Gravel Cleaning And Water Refill- Adding Minerals?

[Fruba]

Hello, im relatively new to fish keeping and tank maintenance so thanks for any help!

I was about to clean the gravel in my tank for the first time. I have a gravel cleaner/syphon thing, and reverse osmosis (sp?) water to put back in.

I called the lady at the aquatic shop i normally go to and she said I have to put minerals back into the tank with the water? Wondered if this is neccesary and if so how i go about it?

She also said i should only clean my gravel bit by bit? Or should i clean it untill a percentage of my water has syphoned out?

Many thanks again!

 

[kewskills]

Hello, im relatively new to fish keeping and tank maintenance so thanks for any help!

I was about to clean the gravel in my tank for the first time. I have a gravel cleaner/syphon thing, and reverse osmosis (sp?) water to put back in.

I called the lady at the aquatic shop i normally go to and she said I have to put minerals back into the tank with the water? Wondered if this is neccesary and if so how i go about it?

She also said i should only clean my gravel bit by bit? Or should i clean it untill a percentage of my water has syphoned out?

Many thanks again!

Are we talking about a freshwater tank or a marine tank?

 

[Fruba]

Tropical? warm water, no salt?

 

[kewskills]

Tropical? warm water, no salt?

OK, why are you going to use RO water then. there is no need to?

I am also assuming that you do not have an undergravel filter. as 99% of the useful bacteria will be stored in you filter media, you can gravel vac the whole lot of gravel no probs.

 

[Fruba]

Im using that water because my parents friend keeps alot of fish and she made it up for me, thats what i started off with. I dont have an undergravel filter no. My tank is only 2ft by 1ft, will i not loose too much water if i do all my gravel at once?

 

[kewskills]

sorry I use a gravel vac filter which just places the water back into the tank, I do separate water changes weekly.

just do as much as you can when you do a water change. i only do a 20% water change weekly.

 

[backtotropical]

Hi Fruba. to TFF.

I agree with Kewskills that RO water is unnecessary for your tank. In fact, it will actually have negative effct.

To explain briefly, fish use not only the water in the tank, but also the minerals in the water. Reverse Osmosis strips water of virtually all minerals, and keeping fish in pure RO water will eventually kill them.

The water needs to be re-mineralised, but as Kewskills says, just don't use RO water. Its much cheaper.

Just water from the tap, treated with an aquarium dechlorinator is absolutely fine.

Cheers

BTT

 

[Fruba]

Thanks for the feedback!

So was i told i would have to add minerals because i would have been using the RO water?

But if i use tap water instead with an aquarium dechlorinator al shall be well??

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Fruba. to TFF.

I agree with Kewskills that RO water is unnecessary for your tank. In fact, it will actually have negative effct.

To explain briefly, fish use not only the water in the tank, but also the minerals in the water. Reverse Osmosis strips water of virtually all minerals, and keeping fish in pure RO water will eventually kill them.

The water needs to be re-mineralised, but as Kewskills says, just don't use RO water. Its much cheaper.

Just water from the tap, treated with an aquarium dechlorinator is absolutely fine.

Cheers

BTT

I agree that its highly unlikely she needs RO water, however, we don't actually know anything yet about her source water parameters yet, do we(?) or did I miss this? If the parent's friend lives very nearby, it is possible there is some serious water problem and Fruba shares the same problem.

Fruba, what brand and type of test kits do you have and which tests are in them? If we can get the results of some tests then the experts like BTT can help you decide whether you are one of the very rare cases that might need RO water. Using RO water is a large hassle and expense and is best avoided if at all possible.

To address your immediate questions though, I believe there are bottles of mineral combinations that are sold to be used to re-mineralize the RO water. Also, I believe your LFS person was telling you the right thing about gravel cleaning in that, for smaller tanks, it is usually only possible to get about a third of the gravel area vacuumed out before the water level has dropped to the 3/4 or 1/2 point down the tank - thus I think what she was saying was just that you would then wait until the next week (or next water change) to get to the next third or so of gravel area - this is common practice.

Water chem, either establishing that what you are doing is ok or finding out that you need to make changes or learn about it should be the first priority here -- then the other things will fall into place.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Fruba]

I agree that its highly unlikely she needs RO water, however, we don't actually know anything yet about her source water parameters yet, do we(?) or did I miss this? If the parent's friend lives very nearby, it is possible there is some serious water problem and Fruba shares the same problem.

Fruba, what brand and type of test kits do you have and which tests are in them? If we can get the results of some tests then the experts like BTT can help you decide whether you are one of the very rare cases that might need RO water. Using RO water is a large hassle and expense and is best avoided if at all possible.

To address your immediate questions though, I believe there are bottles of mineral combinations that are sold to be used to re-mineralize the RO water. Also, I believe your LFS person was telling you the right thing about gravel cleaning in that, for smaller tanks, it is usually only possible to get about a third of the gravel area vacuumed out before the water level has dropped to the 3/4 or 1/2 point down the tank - thus I think what she was saying was just that you would then wait until the next week (or next water change) to get to the next third or so of gravel area - this is common practice.

Water chem, either establishing that what you are doing is ok or finding out that you need to make changes or learn about it should be the first priority here -- then the other things will fall into place.

~~waterdrop~~

Im a male sorry if my username gave u the wrong impression? i dislike it the more i look at it!

I dont have any water problems, the woman that gave me the RO keeps alot of saltwater fish, she uses the RO water and i think she was just trying to help me out by giving me some?

I was just confused when the lady at the store said about minerals cause im new to this stuff.

Am i right in saying i wont have to add any mineral stuff if i use tapwater and a dechlorinator?

Thanks for the feedback

 

[backtotropical]

Am i right in saying i wont have to add any mineral stuff if i use tapwater and a dechlorinator?

Absolutely. The water from your tap already has the necessary minerals in it and merely needs dechlorinated to make it safe for use.

RO water is expensive because of the process of reverse osmosis, which strips all the minerals out of the water. You then need to add them in again, which is a further expense. There are situations where this is required, but in most freshwater aquariums, RO water is an expensive unnecessary resource.

Cheers

BTT

 

[Fruba]

Crackin`, thanks for all the info folks

Top job

 

[loachman]

RO is typical for saltwater aquariums where there are more species that are highly sensitive to minerals (mostly metals) in the water. Corals and anemones are good examples of things that do very poorly with trace copper in the water. It also allows for people to be sure exactly what is in the water by taking pure RO water and adding marine salt.

For freshwater, there are VERY few aquarium species that need RO water systems at all. If you live in a place with very hard water (you get lime scale in your sinks, toilet, etc.), sometimes it is combined with tap water to make water that is less hard. Typically, that is only needed for breeding fish though. You'd never use pure RO water though, you mix it with minerals or tap water, as "pure" RO would cause severe stress on the fish (it'd make extra water go into the fish cells, and it'd swell and cause all sorts of issues).

 

[OldMan47]

I have quite hard water and so in one of my tanks with more sensitive fish I use RO. I did buy some chemicals to add to it to bring the minerals back up until I realized that the hard water had all the minerals in it that I needed. Now I just mix my RO with tap water to get the concentration of minerals that I want. As others have said, RO has an expense to it that you probably don't need in most fish and water combinations. I am using my RO for a tank that has species needing soft water and my own tap is quite hard. Otherwise all the rest of my tanks run on straight tap water.