Anyone know water, how to keep calcification from forming?

[look 171]

How do the pros do this? I visited places that has huge fountains, like the Getty. That water or the areas where the water falls into another pond is spotless. No calcification, none. How do they do this? Is it a chemical added to the water?

[rusnak]

Either reverse osmosis, like the spot free rinse in a car wash, or a water softener system.

[look 171]

In a big pond or a commercial fountain? Do they run that water through a water softener system during filling or they recycle it through a water softener all the time?

[id10t]

Or they use a lot of manual labor scrubbing at night.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Likely it's chemically treated. I've done several projects with water features if various types and it has always been treated.

[sammyg2]

Keep the PH at or below 7 with muriatic acid.

[notmytarga]

This is similar to pool water management. The scaling is because of hard water - Calcium hardness and evaporation. Yes, a water softener will replace the calcium with Sodium (salt) and this will make the scaling less of a problem - BUT - you want a reasonable level of hardness and alkalinity or the water will degrade metals, and ceramics as it pulls ions from those items. The task is to balance the the pH, alkalinity and calcium hardness so that salts do not precipitate at the temperature of the water. This can be done with pool test kits guiding the addition of acid, baking soda and possibly Calcium Chloride. The Taylor kit has a handy nomogram dial that indicates if the balance is likely to cause scaling. A pH of 7-7.6 will be easier to maintain if the Total Alkalinity is raised to 70-100 ppm because it acts as a buffer.

[Rusty Heap]

vinegar works for cleaning my saltwater fish / reef tank equipment of scale.