Fire mouth Cichlid - Water Hardness

[YungRasputin]

RO units are a bit like the Britta filters but much more thorough. They pump water through a series of membranes until you are left with only pure water litteraly H2O. No chlorine, no nitrogen, no phosphates and no heavy metals. They are often expensive though and there are a few different types of machine, some pump direct to your tap doing 600 - 1000 lph others do much slower flows but the idea is you use it to fill up jerry cans or water butts you can store for when you need the water.

You then just need the remineralising agents to get it to the hardness and introduce the trace minerals your fish will need. For the fast units in the UK they are about £300 - £500 but you can get the slower ones for as little as £40. Then its just a case of keeping up on the cartridges.

On the outside looking in it is such a crazy situation that so many American cities and towns face undrinkable tap water, either through things like this or through failing infrastructure like in Flint Michigan.

Wills

It’s a complex thing - people are hyper-dependent on these corporations and have been for generations; local authorities are petrified to do anything against the corporations out of fear that they’ll put out and leave - so what you’re left with is a perfect storm of negligence and fear that leaves these polluters unregulated and untouched

the weight of history isn’t even enough to spark change and action - another example would be people in Minden, WV are *still* waiting for federal help while the soil continues to cause astronomical rates of cancer - the EPA found numerous examples in Minden and the surrounding area that were well above “actionable levels” but still nothing

my heart definitely goes out to Flint and all my brothers/sisters still struggling for something so basic as clean water - reminds me of growing up during Reunification in Germany when I couldn’t drink the tap water then/there either

I’m definitely going to look into the RO units and all the other stuff you mentioned! it’s been a tremendous help and the exact reason why I joined the forum

 

[Essjay]

You can drink RO water as well.