Aquarium Calcium?

Question

My aquarium builds up this white chalky stuff over time over the heater, glass, filters and basicly everything nearby that isn't always in water.

My question is, is there any way to remove/reduce the ammount produced with any products or anything like that. Help is greatly appreciated.

*Btw, its a 20 gallon tank which I fill with tap water.

Answer 1

100% fix to your problem, start doing your water changes with reverse osmosis treated water. After a few changes that will decrease and eventually stop all together. Also with that water you will not need to add any chemicals to remove chlorine...:)

Answer 2

You probably have hard water coming out of the tap. As water evaporates from the tank, calcium deposits on "stuff" One question, do you do regular water changes? If not, as water evaporates, the "stuff" in the water becomes more concentrated. When you add more tap water, you are adding more 'stuff". More water evaporates and the concentration goes even higher. And on it goes. So one easy answer is to perform very regular partial water changes to keep the concentrations of these salts as low as possible (and that is what they are chemically... not table salt, but a combination of ions).

There are comercial water softening products one can use that are available in most high end fish stores. That might help. You could also find a source for distilled or reverse osmosis water.

But, again, the mainstay is frequent partial water changes. I have kept African Cichlids for a while now. They require hard water. Yet I don;t get a lot of build up because I keep the tank topped off so the glass is never "dry (wich allows the salts to crystalize and create that film you see) and mostly because I keep up with the water changes. About 20% every couple of weeks at least.