Sodium Water Softener & GH/KH help

[Vindicare066]

Hi Everyone,

I recently moved to a small town and my house is set up on a Sodium Water Softener to treat our water. From what I have been reading online, these types of water softeners are not ideal for planted aquariums, as they strip away important minerals like Calcium and Magnesium. So to remedy this I have begun adding Seachem Equilibrium to ensure that these minerals are replenished.

I also picked up a GH and KH API water testing kit to monitor my tanks, and im not to sure what to make of the readings...

TAP: KH= 22 drops, GH= 24 drops, PH = 6.4-6.6

5 GAL, Stocked with Equilibrium: KH= 17 drops, GH= 30 drops, PH= 7.6

10 GAL, Cycling with 2 Teaspoons of Equilibrium: KH = 17 drops, GH= 30 drops, PH = 7.0

Can anyone provide me with the formula for determining what the exact ppm is for these results, as the chart provided by API does not go into that kind of detail. I can only determine that my range is anywhere between 200ppm-500ppm.

Now having a GH/KH in this range is it bad for my plants/ aquariums in general? How can I lower my GH/KH without using buffers or softeners? Would an RO system help solve this and would I still need to keep using Equilibrium with the RO system? I also use Seachem Flourish and Excel to provide nutrients for my plants, should I look at maybe using additional supplements, like Flourish Advance, & Trace?

Sorry for the long winded inquiry. Any help is much appreciated!

Sincerely,

Vindicare

 

[Essjay]

With the API testers, 1 drop means 1 degree hardness. To convert degrees to ppm, multiply by 17.9.


The other problem with these water softeners is that they add a lot of sodium to the tank, which is not good for most fish.

If your tap water has GH 24, that is very hard. It suggests that the softener is not working as it should. You should have a bypass tap somewhere as drinking water from this type of softener is not good for humans. It would be an idea to check the GH and KH of both water from the softened tap and water from the bypass tap to compare them. If they are the same, something is wrong with the softener, perhaps it needs a new cartridge (or whatever it is they use).

The reason your two tanks have even higher GH than your tap water is because you have added chemicals to increase GH to hard water not soft water.


The best thing for your fish would be to use either all RO water and add in some remineralisation salts, or to mix RO and water from your bypass tap in the proportion needed to get the hardness you want. You should not use water from the softened tap with a sodium-type softener.

 

[StevenF]

For a water treated with a water softener I would expect very low GH and KH reading (close to zero). The readings you posted are either untreated water from the mains or your water softener is not working. You need to resolve this first.

Note the GH and KH test will not detect sodium chloride in the water. GH only tells you the toltal amount of calcium and magnesium in the water. KH only detects carbonates. Water softeners remove both of these. But they do add sodium chloride to the water. Typically not enough to be harmful to most people. But it does add a taste that you may not want.

A RO system connected to a sink that is connected to a water softener and its filters will lats a long time due to the low GH and KH. The filters will not clog as quickly. and its output would have a very low GH and KH.

 

[StevenF]

So to remedy this I have begun adding Seachem Equilibrium to ensure that these minerals are replenished.

Equilibrium is a good way to remineralizerthe excessively soft water. for soft water fish and plants you only need about 1 degree GH or KH. For shrimp and snails 2 or 3 degrees would be better. However different fish have different needs. some fish naturally live in hard water. You need to add enough to satisfy the needs of your fish for best results. If you go online and search your can find the GH, KH, and PH preference for your fish and adjust your water as needed with equilibrium.

 

[Byron]

I should mention that Equilibrium is not the best substance to add minerals to water if fish are requiring these. Equilibrium is a plant additive, to increase "hard" minerals; it adds calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, and potash. It does not buffer, nor does it raise pH. This is ideal for plants, but not necessarily all fish. Fish are concerned over GH, KH and pH, whereas plants primarily need the GH aspect (all else being equal).

 

[StevenF]

I should mention that Equilibrium is not the best substance to add minerals to water if fish are requiring these. Equilibrium is a plant additive, to increase "hard" minerals; it adds calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, and potash.

If you look at all the ingredients in commercial remineralizes you can clarify All as plant fertilizers. All life on earth needs the macro nutrients of N P K Ca Mg S. and most life also needs the trace nutrients found in plant fertilizer. The primary reason for adding these minerals it to help fish maintain a proper osmotic balance in there body.

Basically water flows in and out of cells of animals and plants. This flow is strongly influenced by the minerals in the cells. If the mineral levels are wrong a cell may swell with water and possibly burst (killing the cell. In other cases the cell may loose water and shrink. This can also kill the cell.

plants and animal have methods available to regulate this pressure. This allows it to adjust to changes. But if the mineral content of the water is way off from what is normal for the animal (or plant) it will be stressed and may get sick or die. A good example is shrimp. If the water is too soft they cannot molt and will die. However if the mineral content is to high they again cannot molt and will die.

Fish are concerned over GH, KH and pH, whereas plants primarily need the GH aspect (all else being equal).

This is true to some extent. But it should be pointed out the PH only measures the corrosive potential of water. Again if the PH is too high or low a fish may die. Plants are also sensitive to PH . But this is often overlooked and there is little to no information available on this. PH is a separate issue from osmotic balance. however both are important. GH measures mainly calcium and magnesium total content of the water It is useful but not perfect. In some cases it is better to mere calcium hardness and magnesium hardness speprately to determine the ratio of Ca to Mg. KH is mainly used to determine how much buffering of the PH is available in your water. Low KH water may have rapid large swings in PH due to small changes in water chemistry, while water with a moderate of 3 degrees of KH will have a more stable PH .

 

[Vindicare066]

Thank you everyone for the replies!

Sorry for the delay in responding, so to give an update it turns out that the existing water softener wasn't working properly, we had a technician come by on Tuesday and he informed us this when he did the inspection. While we were talking I asked him about the water quality in the area, he told me that I am dealing with heavily mineralized water (450ppm for iron, calcium and magnesium) Is this kind of level dangerous for fish, invertebrates and plants?

Today, the technician has returned and he installing a brand new water softener, so hopefully it should be up and running within the next hour or so.

So with that resolved I am now going to look into getting an RO system, I have been looking at numerous products online however I am not sure where to start. It seems like the standard go to RO system is a 3 Stage. However, I am coming across a lot of forums and websites that are saying a 4 Stage RO/DI system is the way to go. From what I have been reading the only difference between the two systems is that a RO/DI produces a purer filtered water after it passes through the system. Any thoughts and suggestions on what kind of system I should look at buying ? Space is a bit of an issue, and would need one that is portable, regarding budget I am fairly flexible on, this is an essential so I want to make sure what I get will last and produce a good quality product.

Regarding the addition of Equilibrium, I was adding it because all of my tanks are planted, and my plants have been suffering since the move. (a lot of melting, and I was seeing symptoms of mineral deficiencies) however, i was always under the impression that the water in my tanks were very soft (as I didnt have the test kit). So should I continue to add Equilibrium to my tanks for my plants or stop? And are there any other products I should be looking into that I should be adding to help both the fish and plants? One that I have seen commonly get referenced is SeaChem Replenish. Should I be adding this in addition to Equilibrium?

Thank you for your help!

 

[Byron]

Yes, at 450 ppm (= 25 dGH) you do indeed have very hard water. Assuming the new/repaired softener is still using sodium, it is best avoided. I will leave it for those with direct experience with RO to answer those questions, and respond on the Equilibrium issue.

First, the reason your plants may have been melting would be more likely due to the salt in the softened water rather than lack of minerals, though the latter wouldn't help. I have very soft tap water, around 7 ppm (0.4 dGH) but I can grow some plants with just Flourish Comprehensive and/or Flourish tabs. Melting is more likely a dehydration issue, which is how salt affects plant--they literally dry out and melt.

Your first step is to get decent water. If you use RO, you may find it helpful to mix the RO with some of the source water if you can bypass the softener. The very hard source water diluted with RO could be mixed to pretty much any level of GH/KH/pH. The mix is proportional. Example, if you mix half source water with half RO, you will reduce the GH by half. I believe KH is similar. Obviously, the GH you aim for will depend upon the species of fish intended. Once you have this worked out, there will likely be sufficient mineral in the water to make Equilibrium and Replenish unnecessary. This would save adding another substance, and it would decrease the cost of the RO water (RO does waste a lot of water).

However, if you were to go to only RO, these products or similar could be used to add some mineral, again depending upon the fish and plants. Fish are less adaptable than plants when it comes to GH, so you should always consider the fish and provide what they require, and this will likely be adequate for most plants. I'm being very general just to give an overview.

I gave up using Equilibrium because of my fish. It did improve the swords (which had calcium deficiency before), but at the same time I have a lot of wild soft water fish and I was concerned over the higher-than necessary GH. I raised the GH from 7 ppm (less than half of 1 dGH) up to 5 or 6 dGH. I stopped using Equilibrium during a test to deal with what turned out to be an organics problem in one tank, and found to may amazement that it didn't seem to have much detrimental effect on the plants. In the end, and for the past two years now, I have been using Flourish Tabs and not Equilibrium, plus Flourish Comprehensive, and my swords are fine. I replace the tabs every 6 weeks (rather than the recommended 3-4 months) and use just under one weekly dose of FC. Fish seem happier, plants are thriving...which only goes to show how often we are led into thinking we need to be dumping this and that into the tank for plants when we actually are doing more harm than good, at least to the fish. Every substance added to the tank water will get inside the fish, and keeping additives minimal is always better.

I've never tried Replenish as I do not have fish that need anything but soft or very soft water. I did correspond with Seachem about Replenish vs Equilibrium, for plants, and they advised that Replenish would not provide the best solution for plants, whereas Equilibrium would not provide good mineral for fish, so they are not interchangeable.

 

[Vindicare066]

Yes the new softener is sodium based. I just did a new test of the TAP water after the new water softener was installed.

Here were the readings:
GH= 15 degrees of hardness so that comes out to 268.5ppm
KH= 19-20 degrees so 340.1ppm

So the new softener certainly dropped the hardness down quite a bit compared to the previous readings I provided, however, I am still surprised it isnt lower. I suspect that the readings are like this because there may be old water still in the piping. So I am going to give it a few days, to let the new softener get settled and make sure all of the piping has been flushed with new water before I do another test.

That said, the fish I am keeping will do much better with this water compared to what it was before. There is only one fish that needs softer water and that is my Galaxy Pleco, so I will still be looking into getting an RO system to help him thrive as well as my plants.

Regarding the RO system, my plan would be to do 50/50 or 60/40 (RO/TAP). I would really like to avoid using Equilibrium/ Replenish and any kind of buffer if I can, for the exact reasons you mentioned above, "everything you add will work its way into the the fishes system". Before I moved, I was like you Byron, I was only using Flourish Tabs, Flourish Comprehensive and a a bit of Excel. I keep Iron, Potassium, Phosphorus and Trace as well, on hand, however, I seldomly add them to the tanks. Now that I live pretty far from any LFS, having everything on hand just in case is always useful.

 

[StevenF]

Here were the readings:
GH= 15 degrees of hardness so that comes out to 268.5ppm
KH= 19-20 degrees so 340.1ppm

So the new softener certainly dropped the hardness down quite a bit compared to the previous readings I provided, however, I am still surprised it isnt lower. I suspect that the readings are like this because there may be old water still in the piping.

I completely agree with this 15 degrees is still very hard water. I agree your water sample was a mix of tap plus softened water. Probably more tap water than softened water. You might have to run the faucet for a couple of minutes to get mostly softened water.

Keep in mind the GH test detects calcium and magnesium. It doesn't detect sodium. My understanding on water softeners You sodium levels are elevated but I don't know how much. Your sodium levels might be too high for your fish but I have no way of knowing for sure. I would definitely get a RO system.

Regarding the RO system, my plan would be to do 50/50 or 60/40 (RO/TAP).

Depending on the final value of the softened water and sodium valve in you water you might ned more RO water than that if you assume for every1ppm of GH reduction results in 1ppm of sodium added to the water you might need more RO than 60%. You might have to experiment. to find the best values. Another thing you could do is to buy a test that will detect sodium in the water (they are available but I have never used one). Or you can get a TDS meter. A TDS meter uses electricity to measure the Total Dissolved Solids. It will measure sodium and anything else in the water. I got a TDS meter a little over a year ago. It can give you a TDS digital reading in ppm in a minute. I don't like color charts and have slowly moving to devices that give a digital readings.

I would really like to avoid using Equilibrium/ Replenish and any kind of buffer if I
can, for the exact reasons you mentioned above, "everything you add will work its way into the the fishes system"

While it is good to avoid adding things to the water keep in mind that everything in equilibrium is needed by all animals on the planet. If you don't have these things in the water the fish might be stressed and could get sick. But that said you don't need to add much for fresh water fish. Adding only enough to provide 1 degree of harness would be enough. That is not a lot. Also you don't need to to add a buffer. When plants absorb the sulfur in equilibrium carbonates are formed. If you add only enough equilibrium for 1 degree carbonate levels (KH) will be about the same.

If you want to avoid adding chemicals to the water I would start by eliminating the unnatural ones first. all the chemicals listed in equilibrium and replenish are found naturally in streams. However water conditioners are full of chemicals that fish don't see in the wild. So if you want to reduce unnatural chemicals eliminate the conditioner. for RO water will not need a water conditioner. RO systems remove chlorine. I stopped using water conditioner in my RO tanks a long time ago. and have no problems. Also you natural food with no preservatives and colors added. For things with naturally occurring chemicals fish and plants need. Use only the amount needed.

 

[hobby5]

Every ppm of GH removed adds 2 ppm of sodium ions as Ca and Mg have divalent cations while sodium ions are monovalent.