Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hmoobthor on October 3, 2011 at 2:51pm

wow....you sure are wasting money there

 

unless you are breeding your fish like crazy or you have REALLY sensitive fish that require VERY VERY soft water.... I see no point in waste your money anymore.

 

Any fish can live in any ph without much change in the PH. Ph must be stable and not dramatically lower or rise.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Greg Thomas on October 3, 2011 at 8:36pm

Stable is much more important than perfect. All but some very sensitive fish will adjust...unless you are breeding. People that use R.O. have to add minerals back to the water in the form of tap water,waste water from unit, or store bought products. A lot of testing and adjusting is involved to keep parameters stable. K.I.S.S.=Keep iIt Simple Silly.  Not to mention that a lot of water will be flushed to produce a small amount of R.O.. As long as the carbon block is good, there is no need to add conditioner to R.O. water. You will have to use it in the tap water if that is what you use to reconstitute the R.O. water.

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Permalink Reply by Danny1107 on October 4, 2011 at 5:58am

Thanks for the info guys, everything is stable at the moment, my PH is a little high (around 7.8) and obviously as said in my first post the water is really hard.

 

If I was to get an RO system I'd probably do 50% RO water and 50% tap water as I have been doing with the distilled water. an RO system is £180 (cheapest I've found with a relitivly good flow rate, 50gal per day) and distilled water is costing me £10 every water change I do, so I'll save money in the long run.

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Permalink Reply by 2apes2gp667wr on October 4, 2011 at 7:32am

If you want to lower the hardness of your water, buy a filter bag, fill it with peat moss & put it in your filter. That will cost you about $5 (don't know how many £) and will lower water hardness. Almond leaves are another option, but peat works for me. What is your gh & kh? Have you measured it?

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Permalink Reply by Danny1107 on October 4, 2011 at 7:44am

GH is around 400 mg/l and KH is around 300 mg/l, thats after doing a water change using just tap water, if i do 50% distilled water and 50% tap water it goes down to around 250-300 mg/l

 

I've been told GH should be around 150-200 mg/l for most tropical fish

 

I'm using a submersable filter, theres not enough room inside to put anything else in there, unless I remove the bio media

 

the test kit i'm using is the "King British 6 in 1 test strips" tests PH, KH, GH, Nitrate, Nitrite and Amonia

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Permalink Reply by Hmoobthor on October 4, 2011 at 8:59am

test strip are not even accurate..

 

get yourself a liquid master kit

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Permalink Reply by 2apes2gp667wr on October 4, 2011 at 10:07am

i think we've all failed to ask the one important question in our pursuit for the "ideal" parameters. Are the fish healthy and acting normally? Or are they stressed and unhealthy? If they are fine, I wouldn't change a thing.

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Permalink Reply by Danny1107 on October 4, 2011 at 10:15am

the fish seem fine, 3 of my fish did die over afew days 2 weeks ago, I'm not sure why. 2 of them seemed fine and healthy the night before (both female guppies) and the other (male) seemed like it had a damaged fin, but wasn't showing any other signs of illness, and was swimming around and acting like... well a fish.

 

I removed the dead fish and did a 25% water change straight away. I also added some "disease clear" which protects damaged fins, gills ect from infection and also treats fin rot, and other fungal infections. I did this cause one of my fish had a sore on its head and gill, this cleared up pretty quickly after I added the medication. my other fish in the tank haven't shown any signs of illness.

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