Better stated - when I strip all of the ions, salts and buffers out of my liquid
rock water I can't raise anything with fins. When I add ions back, in this case
in the form of calcium chloride, from reef blocks, my fish manage to grow (and
thrive). This may or may not work in your water, unless you strip out all of
the ions and start with the same lack of minerals that Roy is starting with.
Even though Roy recently stated that it absolutely is calcium that makes fry
grow so fast Roy really doesn't have a clue! Reality might very well be that if
you have normal water, reef blocks will do nothing but harden your water (unless
it's the trace elements). If it's the trace elements then we can just make a
mixture of trace elements, like they do for the plant fertilizers, and add it
with each water change.
If you are starting with relatively reasonable water 100-250 ppm I would
seriously consider not adding that great of an increase in hardness unless you
were sure that you were getting the benefits from it. To really know for sure
you would have to have two identical tanks, one with and one without a reef
block. First of all HBH blocks are not available in most markets, you have to
go out of your way to find them. I also doubt if they are in the australian
market. Although there are other blocks out on the market many of these are
much larger than the HBH blocks. Adding a large block of Calcium to a 10 gallon
tank could really throw your water out of balance. If we really "know" that it
is calcium then we can just add calcium chloride to the water. Then anyone who
is having problems raising fry can just add that extra calcium to their water
without having to try and import HBH blocks to France, Holland, Germany, The
great frozen north <g> and Oz or any other country on this list. They are also
not all that easy to find in the US.
de solve ( prefix signifying separation, to loosen,release also dissolve....)
Fortnight is in my dictionary, de solve isn't - but maybe it's in the Dr. Seuss
dictionary! That would explain a lot of things :-) de maybe