDSs.....

HTH

Perhaps your driftwood to water ratio when you put it in the tub for a week wasn't enough to change the color of the water significantly while in your small tank your driftwood to water ratio is large enough to make a noticeable difference. Either that or the change in water hardness/pH caused by the AS is allowing a reaction to occur in the the various tannins in the wood resulting in increased leaching into your water column. Unless you got your AS 2nd hand I'm willing to bet it's your driftwood.

Is it malaysian driftwood?

yeah, its root wood of some kind, the tag says "sumatara driftwood" i dont know, im running purigen now and ive got no problems with water discolouring at all