Blackadder

I'd say the concrete water tank is the reason for the higher pH of your rain water, concrete will continue to increase the pH and hardness of your water for a long time. The pH from the water from your water tank probably changes depending on how recently its rained, drops after decent rain and slowly goes up when its dry. Your bore water probably has a lower pH because of the rocks etc it travels through in your area. Putting shell grit in the filters or water tank probably won't help because your pH is already going to high. Might be easier to use bore water for your fish tanks if you can, or collect rainwater into a separate container for your fish with maybe a bit of shell grit added to that.

H3.1 is LOSP treated, its the H3.2 that's usually used for outdoor stuff like decks

Why not just get a generator, you can get them quite cheap and it will run as long as your supply of petrol lasts. Also you could power more than just your fish tank if you have a power cut.

I think the chlorine everyone is talking about is chlorine bleach which is sodium hypochlorite. Sodium hypochlorite reacts with excess acetic acid to give of chlorine gas.

What are you doing with your probe for it to need replacing that often?

Gemstone bay is on the walk part way down to Cathedral cove

Oats mixed with some water and a bit of yeast, to give a thick not to wet mixture always worked well for me.

I don't know how you'd do the ro part, but the di bits easy, just add the resin to a filter

What you're already using should work, are you trying to raise it faster? You could use baking soda to get the pH of your tap water quickly to round what you want before adding it to your tank and keep using the shells, limestone or coral sand to buffer the water in your tank to stop it drifting.

I've done the coconut cave in the past too. I found you could crack the coconut straight down the middle if you hit it on the concrete after you've removed the liquid. You sometimes have to bounce (yes some of them will bounce) the coconut quite hard before it will break and it doesn't always work, but its quick if you don't want to saw.

Why don't you just get some new buffer solutions for your pH meter? Having to measure your pH some other way so you can calibrate the pH meter sort of defeats the purpose of having it doesn't it?

Why not try a strong salt solution, probably safer than boiling water which may not be so good for the seals on the heater or the cord even if its safe for the glass itself

Caustic soda would probably work.

Hold it against the white background of the color chart. You want water in the test tube only, you don't want water on the outside of the test tube or on the color chart.

Just paint some polystyrene and slip that in behind the tank, not quite as good as painting the glass but works ok. Any acrylic paints ok since its not going in the tank.

I did my background with concrete over the top to give it a rocky finish and to stop it floating. Needs quite a bit of concrete to stop the polystyrene floating though.

If you have any dead heaters you could use the heater cores. You could also use scoria.

Put the pump under the house or somewhere out of the way where you won't hear it and use a long airline to the tank, just need to drill a hole in the floor or wall for the airline to go through. Or else you can try ear plugs

Why not partially mix the RO/DI water with tap water when using it for your tanks to put some of minerals back. And if you want to add anything for your plants, pH, buffering etc, do it to the mixture. Seems silly to take all the minerals out then add them again to pure RO/DI water.

Java moss, nothing seems to eat that.

Says its disabled for me too, but tried it and it worked

They're not all acidic, thats one of the reasons you can't mix some herbicides together. I don't know if bleach or alkali would make much of a difference in a well rinsed drum, but I guess it can't hurt

A organic surface active agent is a surfactant, so you won't need to use soap or anything to clean them since its a bit like a soap. Just use plenty of water.

What exactly is the 'Foam Concentrate', do you have any more information?

I've got a handful you can have