My city water got harder, so driftwood recommendations?

[biofish]

Alright… thank you guys for the information! I’m gonna have to talk and plan with my family about this. In the meantime I’ll do the pillows, even if they aren’t the best, but it’ll give us time to figure out a full time solution. I really love the cories, pleco, and tetras and I’ve had a lot of them for over a year so I don’t wanna get rid of them but I also don’t want them to suffer needlessly. I’ll go to my various LFS and ask about how they are dealing with it and see if they found a price savvy method or RO method.

 

[Colin_T]

You can make a solar still, which would probably work well in California. It would give you pure water, no waste water and be free to make pure water, it just requires a bit of sunlight.

Get a large plastic storage container and put it outside in the sun.
Pour a bucket of water into the storage container.
Put a clean bucket in the middle of the storage container. Have a rock in the bucket to stop it floating around.
Put the lid on the storage container.
Put a rock or small weight on the lid in the middle, so the lid sags above the bucket.

As the sun heats up the container, water will evaporate and condense on the underside of the lid. The water will run towards the centre and drip into the bucket. When the bucket is full of water, you put it into a holding container and put the bucket back in the storage container with another bucket of tap water.

You get pure water with a pH of 7.0, 0 GH, 0KH and no wasted water, no power used and it's cheap to set up.

 

[Guyb93]

This depends upon the GH/KH and some other factors. Steven mentioned this above. Organics (wood, peat, dried leaves) can lower pH and possibly GH/KH but it all depends upon the initial levels and what if any other additives are impacting these. Assuming the GH/KH here is due to the "hard" minerals dissolved in the water, the only effective and safe method is to dilute the water with RO, etc. If the water authority is adding chemicals/substances to increase these, that is another issue.

My water isn’t particularly soft it’s around 140ppm and a ph of 6.5 with a kh of around 40ppm after a week of sitting my water will test at 110ppm ph will be at 6 and kh remains the same of around 40ppm my kh never changes really

 

[Byron]

My water isn’t particularly soft it’s around 140ppm and a ph of 6.5 with a kh of around 40ppm after a week of sitting my water will test at 110ppm ph will be at 6 and kh remains the same of around 40ppm my kh never changes really

Your water is about half the hardness of the OP's, so that is significant. One of the problems with the old idea of using peat was that it took a lot of peat to soften very hard water, and it needed frequent replacement.

 

[Guyb93]

Your water is about half the hardness of the OP's, so that is significant. One of the problems with the old idea of using peat was that it took a lot of peat to soften very hard water, and it needed frequent replacement.

I get what you mean the changes in my water is insignificant but if done on a larger scale with more water and more wood Surely you could achieve a mor significant change but then again I’m doing this in a 125g so I’m not sure it’s worth doing on a larger scale

 

[Byron]

I get what you mean the changes in my water is insignificant but if done on a larger scale with more water and more wood Surely you could achieve a mor significant change but then again I’m doing this in a 125g so I’m not sure it’s worth doing on a larger scale

The harder the water (I include both GH and KH here) the stronger the pH buffering capability. So while "x" amount of organic matter (wood, leaves, etc) would be effective in a low GH/KH, the same amount in hard water would not be effective at all. All depending upon the actual numbers. Diluting water with some form of "pure" water will proportionally reduce the GH/KH/pH, but the extent it does this depends upon the initial GH/KH. Pure water has zero GH/KH and a neutral pH. Various substances can affect it because of this...acid rain for example. Rain is "pure" water when it falls but water being a strong solvent, the rain water picks up the CO2 and becomes acidic. But CO2 acidity can be temporary, as CO2 dissipates out of water quite easily if agitated.

 

[biofish]

So my LFS saddled me up with wood, pillows, almond leaves, and an acid buffer that he told me to add half the suggested does every other day to my tank with fish and to come back to test the water every 4 days.

Worst comes to worst the place sells 5 gallons of RO water for $7.

He said that my ph was also high and that lowering ph can help with the gh

 

[Colin_T]

Worst comes to worst the place sells 5 gallons of RO water for $7.

make your own as described in post #17

 

[biofish]

make your own as described in post #17

Our roof is completely flat and gets sun 24/7. That might be a good place to build it! My parents were thinking of building a spiral staircase going up there and if they do that then it’ll be perfect!!!

 

[Colin_T]

You don't have to construct a solar still, just put a plastic storage container in the backyard in the sun.

 

[StevenF]

I started looking up reverse osmosis systems and I’m a bit lost. How are they set up exactly? I mentioned it to my dad and he said we would need big tanks to contain the water and that we could technically get the entire house outfitted with it for 5k (expensive

In general a RO system separates the water in 2 outputs. It takes tap water and most of the minerals go out in one output that is typically dumped down the drain. The other output is soft water with most of the minerals removed.

The simplest system connects to a facet and and waste water hose placed in the drain of a sink or shower. The software output goes into a bucket or plastic trash can. These systems can produce 50 to 100 gallons per day. You can get such systems from Amazon.com for about $60 to $80. This is the easiest option for you.

Smaller systems (about 20 gallons per day) can be installed under a sink. Due to the slow production rate these system typically store 1 to 3 gallons tsoft water with a smalll dispenser for drinking water or for cooking . Larger systems can be installed for substantially more money. Most of the time RO system are not sized to filter all the water used in a home.

Note RO systems come in 3 or 4stage versions. The 3 stage is the basic RO system. 4 stage systems add an addtionalcartridge with a resin.This aditional filter is similar to the pillows you have. This adds an extra filtering get thee water as clean as possible.. You don't need the4th stage and the extra cost to resolve your issues. Also some of the wast water can be mixed with the soft RO water to reach a specific GH if needed.

 

[StevenF]

You can make a solar still, which would probably work well in California. It would give you pure water, no waste water and be free to make pure water, it just requires a bit of sunlight.

This is an article on the solar still. These systems do work but they produce clean water slowly. you could use a solar still to get pure from from the waste water generated by a RO system.

 

[biofish]

In general a RO system separates the water in 2 outputs. It takes tap water and most of the minerals go out in one output that is typically dumped down the drain. The other output is soft water with most of the minerals removed.

The simplest system connects to a facet and and waste water hose placed in the drain of a sink or shower. The software output goes into a bucket or plastic trash can. These systems can produce 50 to 100 gallons per day. You can get such systems from Amazon.com for about $60 to $80. This is the easiest option for you.

Smaller systems (about 20 gallons per day) can be installed under a sink. Due to the slow production rate these system typically store 1 to 3 gallons tsoft water with a smalll dispenser for drinking water or for cooking . Larger systems can be installed for substantially more money. Most of the time RO system are not sized to filter all the water used in a home.

Note RO systems come in 3 or 4stage versions. The 3 stage is the basic RO system. 4 stage systems add an addtionalcartridge with a resin.This aditional filter is similar to the pillows you have. This adds an extra filtering get thee water as clean as possible.. You don't need the4th stage and the extra cost to resolve your issues. Also some of the wast water can be mixed with the soft RO water to reach a specific GH if needed.

That RO system wastes so much water though… if you do 50 gallons of water a day you only get 14 gallons of usable water and the rest goes down the drain. The waste hurts my heart

I’ll keep looking!

 

[Rocky998]

That RO system wastes so much water though… if you do 50 gallons of water a day you only get 14 gallons of usable water and the rest goes down the drain. The waste hurts my heart

I’ll keep looking!

You don't have to do that much... Just stop the system when you have enough

 

[Colin_T]

That RO system wastes so much water though… if you do 50 gallons of water a day you only get 14 gallons of usable water and the rest goes down the drain. The waste hurts my heart

I’ll keep looking!

solar still
solar still
solar still
seriously, no waste, no energy required besides sunlight. use a plastic storage container and bucket, or a couple of each to double the output.