hard water??

How do i lower the kh in my tank? It is really high...around 21-22!

Please help!!:-/

 

Is this for a saltwater tank or freshwater? If it is for saltwater, I'd recommend getting a reverse osmosis unit to purify your water. This would be helpful even if it is for freshwater too, but a bit pricey.

 

It is saltwater. I already have a RO unit and it has new filters in the past months. The only thing is that my RO water tests high too.....

 

Your RO water should not test high if it is working properly. Do you have a DI unit as well? This can be very helpful. Basically if your RO/DI water is hard, I would contact the company you bought it from and request their advice on what to do. You may need new DI material, or possibly even a new RO membrane if yours is very old.

 

What make and model of RO unit do you have? How old is it? How old are the filters and the membrane itself? What is your tap water TDS and hardness? What is your tap water pressure and temperature? What is your RO TDS? Do you feed your RO with softened tap water? Do you have DI too or just RO? What is the waste ratio on the RO unit? Has the RO unit been stored or put a way for any length of time and the membrane allowed to dry out?

 

The filters and membrane in RO unit were both replaced less than a month ago. It is a GE SmartWater model GXRM10GBL02 and there is no DI unit attached. I'm not sure how to measure the pressure of my tap water.... but..the kh is same before and after RO....

 

The most critical piece of equipment you need to troubleshoot a RO unit is a handheld TDS meter. If you do not have one I would sure look at purchasing one.
How old is the unit itself and did you take the time to disinfect the system while you were changing filters? That is an important step that is often overlooked.

Your problem could be something as simple as a membrane that is not seated correctly inside the housing but again its going to take a TDS meter to tell us that. Another indicator of a unseated membrane is increased production, if you are getting more GPD than you were before its also a sign of water bypassing the membrane.

 

Eliminate salt from the water

You can use two ways to avoid such problem of salty water either a water softener or an alkaline water ionizer. Water softeners remove unwanted minerals from the water supply using several methods. However, if you compare ionizer with the above then it will not only supply a fresh and good flavor water and also give a healthy drinking water that consists negative ions.

 

The average water softener does quite the opposite, its adds sodium into the treated water as it removes calcium and magnesium with the ion exchange process. There are other that use potassium instead of sodium but they are not as common. Its still the same process just a different exchange media.
A water softener is recommended in front of the RO unit by most all manufacturers as it acts as pre treatment for the RO membrane and salts are what membranes were originall ydeveloped to reove so they are quite efficient at that.
Alkalinity should be minimal after a properly functioning RO membrane, there should be few ions of anything to measure in fact, thats what the TDS meter will tell you. Test kist don't always work well on RO and especially RO/DI water since it is very volatile and has little to measure. If the RO is working as designed its not the source of your problems, again use the TDS meter to confirm this.

 

are you sure it is dkh your measuring. some kh test measure in ppm and if so 210 220 ppm is like 12dkh.