# Hard water, co2 and the natural method



## walzon1 (Feb 24, 2014)

Hey everyone new to the forum but not to aquariums, been in the hobby for many years one of my best acheivements was a discus planted tank but I used RO water with a buffering agent like neutral regulator and constantly monitored and babied the tank. After my discus died I vowed never to do another money pit, time consuming tank like that again. Fast forward 15 years and I have been reading and learning a lot about the low tech, el natural, wastad type aquarium setups and immediately was intrigued just one thing I can't wrap my head around is how can this possible work with my hard tap water. Im in L.A. PH around 8.2 KH around 20. How can co2 levels ever come close to whats needed in a heavily planted tank with such a strong buffer. I just can't see how this can be done without trying to soften the water somehow. Im hoping someone more knowledgable about this could possible have an answer that I couldn't find.


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## atc84 (May 18, 2013)

I have hard water and high ph in San Diego and my plants do fine. I actually didn't know hard water was a buffer to CO2.


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## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

Shouldn't be a problem. While there are a few aquatic plants that really do not like water like that, most do not mind it. 
Roughly half the plants we keep in aquariums can actually get carbon from carbonates.

I would go with fish that thrive in hard water, though, not fight to keep soft water fish in such hard, alkaline water.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

+1 for Diana's reply. I have relatively hard, high pH water and plants do well in my Walstad tanks. The substrate helps to lower carbonate hardness and buffer the pH. The tanks become very stable with pH near or slightly above neutral.


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## walzon1 (Feb 24, 2014)

Thanks to all who the replies while I don't understand the chemistry I plan on setting up a 10 gallon so I hope somehow my plants will be able to thrive.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

walzon1 said:


> One thing I can't wrap my head around is how can this possible work with my hard tap water. Im in L.A. PH around 8.2 KH around 20. How can co2 levels ever come close to whats needed in a heavily planted tank with such a strong buffer. I just can't see how this can be done without trying to soften the water somehow. Im hoping someone more knowledgable about this could possible have an answer that I couldn't find.


The soil, fish respiration, and targeted measures (e.g., no over-cleaning, no over-filtering, etc) will provide and preserve CO2 for plants in El Natural tanks.

Hardwater is nutrient-rich water; many aquarium plants can use bicarbonates for their carbon. Therefore, I think you are lucky to have hardwater.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

I will say the best single item investment I made for my fish was my Reverse Osmosis system. I have a 60 gallon per day system and at my peak I had two of these running every day.


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