Quick Questions

[AdAndrews]

Firstly i never people say that u can use hot water from the tap, they always say from the kettle, butcan u use water from the hot tap?, i have always been doing this and after many losses am trying to pin down the reason,

Secondly do i have to remove my green nitrite removal sponge wen using meds?, i have taken out the black carbon but i didnt no if the green contaisn zeolite, which it says on the med bottle needs to be taken out

thanks 4 ur help

 

[waterdrop]

You hear lots of different opinions about whether or not to use hot water from your house system. I think that is because people have lots of different kinds of systems and lots of different attitudes about substances that you can't see and are expensive and difficult to test! Personally I do use hot water from my fairly standard electric tank hot water heater because I believe most modern ones with glass/fibreglass liners would likely not have too much excess metal if one allows the water that sat in the stretch of pipe overnight to run out. Seems like some of the concerns are about copper, if you have copper pipes, and lead, if they are soldered copper pipes. I think a lot of people go ahead and take the chance of using hot water from their house, but I'm open to being corrected by the experienced fishkeepers here!

I've heard "green nitrite sponge" mentioned before as being in a particular manufacturer's filter product, but I don't know what it is or how it would work, so can't help with that part.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[AdAndrews]

ok, thanks waterdrop

 

[waterdrop]

Sorry I don't have more to help you go by. The question of heavy metal toxicities (if indeed that's even a fair description) is a difficult subject and if you are worried about unexplained losses I can understand how you might be wondering if this is part of the explanation.

I do know that Diana Walstad talks about there being problems caused by various heavy metals for both individual species of plants and individual species of fish. Keeping track of them all or even finding information of what they are is not something that seems obvious. To make matters worse, I know of experienced shop owners and salt water enthusiasts who say that their experience with the liquid tests for individual metals, like copper I believe, give results that seem to be "all over the place." I believe I have read in places that accurate measuring of these would probably require expensive and frequent calibration if not very expensive chemistry lab instrumentation.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Schmill]

As someone from the 'opposite side', (and in no way contradicting waterdrop), I DON'T use water from my hottap do to the concerns over the various metals etc that might be in it that I can't test for.

In my loft I have a plastic storage tank that the water goes in when it comes out of the mains, this is used to provide the hot water 'pressure'.
This in turn fills my hot water tank, which is basically a large tank, usually made from copper, and coated with insulation. It has a spiral of heating pipe in the bottom that the hot water from the boiler runs through, and it is this that heats the water.

The way I see it my 'hot water' from my tap has first sat in my loft for a period of time, then sat being heated in a large copper vessle for a period of time, then flowed through copper pipes, joined with solder that probably contains some lead, (as lead free is fairly recent), and then comes to my tap.

The API dechlor I use does (according to them) 'deal with copper', but who knows to what amount, and to be honest I figure with the amount of copper construction in my heating system, I'd rather not take the risk than to come down one morning after a water change to dead fish/shrimps and "Oh... I guess there was to much copper in it after all..."

As waterdrop says, it really depends on YOUR system, and YOUR feelings on the matter. I think if I had a system like waterdrops then I'd probably use the hot tap water, but in my situation there just to much copper involvement and to many unknowns for me to feel comfortable doing it. A few kettles of boiling water, and even on a fairly big water change the water is then only slightly cooler than the tank

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, this kind of discussion has come up repeadedly (although recent new members probably have run into older discussions less since its become more difficult to do searches of past threads) and if I'm summarizing accurately it seems like the UK folks generally seem more reluctant to use their household hot water, whereas the US folks use theirs more. I guess I chalk this up to there being a larger stock of nice older homes in many of the UK cities with a greater percentage of older plumbing systems or systems that have been changed in a greater variety of ways. Have no idea whether this is actually accurate at all.

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether good tests of the most concerning metals are really so out of reach. Does anybody know?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[AdAndrews]

my deaths have all seemed to be viral or bacterial infections, the water quality is near perfect, so could this be the reason, i have had whitespot, fungus, finrot, ulcers all in the past few weeks and to date about 7 deaths in my tropical tank, including a death each day this week!- im beggining to get anoyed withn the fish, i use meds but usually its too late, i figured most of the deceased have had either internal parasites or bad bacterial infections that i only notice in the later stages of the disease

 

[OldMan47]

As WD said, with a modern hot water heater that is fibreglass lined, there should be no problem using hot tap water. The system that Schmill described would probably be a case where you would not want to use hot tap water. I am fortunate to have the glass lined water heater so I don't worry about metals in my tap water but you are the only one who can judge the system you are working with.
I found in a past life that when I treated infections one after another with medication, I lost a lot of fish. I never knew what was really wrong and just spent money on one medication after another. It is important to get a good diagnosis of the disease your fish has before using any treatment and only use a treatment that is meant for the particular problem. If you walk into a fish store saying fungus, they will pull the fungus cure off the shelf for you but you could have an entirely different problem that the fungus cure won't touch. I would take the best pictures I could of the symptoms and post them in the emergencies section for one of the more experienced fish disease people to help you with.

 

[AdAndrews]

any ideas about the nitrite removing sponge? do i need to take it out when using meds?

 

[petertr]

The Green Nitrate sponge sounds like a Juwel Internal Box filter (Compact or Jumbo, probably).

1 - They don't do anything of use - treat them as identicle to the coarser blue sponge

2 - Well, answered in 1 really - no, you don't need to remove it.