my water has a lot of bicarbonate and no cal or mag

this is my tap water profile:
pH 8.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est 196
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.33
Cations / Anions, me/L 3.3 / 3.5
ppm
Sodium, Na 75
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 1
Magnesium, Mg < 1
Total Hardness, CaCO3 3
Nitrate, NO3- N 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 3
Chloride, Cl 6
Carbonate, CO3 21
Bicarbonate, HCO3 145
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 154

bicarbonate is thru the roof.
virtually no ca or mag
there is na, dunno if thats too much.

ph is super high. it doesnt rise back up much after the water is aerated and ph downed.

how much calmag should i add? and ii dont know how much iron there is but i figure there should be enough in the calmag? id like to use bennie safe calmag.

doesnt bicarbonate bond with ca and mag? do i have to compensate?

i could filter the bicarbonate out with an anion exchanger. but i cant find anyone focusing a unit on removing lots of bicarbonate. i dont think i need to ro my water, just carbon out the chloramine besides the anion exchanger, which should get the na to i think.....

how bad would it be to leave the bicarbonate and just add what is needed? ie ph down and calmag+

Have you looked at Diatomaceous Earth filters?

Ive heard 150ppm base water with cal/mag tossed around,havent really tested out the validity of this because I havent found a pre bottled cal/mag product that I like.Use a quality fertilizer with 2% availiable calcium and dont lock it out.

lots of sodium too. i'd really recommend getting a reverse osmosis unit. lots of peeps have them on sale. could try diverting rainwater, but i ended up with a bad back humping 5 gallon buckets of rainwater. reverse osmosis MUCH easier. i just got mine from bulk reef supply on sale

CACO3 is calcium carbonate and any fertilizer worth its salt will contain enough calcium and magnesium not to have to mess around with it.

im using ff trio, i dont think it has any cal or mag.

is the calcium in caco3 available to the plants? i thought the actual free calcium is the number to look at.

if not maybe im having an imbalance of cal to mag cause the caco3 is high?

If your ferts dont contain any cal/mag then they are not complete, i just use a complete fertilizer and if its soil undoubtedly that will be limed so extra cal/mag will be the least of your worries.

def need more complete nutes.

are you saying i should lime the soil? to make up for the high ph water?

If you're in soil, you don't have to worry about the chloramine (you said something about a carbon filter). Water contains only enough sanitizer for a closed, sanitary system. It's not expected to sanitize something like soil. Just fill your bucket the night before, add a pinch of sugar to promote some microbial activity which will exhaust the sanitizer, and don't worry about it. You're growing in dirt. The sugar will promote the microbes in the soil too. I use a pinch (1/16th tsp) in every watering even though I use mostly RO.

If I were you, I would use RO water and add 1g of epsom salt (26.1ppm Mg and 34.4 S), and 1g of gypsum (61.5 Mg and 49.2 S). That would give you a starting ppm of 160-170. (I am for 150, but 100-200 is good.).

That's a good ratio of Ca to Mg. Between 2:1 and 3:1.

I would try that (on one plant) to see if you could avoid the cult of calmag. When you use calmag, it acidifies your mix, making it more likely that you have to pH adjust. Then you're adding pH up, which adds more unnecessary salts to the soil, which leads to acidic soil, which leads to using more pH up (and more calmag because people think they have an Mg def due to the lockout). It's a spiral. When I stopped using calmag and began mixing tap and RO (to get 150ppm) my life became so much easier. I stopped using pHing my mix, fewer mad-scientist bottles to monkey with. It's just me and nature.

My tap water is 800ppm. I can't use it. But unlike yours, it has Ca & Mg. So, I use 20% tap to get 150ppm. However, the Ca & Mg is miniscule. About 30ppm. The majority of the remaining 120ppm are sodium and sulfates. I should try my epsom/gypsum idea myself. I'm almost a perfect candidate for it too.

I haven't tried it. But, in theory it should work. Everyone uses epsom salt to treat Mg deficiency. Gypsum is commonly used to treat Ca def.

My tap/RO mix works fine even though it's mostly sodium and sulfate. I bet all you'd have to do is dilute your tap with RO down to 80-100ppm (50/50 tap and RO?), then add equal (1/4 gram?) amounts of each to get to 150'ish water. That would be a lot like mine. (Mostly useless ppms, and very modest Ca & Mg.). You could make concentrated solutions which would make it easier than weighing 0.25g. (However, gypsum has a 2g/L soluability. If you were going to do this, we could talk about it more. There's another option which would be more concentrated.).