Quote:
Originally Posted by defdac
Now when you mention this there was a time when I always changed my water with one hose (siphon) coming out of the tank and one with fresh water into the tank - without altering the water level.
No pearling. We have < 0 ppm CO2 in our tap due to hydroxide treatment, and very low nutrientlevels.
Since I started to do ordinaray wc:s where I lower the surface to just a couple of cm from the substrate the "after wc champange" have started again... Hmm...
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Yes, lime softening removes the CO2. So that make's sense. Some water companies recarbonate the water and lower the pH, essentially adding CO2 to the tap.
If not, there's not going to be hardly any CO2, a high pH and very soft.
Most blend the softened water with the un softened water in partial lime softening methods. This way they can avoid recarbonation.
But the tap still has very low CO2 though but decent pH and they can produce more soft water, btu not super soft.
The hydroxide also will mess with the pH/KH as it adds some OH alkaninity, which will make it seem like you have 200ppm and fish are fine and plants grow well.
Limestone regions will often do this and have CO2 tap water issues with aquarist.
Try this, time the exposure to air, and use a spray misting bottle to keep the plants moist/splash water on them every 10 minutes etc.
Try for 5 min, then for 30min.
You can clean the tank really good while the tank's low(not a bad idea anyway!).
If you watch, and add black cloth blocking the lights on one side of the tank, then refill, you should see dramatic pearling only on the side with the light.
That will essentially prove it's the exposure to the air.
You will need to replace the tank water without the exposure to air also as a control and see how the black cloth effects the plant's pearling.
So this may be a good reason to do large water changes
Even if the CO2 is low in the tap.
It'll also give a standard of what optimal growth and pearlign is, so folks can try and get that same effect all week long rather than for a day or two.
And one thing that it will show more support for is that the idea behind the gas phase in CO2 mist, is well supported here. => 30-40ppm of Dissolved CO2 in water is not the maximum growth attainable. We can grow things even better with CO2 mist.
My personal goal is not max growth rates, it's max growth for lower light. I prefer to use less light to throttle growth rates as well as judicious plant choice. This provides the best mangement and the most stable method for a tank.
But knowing all this helps to focus the needs of other folk's goals, who may not want this.
Regards,
Tom Barr