Unreliable basic resource?

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nigelcaddock
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Unreliable basic resource?

Post by nigelcaddock »

Most of us rely on tap water as a basic resource for our Koi keeping. Historically UK water has been pretty good, but its clear that a combination of expediency and more relevant - commercial pressures have changed things, at least around here. I live in the North West and around a year or so ago a massive civil engineering project began parallel to the east lancs road close to Haydock park racecourse. This cause traffic meyhem for months and it seems the cause of this chaos was a new 2m water supply pipe.

Before the installation of the new pipeline our water was pretty consistent and specifically had a kH around 125. Since the new pipeline was commissioned its different almost every day. Discussions with Unitied Utilities have extracted the usual platitudes…."all our supplies meet EU quality standards"…"the water we supply is for human consumption and within legislative guidelines, but we give no undertaking or comment re its suitability or otherwise relating to keeping fish thats not our brief", yada, yada, all very helpful NOT. Funnily enough however i did manage to enage one helpful young lady in general water chat on one ocassion which was especially enlightening especially re the extent of the use of Aluminium Sulpate as a particulate clarifier in the final stage of water treatment, and get this pH control using ammonia, all thats an article all in itself!

If we are really honest most 'experienced' Koi keepers dont do many water quality checks, we get into a kind of rythm and usually things go ok. The consequences of the above however are in fact, significant simply because its clear that the consistency of tap water we enjoyed in the past is no longer the case. Worse still, not only is it not consistent, chance are, if like me you water is 'networked' ie comes from one source on day and another the next, who knows what it will be like tomorrow.

Quite apart from fluctuating parameters which is bad enough the lack of CaCO3 is a real problem. Without Calcium carbonate most functions of our filtration systems are at best impaired. The lesson for those in the NW and i suspect for us all is we need to go back to basics and check tap water parameters in general and kH in particular.
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Duncan
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Re: Unreliable basic resource?

Post by Duncan »

Nigel

when I get a moment im going to start looking into PO4 and other such goodies that maybe in our water supply being as weed is the bane of most koi keepers life

there no telling whats in there any more since most water supplies are foreign owned now

dunc
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