Adding A Water Softener?

[fishyfreak]

I have a well established 180g mixed species cichlid tank, it's been running for about 2 years. I do a 50% water change once a week using tap water (city water, no well) and a small amount of conditioner to help initially remove the chlorine that they like to dump in. Our house came a water softener that I have never used but am thinking about getting up and running. Will this be too drastic a change for my fish? Is anyone currently using a water softener with Cichlids?

Thanks,
Matt

 

[VaegaVic]

If you do do this, make sure you only do 5-10% water changes a week.
Read up on Old Tank Syndrome, that will answer your questions.

 

[Mikaila31]

My house uses a water softener and I do 50% weekly on all my tanks with the soften water. If it is possible I would see you you can install a tap before the softener so you can still get unsoftened water. The softener pulls Ca and Mg ions from the water and replace each ion with two Na(salt) ions.

I have noticed a few issues with mine.... fish are fine. Eggs though...... I have zero luck with eggs. I'm not sure its the excess salt... the hardness, or the higher nitrates. But eggs don't like me, I don't keep cichlids though. If you have plants it is not helpful at all. I have been seeing some major deficiencies in my high tech planted tanks. These specifically I believe to be Mg and Ca. Ca is for sure, because my snails shells dissolve as they get older eventually killing them. I only just started bypassing the softener about 2 weeks ago. I've seen some slight improvement with the plants. I still may start dosing Mg and Ca and see what happens. I'll give it a month though.

Only issue with it is if I want unsoftened water it can only be unheated.... our well is really cold too. Since its winter I've been boiling and adding to the cold well water to make it at least 60* before adding it to the tank. In summer I plan to set a 50 gal bin outside and let it warm up in the sun. I can also set it up higher than the tank.

ATM our water is a complete mess... I won't get into the details, but hot is cold and cold is hot. That doesn't matter too much because the hot water heater is broken. At least we have water ATM, so this is a improvement.

 

[fishyfreak]

Thanks Mikaila, come to think of it there might just be a tap there to bypass it, that would solve my issues (assuming I remember to switch it b4 a water change), I'll be sure to check tonight. It was there when we bought the house 12 years ago but I've just never got it running. I'm not interested in breeding them, they do fine by themselves in that department, 2 or 3 times a year I have to strip the tank of 30-40 fry that escaped the jaws of the bigger guys. As for plants, well the cichlids would kill them before the soft water would.