What To Add To Ro Water For Discus

[danb]

Hi,

Im going to start a cycle with RO water ready for 6 discus fish. Its a 240l tank with 2x tetratec ex1200's; barebottom for first 6 months.

What would you recommend i add backinto the RO water? Should i just add purely RO water to the tank or some tap water too?

 

[nmonks]

Will depend on your local tap water. If your tap water is hard and basic, then adding a certain percentage of that to your RO water will be fine. Ideally, you'd remove the nitrate from the tap water, and perhaps use carbon as well to remove any other impurities. The idea is to raise the carbonate hardness to a degree that provides at least some buffering, *unless* you're going to be using a proprietary soft water aquarium buffering mix. If you go down the latter route, the manufacturer will state what you need to do.

Also note that farmed discus and wild discus are quite different things. Farmed discus will be fine with 75/25 or even 50/50 RO and tap water mix in many cases. As has been stated many times before, the pH is relatively unimportant, but low hardness and low nitrate levels are more critical where discus are concerned.

Cheers, Neale