"good" hard water... a natural product, or man made...

[Magnum Man]

so far, my live bearer tanks in my main tank group, have been getting a mix of my rock hard well water, and RO, and have been doing well...

I'm getting a couple larger tanks ready for my velifera trial... those tanks are not in my main group, and previously had Tilapia in... not being in my main group makes the RO water harder to do... the Tilapia thrived on my well water, when in outside grow out tanks, or on the house water softener water, which was the easiest for these couple aquariums, just by their location in the house... a couple "canary" mollies did not like the house softened water, which was the easiest to do, from those tanks location... so "going big, or going home" I'm setting up to do easy well water changes..., and will do a couple big water changes prior to adding actual velifera to those tanks

I've not had to test water for over a year, since I began. using RO for everything... my well water here is rock hard, very alkaline, and having agricultural land for miles in every direction, higher in nitrates than it's supposed to... we use another RO unit for drinking water... water testing is not something I enjoy, but I was seeing fluctuations in nitrates, depending on the season, and which crops were in the fields, back when I did tests... sorry, I don't remember the exact numbers, but they were borderline high for potable water...

so "good" hard water... maybe good enough, from the tap, or may require some additional work???

a change to my RO manifold, and the use of a big expandable garden hose, could allow me to blend waters, like I do on my other live bearer tanks, if needed to get the nitrates down some, if that becomes a problem...

 

[Magnum Man]

well this thread didn't get any business...

so I'll find a different spot to post this...

 

[GaryE]

There's sort of a question in the title, but I saw it as an observation on your water source.

 

[Magnum Man]

In the same way, a lot of us RO for our soft water, I guess I'm wondering if that's good enough, that the water is hard, for those fish that like it hard, or if I need to look a filtering my well water, to perhaps remove some of it's natural components, that are in excess ( like iron, for example ), and nitrates, which is not natural, but the result of agriculture... just wanted to see what any hard water fish keepers are doing to their water, if anything???

 

[GaryE]

That's a key point, to me. Hard water is full of minerals, but which minerals varies by region. But as far as osmosis goes for the fish kidneys, I think it's six of one half a dozen of another.

When I had hard water, I just went ahead and used it. But I didn't have nitrates. It's interesting to consider you generally have to move out into the country to get really polluted water! That's not what my hippy cousin told me.

My concession was in fish choice - I kept hardwater origin fish when I had hard water, but beyond that, for water I turned on the tap. My fish choices were really limited.