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Thread: Increasing Hardness
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06-04-2021, 09:28 AM #1
Increasing Hardness
My tap water comes in at 70ppm On a x500 ec meter. It’s very soft.
My draco drum is going to cause me to be refilling a few hundred litres per day.
Is there something that can be used to filter tap water through to increase hardness?
Was looking into dolomite but couldn’t find a supplier of dolomite rocks larger than dust.
I’ve heard of oyster shells but people saying they don’t work too well on forums and since I’m dumping a lot of water every day I’d probably need tons of it
Cheers
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06-04-2021, 11:04 AM #2
Hey Steve
wouldn't worry to much about ppm, lover the better for the koi generally.
what you need to know is the KH and Ph and whether they are stable.
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Ajm Thanked / Liked this Post
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06-04-2021, 01:48 PM #3
Yeah what I mean is the KH is low due to low amount of dissolved solids in the water.
I’ve read that hardness is good for koi? Is that not correct?
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06-04-2021, 02:20 PM #4
Running ro /soft water koi can thrive but one slip up can cause a ph crash wiping out a whole pond. Kh is a buffer that helps keeps the pH in acceptable levels
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"we are water keepers first"
Johnathan
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WaterRhino Thanked / Liked this Post
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06-04-2021, 03:07 PM #5
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06-04-2021, 03:12 PM #6
General hardness is generally bad for koi (although this depends what level of the hobby you are at). However carbonate hardness you do need some of for pH buffering reasons. If your source KH is below 4DH then you will probably need to add some bicarbonate to the pond from time to time. It’s cheapest to buy a big food grade sack of the stuff and then test KH regularly to decide how many dissolved mug fulls per week you need to put in. Thankfully bicarb is very cheap.
You will find that you need the most bicarb when feeding heavily in the summer as it gets used up by filter bacteria when they are busy, but also during periods of heavy rainfall if rain can get into your pond. Rain is slightly acidic you see.2016 new 6000 gallon pond
https://www.koiforum.uk/pond-construc...ghlight=feline
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06-04-2021, 04:10 PM #7
Yes the bicarbonate method I thought for me was not practical though. As the draco drum will most likely cause a pond to be completely refilled of fresh water every 5-10 days as it uses so many litres to clean.
Adding bicarbonate every single day for this doesnt sound fun
Is there not some sort of filter you have tap water going through rocks or something to add kh?
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06-04-2021, 07:25 PM #82016 new 6000 gallon pond
https://www.koiforum.uk/pond-construc...ghlight=feline
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06-04-2021, 08:01 PM #9
It’s going to be around 13000l.
I have been told the draco drop in drum self cleans every 10 mins or so and uses 5l?
So that’s 144 times a day 5l each 720l a day?
My full refill was a bit exaggerated but I figured 720l a day is still too much to keep KH up.
Is my info about the draco incorrect?
I’m still building the pond atm I’m just ironing out some other details whilst I wait for fiberglassing and other things to get done.
The water quality was concerning me a bit and wanted to ensure I fill with correct water
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06-04-2021, 08:39 PM #10
The Draco should use less than 5l per wash. More like 2 - 3l.
In terms of frequency, it can be as often as 6 mins between washes in summer, but should drop down to more like once every hour or 1.5 hours in winter.
If it uses more than 2 or 3 litres per wash, it's probably worth turning the valve down feeding it (i'm presuming here that you are using mains).
The other thing is if you are feeding the drum with mains water, then most of the water used to wash the mesh will go straight down the drain.
But your comments suggest you have a pump on your clean side and a trickle in to top up what the drum uses?
Sent from my Pixel 4a (5G) using Tapatalk13,000L fibreglassed raised pond with window
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Gazkoi Thanked / Liked this Post
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06-04-2021, 09:59 PM #11
No sorry I have not set it all up yet. But my plan was to plumb mains water into the draco.
I was also planning on having a float valve to keep the pond topped up.
I suppose your right about the water going down the drain. I’ve just not seen it working to understand it fully. The water splashes the mesh but then still mixes with the pond water doesn’t it? Quite a bit will still be in the pond removing the hardness over a short amount of time?
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Twhitenosugar Thanked / Liked this Post
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06-04-2021, 10:29 PM #12
The spray bar washes through the screen over the waste chute as the drum turns, so basically almost all of the mains feed water goes down the drain with the fish poo. A little bit of splashing might miss the chute and stay in the system, but that would be negligible.
2016 new 6000 gallon pond
https://www.koiforum.uk/pond-construc...ghlight=feline
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06-04-2021, 11:43 PM #13
Ok thanks for clearing that up.
So in regards to keeping healthy koi is calcium carbonate enough? Should I not have some sort of magnesium carbonate too?
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