house softened water… is it good for anything???

[Magnum Man33 147]

so, I mentioned this larger corner aquarium that is available to us… with my wife being ill, her friend said she would hold on to it for us, until we can take it… I already have more than a dozen tanks, so placement is challenging… one of the places it would work, is far away from either my hard well water, or my aquarium specific RO water, but it is round the corner from the kitchen, and the kitchen sink, which is currently only plumbed with house softened water…

before my RO unit, I tried using the house softened water, for soft water tanks, with poor results ( salt ions or some such ) but with the recent talk about scats, I’ve been kind of thinking a brackish tank… could the house softened water be used as a good base, for a brackish tank, or am I missing something???

 

[bgarthe33 50]

Home softeners filter out calcium and magnesium while adding lots of sodium and potassium ions which is not ideal. High sodium levels and potential unstable pH status from lowered KH makes such water not ideal for fish. Some, if not most, softeners have a bypass lever/switch one could use to gather unsoftened water and then switch back on. Do, however, test such water to be sure this bypassed water is ok for your fish. Test atm right out of the bypassed water and after it sits for 24 hours and check your chlorine and chloramine levels.

 

[GaryE]

Speaking as no saltwater fish person, I find the salt side of things very careful about water. A lot of people use RO and remineralize it so they can have control over what's going in. Brackish isn't just a few tablespoons of sodium added to tapwater - it's more complex than that. This may be why when I tried brackish tanks years and ago, before I had read some of excellent forum discussions on this, I failed miserably. I thought it was just 'salt' and didn't get 'salts" with the all important S.

Really hard well water might be great for livebearers. Might. But I've heard a lot of fiasco stories from people who used kitchen softener water for fish.