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Do you live in an area which normally has very hard water, like liquid rock hard?
Some municipalities that treat very hard water will do a De-Ionizing cation exchange filter to soften the water enough so it works better for clothes washing. A DI filter is a Sodium ion exchange filter.
What DI does is take your 7.8~8.0 Calcium and Magnesium GH and KH loaded water and exchange their ions for Sodium ions.
This will bring down your GH, but will bump the KH to very high levels. Often times your water will test out at 3~5 GH and almost be off the scale KH. Frequently DI treated water will be way above 8.6 in pH.
Reverse Osmosis treatment is where the water is passed through, (under pressure, like 40PSI..) through a water permeable, special molecular filter. Part of the water is waste with higher concentrations of dissolved minerals and the water you use is frequently so pure as to be close to distilled with a close to neutral pH of around 7.0 and a Total Dissolved Solids reading in the tens.
Your TDS pen measures the electrical conductivity of the water.
As a note: You should never use pure RO water in a aquarium, a bit of dissolved minerals is good for the animals and plants Which is why there are products like Seachem's Equilibrium and Salty Shrimp's GH+ and GH/KH+ shrimp salts.
Also note that Seachem Equilibrium adds trace amounts of Iron and Manganese for plant health, but doesn't include other micro nutrients.
Some municipalities that treat very hard water will do a De-Ionizing cation exchange filter to soften the water enough so it works better for clothes washing. A DI filter is a Sodium ion exchange filter.
What DI does is take your 7.8~8.0 Calcium and Magnesium GH and KH loaded water and exchange their ions for Sodium ions.
This will bring down your GH, but will bump the KH to very high levels. Often times your water will test out at 3~5 GH and almost be off the scale KH. Frequently DI treated water will be way above 8.6 in pH.
Reverse Osmosis treatment is where the water is passed through, (under pressure, like 40PSI..) through a water permeable, special molecular filter. Part of the water is waste with higher concentrations of dissolved minerals and the water you use is frequently so pure as to be close to distilled with a close to neutral pH of around 7.0 and a Total Dissolved Solids reading in the tens.
Your TDS pen measures the electrical conductivity of the water.
As a note: You should never use pure RO water in a aquarium, a bit of dissolved minerals is good for the animals and plants Which is why there are products like Seachem's Equilibrium and Salty Shrimp's GH+ and GH/KH+ shrimp salts.
Also note that Seachem Equilibrium adds trace amounts of Iron and Manganese for plant health, but doesn't include other micro nutrients.
