How to Reduce Water Hardness in Aquarium Efficiently?

Simply use the inert lime-free gravel as a substrate of your tank to reduce water hardness effectively. How straightforward!

This type of gravel is chemical-free, which is beneficial to your pet fish. The lime-free substrate will assist you to prevent the mineral ions (such as calcium or magnesium) from accumulating with each other.

Therefore, this way will be best if you want to lower general hardness in fish tank (also called GH). Remember, make sure you do not use the pea, limestone, crushed coral or dolomite gravel.

As rainwater and distilled water have pretty low GH levels, you can mix them with the hard tank water in order to decrease the mineral concentration. However, do not use merely rainwater to fill up your aquarium because your fish and plants still need some basic minerals to survive.

Therefore, you need to mix rainwater (or distilled water) with tap/remineralized water.

The only thing you need to do is install the reverse osmosis system into your aquarium and wait until the hard water turns soft again. Basically, this system “filters out” the contaminants by letting the water molecules go through a semipermeable membrane.

First, boil the driftwood for 1 to 2 hours to sterilize it. Then, put the whole thing into your aquarium and ensure that it works well.

The principle of adjusting water hardness of the driftwood is to release acid tannic and brown the water. For your information, acid tannic doesn’t harm your pet fish so you do not need to worry about using driftwood for the tank.

Peat moss deals the best with problems caused by magnesium and calcium as it will trap them once there is water running through. In detail, the moderate amount of tannins included inside the peat moss aids in pH adjustment.

What to prepare:

Now, put the peat moss in the prepared mesh bag and drown it into the tank water. Peat moss can also become part of the substrate; assist you in controlling the ammonia level or act as a natural treatment for your tank.

However, if you wish to lower the hardness of aquarium water, which is overly serious already, this way is not a top choice.

Calcium will obviously “stick” to the walls of your aquarium on occasion. These mineral layers become “thicker” over time, resulting in a higher hardness level. Therefore, simply clear them off to get rid of hard water in fish tank.

What to prepare

Detailed steps

• Mix Calcium-Lime-Rust remover, 3% hydrogen peroxide, and water with a ratio of 1:1:1 in a prepared container.
• Gradually apply the mixture onto the calcium stains every 5 minutes.
• Constantly repeat the action in the next 30 minutes and wait until the calcium walls fall off.

First things first, it’s necessary to choose an appropriate acid buffer and you can consider between gallic acid and Indian almond leaves. To use them, gently put the prepared thing into your tank and simply wait.

This method softens the tank water by decreasing the pH level, resulting in less magnesium or calcium in the tank water.

Indian almond leaves contain tannic acid (similar to the compounds included in driftwood) so your aquarium will turn brown. Even though it might make your aquarium less appealing, good thing takes time.

Also, here’s a guide that will help you find the right pH meter.

Here is another way to lower GH in aquarium and it’s quite easy to do since you only need to throw the ready-to-use water-softening pillows into your tank’s filter. Otherwise, fixing it in the water inlet pipe will work as well.

In case you have no idea of which product to buy, refer to API Water Softener Pillow or something similar to it. It performs best in freshwater aquarium and still follows the GH-lowering principle of binding minerals (like magnesium or calcium).

Yes, these crystals look exactly like the things used in the regular washing machine. They also employ the idea of ion balance shift and gradually replacing the mineral ions with sodium ions.

Make sure you select good-quality water-softening crystals. Read the instructions on your chosen products, then, throw them into your tank

Notes: Only use ½ liter of crystals to 20-gallon of water (for marine/saltwater tank) or 1 liter of crystals to 20-gallon of water (for freshwater tank). However, the suggested amount can change based on the brands/types.

As you have a large container and a Domestic water softener, you can proceed with the following steps:

• Fill the container with carbonate ions-decreased water and start to remineralize it.
• Let the whole system continue working overnight.
• Transfer the softened water into your fish tank little by little/drip by drip (to avoid shocking your dear pets).

Notes:

• Keep in mind that the replaced ions reduce general hardness (GH) and the carbonate hardness (KH) so well that you cannot directly use the filtered water in your tank.
• To remineralize water, you can consider adding mineral salts, using mineral filters or alkaline water pitchers.

I guarantee that this technique is the least time-consuming way to lower hardness in fish tank.

You can prepare the following:

What to do:

• Test the GH level and see if it’s high or low.
• Take out 25% of your tank water and replace it with the same amount of qualified water.
• Check the GH level again to see whether it changes or not.
• Redo all the steps above in the next few days until the water hardness level is now good for your fish.

Furthermore, use these aquarium water changers to do it easier.