Water, Testing & Apps?

[Colin_T]

1ppm of nitrite is bad for fish.
1ppm of nitrate is nothing to worry about for the fish. However, if there is nitrates in your tap water, you want to avoid drinking it because nitrates and nitrites aren't good for people.

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Low levels of salt (sodium chloride) can be used to treat fish for some diseases and is normally very safe. However, high levels of salt, or prolonged exposure to salt can damage the kidneys in fish and all animals. If fish are from soft water that doesn't have many minerals, they will be more likely to suffer from kidney damage compared to fishes that naturally occur in hard water or brackish water.

 

[Byron]

The nitrate needs clarification. Can you post a photo of the test strip for nitrate? If nitrate is really at 1 ppm this is not at all bad. My test kit only measures in ranges, the lowest being 0 to 5 ppm, and that is where my tanks have been for over a decade now.

The other thing we need clarified is just what the tap water goes through. You mention a filter...this might or might not add something that is best avoided.

We also need to confirm the readings for the cistern water which presumably you use to drink and other household functions. The GH and pH of this water on its own. If it goes through the mentioned filter, can this be avoided?

 

[Lisbeth Oden]

I have nitrates (and some ammonia) in my rural well water, most likely due to the 95 acre farmers field across the road. I pre-filter water through a now discontinued API Tap Water Filter that is filled with API Nitra-Zorb, then goes through an inline carbon filter.

I used to do this in the kitchen sink into 5g buckets as in the photo, but now I do it in the basement into a 45 gallon Rubbermade Brute trash can. I filter about 100 gallons weekly for the water changes in 6~ tanks.
The Nitra-Zorb resin works great and is rechargeable with aquarium salt or non-iodized table salt (which I use).

I agree that water out of your tap is best, even if you need to soften by mixing with RO or some distilled water. 90% of the time, water straight from the tap is perfectly fine as long as you condition for chlorine/chlorimine. There are excellent conditioners these days that instantly neutralize chlorine/chloramine.

How do you get it to the right temperature before adding it to the tank?


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[Colin_T]

You can add some boiled water to raise the temperature of the new water before adding it to the tank. However, it there is only a couple of degrees difference, don't worry about it.

 

[seangee]

Thank you. The soft and low alkalinity water was coming from the reverse osmosis dispenser at the grocery store because I thought my cistern had gone bad and my counter top filter needed to be replaced. My home water when filtered is nearly perfect but it has 1 ppm nitrates. So I have been trying to figure out which way is the best water to use.

Now I understand. I use RO water because my tap water has 50ppm nitrates and filtering for nitrates is in fact slower and more expensive than using RO. Yesterday morning I did my usual water change of 130 litres. 36 Hours later I have only collected 110 litres for next weekends change. I bought my own RO unit because I got fed up of lugging that amount of water from my LFS every week. (Hopefully now you understand why I encourage people to use what is in their tap if possible, I know from personal experience the hassle and expense of not doing so).

As several have mentioned there is no such thing as "perfect water" and RO certainly is not perfect for most fish because it contains zero minerals and even softwater fish require some minerals. But (as long as you can live with the expense and hassle) it does have the advantage that with added minerals you can make it up to anything you want. One of my tanks has softwater fish and I add enough minerals to get this tank up to 2dGH. The other has shrimp and fish that prefer a hardness of 6dGH, so that's what they get.

FWIW I don't try to change pH, it is what it is, and as you would expect the soft water tank is the more acidic of my two - but neither I, nor my fish care what the actual value is.

So your choices are

1. As long as there is nothing poisonous in your cistern use that water and choose fish that thrive in whatever hardness that is. Its the easy option if it is possible.
   
2. Choose what fish you want to keep and add minerals to RO water to create the perfect environment for your fish - but you do need to choose if you want soft, medium or hard water fish. You could not mix tetras and mollies (as an example) in the same tank.

My tetra safe strips says that 1 ppm of nitrates is stressful.

Do you mean nitrates or nitrites. My Tetra strips show nitrates as safe up to 40ppm - although I would never let it get that high. It shows 1ppm of nitrite as stress - I disagree with that assessment as IMO 1ppm is extremely dangerous.

 

[AbbeysDad]

How do you get it to the right temperature before adding it to the tank?

I used to preheat in an 18g bin using a couple of 100w heaters. However, for quite some time I just pump room temperature water back into the tank. The tank temp drops about 3-4 degrees - the fish don't mind a bit and actually this is not unlike what would happen in nature when it rains.
Note: In my unheated basement (55F in winter), I do still preheat water in winter for water changes.

 

[seangee]

Room temperature for me too. In winter I move my containers to the warmest room in front of the radiator the night before I do the change. But that's only because my water is also stored in an unheated room.