A topic not commonly available to new fish keepers Re: water softeners

[FFGuest6357]

After 12 years out of the hobby, I have just over the past few months gotten back into the hobby.

It was a passion project with my son, and now it’s peaked the interest of other two boys.

I’m the kind of guy who likes to be diligent about my research, and apply my learning to what I’m doing. As such I consider myself the “I can do that” type of guy. I’m usually quite successful as well. Flip side of that coin is that I get quite frustrated when I miss something or things don’t go my way.

I have other posts about my struggles keeping panda corydoras, setting up my tank etc, struggling through an aggressive stocking (in an effort to reduce trips to the store and limit contacts due to COVID-19).

I did my homework, by no means would I consider myself an expert, but I know about he nitrogen cycle, ph, water temperatures, cleaning schedules for tanks, water and filters, acclimating fish, stocking fish(even though I bent the rules), what fish to keep with other fish, aquascapings, tank builds, stand builds, filter plumbing and I’m sure I can make this list longer. I did my best to do my due diligence.

I am certain that every seasoned fish keeper here will agree, there is NO substitution for experience. I’m sure most of you veterans started before we had all this information at our finger tips.

There have been MANY nights that I have gone down aquarium research rabbit holes, and not once do I remember stumbling across anything about supplying water to your tank when you have a water softener.

Fast forward from day 1 of stocking, I’ve lost 7 panda corydoras. All of them had a fungal infection, I’m sure of it, and ended up losing their fins. 2 are left and appear to be recovering. Lost two neon tetras and when I say lost, I literally don’t know where they went. I don’t think they’ve jumped, as I can’t find them outside the tank and much of the hardscape has been removed to better monitor the health of the cories, and I don’t see them in there.

bullet points on how we got here:
-fishless cycle using fertilizer and fish food
-spiked ammonia and then nitrites
-dosed with liquid bacteria got ammonia and nitrites down
-live moss also alive and thriving
-kept up on regular water changes and bacteria dosing after adding fish
-highest ammonia spike was .25ppm, for one day, everything else has been <.2ppm nitrites 0ppm for every test since adding fish. Nitrates have always been at acceptable levels between plant uptake and water changes.
-ph remained very steady at 7.4, tap and tank water.
-temperature ran initially at 74F, increased to 78/79F (over 24hrs) when dosing meds to treat cories.

We live in an area, southern Ontario, Canada, that was pretty hard water. As such, I have a water softener hooked up to the supply. Recently we’ve seen the salt start disappearing through the system, like we’ve never seen before. I checked the programming on the system and for some reason it’s set itself to treat for 3x the hardness of our water. So I re-programmes the unit to treat according to our local parameters.

I’m not entirely sure what effect this was having on my tap water, but from my initial research, probably a significant increase in sodium ions, which apparently isn’t good for fish.

I suspect that this could be a contributing factor to the stress on my panda cories, and why they got so sick so fast.

Because I’ve been staying on top of water changes, dosing and checking parameters regularly, I’m now lowering the % of water changing because I feel like the chemistry of the water will have changed now that the softener has been re-programmed. Over two days, tank ph has gone up to 7.5/7.6. Tap water remains 7.4. High range ph test still showed 7.6 as well.

Anyways, I thought I would share this, my trials and errors. I’m now more frustrated and as soon as I’m done this I’m headed straight for some more rabbit holes.

Hopefully for other new hobbiests, this offers another avenue to research, to seasoned keepers, maybe some insight in case I’m missing another piece of the puzzle.

Off the top of my head, for other newbies out there, when people mention RO water, I believe they are referring to Reverse Osmosis water. A system I will be looking to install.

I can’t give any gh or kh readings, I have those tests coming in the mail.

In conclusion, through my experience in life in general, due diligence is something that you aspire to. What I mean is that you have done everything to assess a situation based on learning, skills and experience. I have done that. My lack of experience has left a gap in my learning, and therefore I missed a step. Such is life, time for more learning and opportunity to be better. Just when you think you’ve hit all your marks, life gives you a new target.

 

[FFGuest6357]

I’m going to post this as a reply rather than an edit.

I’m inspecting my water softener unit tomorrow more closely. I don’t want to operating the bypass if I don’t have to, so I may just install a tap to get the water from the source while I source out an RO system. Not sure yet, need to do my homework.

 

[FFGuest6357]

???

 

[seangee]

Do you have access to water before it goes through the softener (e.g. garden tap)? Water softeners use ion exchange and if it has been "over dosing" you may have an unacceptable level of sodium in your water. Unless we can rule that out hard water may be a better option for your fish until your RO unit is set up

 

[AbbeysDad]

I am a seasoned veteran with over 50 years in the hobby, long before the information age. I'm a retired IT guy, and still it is remarkable how much information is at our fingertips these days. However, I have no experience with water softeners except to know they are not good for aquariums.
But don't beat yourself up - we don't know what we know till we know it!
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It sounds like you should be using your source water before, or separate from, your softener. Not knowing how hard your source water is, it's unclear whether you need to invest in an RO or RO/DI unit...and if you do, perhaps you need to mix RO with your hard source water otherwise you'll need the added expense to add necessary minerals back to the water.
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In the meantime, as @seangee points out, you're likely better off doing water changes with your hard water rather than any amount of softened water.

 

[Retired Viking]

I mix RO water with my tap hard water and use a hard water meter pen to keep track of the ppm of the water. I currently buy my RO water in 5 gallon jugs but I am looking at a RO water system for my house.

 

[FFGuest6357]

In my region, water hardness ranges 28-32 grains. Can’t remember the ppm off the top of my head.
Right now it looks like I’m going to be adding a tap between the supply and water softener so I can get my source water, possibly buying some distilled or RO water to mix for water changes.

unfortunately for me right now, I’m in the middle of two landscaping projects at home and I just messed up my ankle real bad (not broken though, win!)

It may be a couple of days before I can add a tap. So hopefully I can just continue small water changes, get some of the excess sodium ions out. As I’m assuming the concentration is going to be less now that the unit has been programmed properly.

what year, ugh.

 

[Essjay]

In my region, water hardness ranges 28-32 grains.

Do you mean grains per gallon? That is very hard - 28 - 32 grains per gallon converts to 27 dH/480 ppm to 31 dH/548 ppm.


I thought there was supposed to be a bypass tap with salt water softeners and humans are not supposed to drink water that's been through a salt softener?

 

[FFGuest6357]

Do you mean grains per gallon? That is very hard - 28 - 32 grains per gallon converts to 27 dH/480 ppm to 31 dH/548 ppm.


I thought there was supposed to be a bypass tap with salt water softeners and humans are not supposed to drink water that's been through a salt softener?

Yes it’s very hard water, we are WAY up there as some of the hardest water in the country.

There is a bypass built into the plumbing of the unit itself, however it’s meant to be used for unit service/repair. The machine is new as our last one failed (very old softener), and given the fact that the programming messed up for reasons I don’t know, I don’t want to keep using the bypass every time I do a water change. The solution is to install a tap that I can draw water from as needed without messing around with the water supply going to the softener.

this will also be the location of my RO system should I decide to install one.
I’m in the early stages of research and most research suggests that softened water is okay for humans to drink. It ultimately depends on how it tastes for each individual. Also looking into alternative water filtration systems, but damn it starts to feel like you need a chemistry degree to understand it all.

 

[mcordelia]

@Naterjm I feel your pain. I went down the rabbit hole of researching water filters a couple of years ago (not for fish purposes, but trying to determine just how bad the water I was drinking out of the tap was), and I agree, I feel like I could have at least tested out of a few credits at a local community college with everything I ended up learning!!

As you've by now realized, a water softener simply exchanges ions (usually sodium) out for other ions, so for the fish the net end result is still "hard" water, in terms of how much non-H2O is mixed in solution.

My parents live in another state and are on well water, I have no idea what their parameters are but they have both a softener and a RO system. Personally, based on my drinking water research, I would go with a chemical filter only for drinking water, since some of those minerals can actually be really useful for bones, etc (I would NOT recommend RO water as a drinking water source despite how many people hype it, simply because you would have to be a hawk to make sure you are getting enough calcium and other minerals in your diet to make up for the propensity of RO water to pull it out of you (again, more chemistry haha)). I ended up going with an under sink filter to remove chlorine, lead, pharmaceuticals and some other stuff for drinking purposes, and I'm doing my research on whether I'm going to use that to fill up my tank as well, or if I'm just going to toss tap water in and dechlorinate it.
Going back to the RO filter my parents have, they have a 5g tank to store it, and their system (which I think is relatively decent) takes about 6h to fill it up completely. Thus, depending on what ratio you intend on mixing the RO in with the water, you might want to modify the stock system with a bigger holding tank.

On another note, depending on how much you want to/don't want to process your water before you put it in the tank, I got some advice for "hard water" fish species ("get rainbows!") and some pointers from folks with hard water in a thread I started here when I joined that has apparently just turned into a journal on me trying to acquire and set up a 125 gallon

I am bummed for you guys that your fish took such a beating, but hopefully you will be able to put the hero cape back on and figure out how to get iteration #2 working better with species that may be more naturally suited to hard water (as a fellow parent, my approach to fishkeeping is very much path of least resistance....). I'm keeping my thumbs up and fingers crossed for you!!!

 

[FFGuest6357]

@mcordelia

I have two things to say about your reply.

thing number 1: it appeared to be very well written and thought out. I very much appreciate you taking the time to write back in such detail.

thing number 2: I’m not sure which the ATD I mentioned my ankle injury, but I’m right now medicated and can’t fully retain what you said, so I will be coming back to revisit your replyt.

thing number 3: thank you for your insight, but will be getting back to you with a better response maybe possibly tomorrow.

have a good night, time for meto get to bed.

 

[mcordelia]

I hope you feel better in the am

 

[StevenF]

At about 500ppm of hardnesss you are going to have to look into a RO system. i don't know of any fish that can handle that. And it is likely that you have a lot of CO2 dissolved in the water. This could result in mineral snow in your tank. Basically the CO2 in the water dissolved limestone leading to hard water. When you put the water in the tank. the CO2 will outgas from the water leading to water supper saturated with minerals. And the minerals can solidify into solid particles that fall to the bottom of the tank.

I would NOT recommend RO water as a drinking water source despite how many people hype it, simply because you would have to be a hawk to make sure you are getting enough calcium and other minerals in your diet to make up for the propensity of RO water to pull it out of you

You do not have to worry about drinking RO water. The simple fact is that most of the minerals in your body do not come from the water you drink. Most comes from the food you eat. In most places if you figured out how much water you would have to drink to get all your daily need of minerals, you would find that your would need to drink many gallons of water a day. That is a lethal amount of water (Water intoxication).

Most of our ancestors drank water from mountain steams and lakes. In some places this water is almost at soft as RO water..

I’m not entirely sure what effect this was having on my tap water, but from my initial research, probably a significant increase in sodium ions, which apparently isn’t good for fish.

Actually fish do need sodium and potassium to live. In most streams there isn't much in the water but it almost always has both sodium and potassium. So you do want some sodium and potassium in your water. But with 500ppm hardness with a water softener would put way to much sodium in the water. Now some people have stopped using sodium chloride in their water softeners and have switched to Potassium Chloride. But that can be just as deadly to fish as sodium.

The real challenge with RO tanks is that RO water doesn't have minerals necessary for good plant growth while regular tap water does. Most fertilizer don't actually provide all the minerals plants needs since tap water does. IN my 100% RO water tank most aquarium fertilizers don't work well if at all. So for you I would strongly suggest you mix your unsoftened water with RO to reach a desired hardness level. Mixing 1 gallon of tap with 4 gallons of RO would probably get you a GH close to 100ppm. Hopefully that would work well for you.

 

[mcordelia]

I'm sorry in advance that I don't have links/citations to provide since this was research that I did a couple of years ago, but when I looked into RO water I came across a couple of small studies that showed a modest increase in osteoporosis in people who drank RO water exclusively. When I looked further into it, the issue isn't that water provides minerals in a regular diet. The problem moreso arises out of the fact that RO water having NOTHING dissolved in it, is sufficiently chemically active to create an osmotic gradient in your gut to pull mineral ions out of the cells lining your intestinal wall such that you can become mineral deficient if you don't get sufficiently large quantities in your diet. The softness required in water to lose this ability is very small, which is why mountain streams do not pose the same risk, since the chemical activity of "straight" water would have probably been attenuated in the first few hundred feet in a stream anyway (not that one usually finds water equivalent to RO water in nature anyway, even in clouds water still has ions in solution). I brought that point up since @Naterjm has kids at home; it may not be as big of a deal for adults, but kids stereotypically aren't great about eating their vegetables and are using up lots of minerals in bone formation. As mentioned, there aren't any great human studies on this, but the chemistry definitely is compelling to me.

With regard to your thoughts on the topic of fish, I do agree with your line of thinking!

 

[FFGuest6357]

So I’ve had a few moments tonight to check my plumbing situation out.
As far as I can tell, at first glance.... it looks like the softener is only feeding the water to the washing machine, laundry sink and outdoor taps.
It’s quite a mess in that mechanical room to be perfectly honest, so I do need to do quite a bit more line tracing, but at this point it could be a possibility that where I was getting my tank water wasn’t coming from the water softener at all.

I’ll update a little bit later tonight if I get it sorted out