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Tap or RO
Feb 9, 2021 7:32:27 GMT -5
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Post by Sean (90 reef, fw rack sys) on Feb 9, 2021 7:32:27 GMT -5
So unfortunately my rams both died before eggs hatched and I’m thinking it was my fault. Up until they laid eggs, I had been using tap water for usually at least 50% changes weekly on all fresh tanks. Unfortunately hair algae kept growing more and more. Apparently the nitrate test I had been using was junk because after using a different test, nitrates were through the roof. Tested tap water and found I’m getting 40ppm nitrate and 20 ppm phosphate every time I do changes. I should have known because I had this problem with reef and switched over to RO water. Well, I decided to do the same for the fresh tanks starting with the rams and I think I dropped the ph too much. So here’s my question. Do I continue switching tanks over to RO to help with algae or do I continue using tap which I have been having breeding success (cherry barbs, guppies, ram eggs)?
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Post by spotfin on Feb 9, 2021 19:52:01 GMT -5
Sorry to hear about your rams. Crazy that you water has those levels out of the tap. City water or well water?
If you've had success with what you are doing, then don't change. But, those levels are crazy and your algae problem will likely get worse. You could design something like a refugium or algae scrubber, or maybe pothos vines to take up some nutrients.
If you want to try RO on a regular basis, maybe use half RO and half tap when you do water changes and see what happens.
What's the pH of your tap water, and tank?
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Tap or RO
Feb 10, 2021 3:52:49 GMT -5
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Post by Sean (90 reef, fw rack sys) on Feb 10, 2021 3:52:49 GMT -5
So before I realized the male died, I had gotten him a new female, so needless to say, I went and got a new (hopefully) male. He’s smaller than her and colors are kinda hard to tell under Petco lighting. They seem to be clinging together, so I’ll let it grow out a little and see. But as to tap, it is well water on landlords farmland (cows, horses, pigs). I did some testing yesterday. Ro/DI from a fresh machine (guy was servicing when I got there) has untraceable nitrate phosphate as should be expected with ph of 6.4. 1/2 tap, half ro came up 20 ppm nitrate with unreadable phosphate levels. Today is wc day. I’m going to dk some more testing today starting with cherry barb tank. They have been very acceptable of large (usually 75% weekly) tap water changes, almost always causing a spawning reaction (actually found some new babies yesterday). Gonna do pre and post test. Also going to test the city water at one of the stores I service when I’m working. They’ll let me fill my jugs there if need be. I know I’ll have to deal with chlorine, but that is easily taken care of. This is it though. Not buying any more rams. I love them but I’ve spent more money on them than I do a lot of my salt stuff, and that lives.
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Post by georgemygoldfish on Feb 11, 2021 10:50:40 GMT -5
Salty Shrimp makes a product called GH/KH+. And it's cheap! You could try reconstituting the RO with it and using that. That way you could get to 0ppm on the nitrates but still have a healthy level of minerals....
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Post by spotfin on Feb 11, 2021 17:02:51 GMT -5
Good luck. Keep us updated on your testing. I never had good luck with rams.
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Tap or RO
Feb 12, 2021 11:17:03 GMT -5
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Post by Sean (90 reef, fw rack sys) on Feb 12, 2021 11:17:03 GMT -5
So as an update (since people have replied and thank you!), stopped using ro/di from hannaford machine for fresh. One of the lfs owners pointed out to me that when I use it for reef, salt is replenishing necessary minerals, but with fresh it’s not. I work for frito and jump around to a couple different stores, so I’ve been grabbing some water samples and testing. Maybe if I can find a reliable source I can fill jugs there. For now, I picked up some Seachem de-nitrate and phosguard
and diy’d some simple uplift filters. See if it makes a difference. Been 2 days on cherry barb tank so I’ll probably test at some point today and see where I’m at (waiting on Petco order to arrive for other tanks).
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Post by georgemygoldfish on Feb 12, 2021 12:52:54 GMT -5
Yes, that's what the Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ is for! It reconstitutes the salts in fresh water. It's the fresh water equivalent of what marine enthusiasts do for marine tanks. Fish need certain salts in the water to thrive. Straight RO/DI isn't healthy. SS is probably only about $7-10 on-line and it'll probably last you 2-3 years (depending on tank size) - so it's cheap. I actually have some. I accidently ordered it about 3 years ago when what I wanted was just the GH+ version. Shrimp keepers frequently use the GH+ version for shrimp keeping, and I ordered the wrong one. The GH/KH version adds salts to fresh water that effect the carbonate hardness (KH) as well as the general hardness (GH), and most shrimp keepers don't want to supplement KH as they want soft water with no carbonates. Low KH = Low pH, or 'soft water'.
Not sure where in the state you're located, but if you know someone in the Poland area, get some water from them! It's practically distilled right out of the ground LOL! About 3 years ago, around Halloween we had a bad wind storm and I lost my power for about a week. So I drove to my sisters house to fill gallon jugs with water to do water changes on my tanks. She lived in Poland. I tested it first before adding it to my tanks and was pretty blown away. It has an undetectable KH value, and less than 1 for the GH! I retested and got the same results. Then I tossed my test kit and bought a new one thinking it was bad. It wasn't! I bought some 'Poland Spring Water' from Hannafords and tested it with the new kit and got the same readings. So we can have some pretty weird water sources throughout the state... Or maybe Poland Spring is sucking the water out of the ground so fast nothing has the chance to dissolve in it LOL! 😂
You don't want to use straight RO/DI because it doesn't have any salts in it at all, and fish/shrimp need salts to be healthy.
😊
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