How Can I Make The Water Soft?

[seanie112]

hi there i have L182 bristlenose they like blackwater and got told i cld use ro water i am thinking abt getting one for my xmas but first going to get a kh tester first see how hard it is before as my L182 bristlenose breed but the eggs die before they hatch as my


the readings today in my tank


ph is 7.5 to 8.0 dark green
nitrite no2 0.1 clear or light pink
nitrate no3 5 clear or light pink
ammonia nh3 nh4 0.0 clear
test kit used is nutrafin test kit

two lots of air bubbles
external filter 1500ltr hour
300 watts heater
tank is corner tank 252ltrs

before but now with blackwater in tank the ph has droped to around 7-7.5 ph going to test hardest and that 2mrw when i buy a tester


sorry for the highjack post

 

[kribensis12]

Be careful with RO. A sudden drop in hardness can and often will kill your fish. KH allows a fish to excreet ammonia at it's gills, so if you drop it fast, the fish cannot addapt it's osmotic systems within, and thus cannot excreet ammonia as fast as it is being produced in the fish. This leads to the ammonia building up in the fish, poisoning itself to death

With off the chart KH KRIBENSIS12, a 25% waterchange adding neet RO will likely kill your fish, as that is a MASSIVE drop. I surgest more reading up on water chemistory before you even think abotu trying it, as ATM you are asking for trouble. You need to fully understand the link between KH, GH, pH and CO2 in the water to be lowering the hardness and pH with RO safely. On top of this, you need to understand how a sudden drop in hardness will affect your fish, and by how much a drop will be tollerated by your fish. Realistically, more than 5dKH in one go is dangerous

TO mix RO, you need tests for pH, GH and KH Test each from the tap, and decide on your targets. It is then a case of using ratios to sort out the ammount of RO to tap you need for the desired levels at waterchange time.

Krib, add 4ml of RO to a 1ml sample of tap water and re-test your hardness (assuming your kit uses 5ml sample sizes) and then multiply the result by 5 to get your KH reading and GH reading One you know where they are at, you can work out the maximum safe waterchange size you can do when topping up with neet RO

All the best
Rabbut

Well ,from what Tolak told me, adding in 5 gallosn of it was fine. I put it in slowly. Putting in about a gallon every 20 minutes. The ph went down from 8.6 to 8.0 . I tested it and i still cant detect Kh or Gh . It must be really hard. I have done alot of reading about R/O, but never heard anything about it stoping the fish from excreteing ammonia. I hope i didnt kill my angels ( not to sound mean, but if they do die, i have many more , and i learned my lesson the hard way).

 

[petertr]

That's a big pH change in one go. I hope you haven't shocked your fish

 

[kribensis12]

^ Me too! I just checked on them. Being normal. Theese angels are built like steel. I bought them at a auction, they were in jars will not enough water int hem for several hours, and the spawned 5 hours after introduction! They are fighting and eating like normal. I think they should be fine * Fingers Crossed *

 

[Tolak]

Be careful with RO. A sudden drop in hardness can and often will kill your fish. KH allows a fish to excreet ammonia at it's gills, so if you drop it fast, the fish cannot addapt it's osmotic systems within, and thus cannot excreet ammonia as fast as it is being produced in the fish. This leads to the ammonia building up in the fish, poisoning itself to death

With off the chart KH KRIBENSIS12, a 25% waterchange adding neet RO will likely kill your fish, as that is a MASSIVE drop. I surgest more reading up on water chemistory before you even think abotu trying it, as ATM you are asking for trouble. You need to fully understand the link between KH, GH, pH and CO2 in the water to be lowering the hardness and pH with RO safely. On top of this, you need to understand how a sudden drop in hardness will affect your fish, and by how much a drop will be tollerated by your fish. Realistically, more than 5dKH in one go is dangerous

Is this from personal experience?

My water has a pH of around 7.7, gH around 200, kH around 150 (8dKH give or take). I breed green aeneus corys to keep tanks clean, sell them when I have extra. Every time I want to get a whole bunch of eggs I take the top off of the tank, run a fan on the top, and let it evaporate down around 2/3-3/4 of the way.

This now gives me 3-4 times the hardness, in 7-10 days, 24-32dKH. I siphon the bottom, which lowers it down to about 10%, and fill it 1/2-3/4 of the way with fresh tap, 8dKH. The last couple of gallons go in straight cold. The next couple of days it gets a couple of gallons of straight cold.

In 2-3 days I have eggs, not dead fish. Not wanting to do the math on this I just dropped the dKH at least 12, probably more.

 

[rabbut]

I have known a 5dKH upset fish before, showing all usual signs of shock, when the pH moved about .4 of a point from just over 7.5, to just over 7 This was when the water supply went funny for a few days without me realising untill the end of the week. Usually the tap water arround here has perfect hardness for breeding angels, with a dHK about 3-4. That particular week, two 50% waterchanges in a tank in which I was conditioning a pair for spawning managed to raise the KH to arround 10dKH I did a 50% wc with neet RO added slowly over the space of an hour and that is when I hit problems. In short, the KH going up suddenly seems to have little issues IME, but going down can be problematic...

It is interesting to see you have not had issues dropping by 12dKH in one go I suppose we may just need to agree to dissagree with this one, both of us having different experiences with RO...

 

[kribensis12]

My angels are still doing fine. I dont think this effected them much, if at all.

 

[kribensis12]

They spawned! I am going to see if the ph will help the outcome of the batch! I will post pics later as Photobucket isnt bieng retarted atm.

 

[petertr]

Nice one - looking forward to seeing!

 

[saz326]

If you have a small tank, Id explore the use of boiled water. Youd have to boil it up and let it cool and airate before adding it to the tank, but the process of boiling removes dissolved calcium etc that hardens the water.

If you have a hardness test kit, test some cooled boiled water from your kettle. If it is close to the desired water hardness then maybe you could use boiled water at every water change and therefore slowly the tanks water hardness would drop.

 

[kribensis12]

Here ya go:

They are still clear, * fingers crossed *

 

[rabbut]

Looks good Interesting to say the least that they are going well with water that is still pretty hard What is the upper limit of your kit?

Boiling water is an interesting surgestion. It sounds like it might work, but how well? I doubt you'd remove much hardness with it, or you would have a brick in the bottom of your kettal in Krib's area but the limescale diposits are temerary hardness, or KH, built up arround the heating element

All the best
Rabbut

 

[saz326]

Looks good Interesting to say the least that they are going well with water that is still pretty hard What is the upper limit of your kit?

Boiling water is an interesting surgestion. It sounds like it might work, but how well? I doubt you'd remove much hardness with it, or you would have a brick in the bottom of your kettal in Krib's area but the limescale diposits are temerary hardness, or KH, built up arround the heating element

All the best
Rabbut

Thanks for the science bit.

 

[petertr]

Looks good Interesting to say the least that they are going well with water that is still pretty hard What is the upper limit of your kit?

Boiling water is an interesting surgestion. It sounds like it might work, but how well? I doubt you'd remove much hardness with it, or you would have a brick in the bottom of your kettal in Krib's area but the limescale diposits are temerary hardness, or KH, built up arround the heating element

All the best
Rabbut

You should see my kettle! For that matter, we can't use the "steam" button on our iron, as it blows chunks of limescale onto our clothes!


Next time we move, I'm having a water softener fitted!

 

[kribensis12]

^ Dude, we HAVE water Softner! My water still = FAIL. The eggs didnt make it. They fungusd. I tihnk i may have to take the ph down some more. ANy idea on how to do that without risking the shock of my fish? Like putting half R/o half tap in a bucket, and then put that in? Or what? I will prolly get the filter next week ( money)