Salt water Softener

I have a water softener connect to my home water. The water source is well water.
My PH is way too high...it is off the charts.
PLEASE HELP

Where do you live? High PH water is not bad for saltwater. What kind of water softner do you have?

Dr. Who wrote:

Where do you live? High PH water is not bad for saltwater. What kind of water softner do you have?

I have a salt water softener on my house. I have set up a 50 gallon freshwater tank with plants. After, testing and testing....I think it is the softener which makes the water hard. I live in Texas

Am I going to have to get water from another source for the rest of my life?????

Texas is a large state. Most ground water is hard and has a 7.8 to 8 ph. Its also very stable. By pass the softner.

I by passed the softener. However, we are on well water so we have huge holding tank and it drains from about a foot from the bottom of he tank. Which must have alot of salt in it. I tested the water inside and outside after draining over 50 + gallons of water and still the PH for both the regular ph tesing and the high ph testing were still off the charts.
My question now is, I did a 40% water change using bottled spring water and used the buffering powder for 7.0 ph. Hopeing it would add some of the ions/metals that were removed from the salt.
Now when I test the ph it is reading off the chart on the regular test ( 7.8) but when I tested the ph using the high PH testing....it's showing low at 7.4.
So what's my PH?????

First thing I would do is make sure your test kits aren't out dated.

Second thing I would do is put the water intended for water changes into a bucket with an airstone or two or a power head so that you agitate the surface of the water and circulate the water from the bottom to the top of the barrel.

Let run 24 hours and check ph, let run 48 hours and check ph and on up to 96 hours so see if your ph changes. once you have established what ph levels are you will have an idea of how long to age your water. Or even on well water you can run it through a reverse osmosis system which will lower the ph but will also strip out the necessary minerals so you will have to mix the RO water with your well water (2 parts RO to one part Well to start and then see what your reading is as you may need to increase or decrease the ratio of RO water to well water.

Chasing ph with buffers can lead to an excercise in herding cats (it can be done, but isn't always the easiest).

Dave

Thank you so much Dave!!!!!!!

Where in Texas are you living? Your ph shouldn't change if you are using well water. The ground water is very hard and 7.8 to 8.2 ph. Well water is very stable in most of Texas. Where my farm and business is the water can be in a tank with fish and 6 months later the ph is the same as when it was put in. Only well water that has some salt in it is in south Texas.

Hi DR Who,
I live in Dallas/Fort Worth area. The problem is, I have a huge holding tank the keeps the water pressure up. It drains about a 1\3 from the bottom...not at the bottom.
So, I am assuming that the salt has settled in the holding tank. I drained the holding as much as I could but the PH is off the charts. Crazy.... I am now buying RO water to do my water change.
I just added potassium chloride pellets instead of the salt pellets this weekend. I hope see kind of difference. Nothing like living out in the country :)

I understand where your salt comes from. Splice water line before conditioner. Your ground water should be perfect for salt. RO water is unstable because its takin all the stablizing properties out. I'm back in the states bcause of my daughters softball and soon baseball starts. I love softball and bseball.