Re-mineralisation

[seangee]

Its been a while. The good news is my tanks are thriving, I've just been busy

For those that don't remember my tap water is liquid rock and has nitrates at 50ppm. Oh and I keep soft water fish.

I have been managing this by mixing bought RO water with tap water to get the desired hardness, and I filter the tap water for nitrates.

Its time to order new filter cartridges and my under sink cartridge for drinking water is also due. This one is ridiculously expensive because its a proprietary fit. So for economic reasons and convenience I ordered an under sink RO unit today as it will pay for itself in about 3 months - excluding the cost of the water wasted.

I also ordered some Seachem Equilibrium so I don't have to mess about with filtering tap water for nitrates separately. Do I need anything else? When I do the switch I will do a couple of weeks of smaller, more frequent changes so I can monitor what happens to the pH

 

[Colin_T]

can you get a rift lake water conditioner instead of the seachem equilibrium?
the seachem equilibrium has a lot of potassium and sulfates in and not much calcium or magnesium.

a rift lake water conditioner would have mainly calcium and magnesium carbonate and bicarbonates.

the most common mineral found in hard water is calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate.

 

[seangee]

For soft acidic water?

 

[Colin_T]

most waterways with soft acid water don't have any minerals in.

my concern is the sulfates and potassium, neither of which are found in large quantities in rivers and lakes.

 

[seangee]

Well I have decided not to use Equilibrium after all but will be using Salty Shrimp GH/KH+.
Tests for both taken after preparing 25liters of water in a jerrycan and measuring 72 hours later

for the Equilibrium:

• I had to use double the recommended dosage to achieve a dGH of 6
• After 72 hours the water was still stained yellow (Seachem claim this clears within a couple of hours). Its really easy to tell that it doesn't because I had the 2 containers next to each other
• dKH = 0. I knew this and was prepared to add alkaline buffer
  
• pH <6 (I don't know how much less as that is where my scale stops)
• TDS: 158
  
• Biggest problem (besides the staining) was having to mix multiple products and establish the correct ratios because I can't trust the instructions. I would also have to test every time I made a mixture. If I wanted to go to that trouble I would just make my own mix and save a lot of money.

Salty Shrimp

• Recommended dose gave dGH of exactly 6 (as expected from instructions)
  
• dKH = 3 (as expected from instructions)
• pH: 6.5
• TDS: 150 (also as expected)

I don't measure TDS but since I bought a meter to keep track of the RO filter's performance I used it in my tanks...
My South American tank (currently 2 parts pure RO to 1 part filtered tap water) was 158 (pH: 6.8, dGH: 6, dKH: 6)
The Asian nano (100% filtered tap water) was 358 (pH: 7.2, dGH 12, dKh 8)

TDS in the tap water seemed shockingly high. I believe 150 is recommended for shrimp. This may explain why my shrimp population has been pretty static. They don't die of unexplained causes - but they don't multiply very much.

As the chemistry in the S American tank is so similar I will just start using my re-mineralised RO as my regular routine. I will do a series of small changes on the nano tank as these changes will be more significant (and the tank has shrimp).

 

[seangee]

Feel free to ignore my comments on the shrimp population. The nano is a year old and establishing nicely. Did some gardening in there this morning and my original colony of 7 red rilis has grown to several hundred - possibly even more than that. Plenty of berried girls, but they have loads of hiding places.