Hard Water

[jasurf21]

Hello Everyone,

My water readings have been a little hard.

They were perfect...then I did a water change without adding additional FW salt. Could this be why?

Is it true that adding salt to a FW tank (1 TBS per 5 gallons) helps keep the water soft?

When I do water changes should I also be adding 1 TBS of salt per 5 gallons?

Thanks!

 

[Fishguy2727]

Water softeners work by replacing the calcium and magnesium with twice as much sodium (they use rock salt). So on a GH kit the hardness will actually be reduced. This could be what is happening. The problem is that water softeners actually increase the total dissolved solids (TDS) which is what the fish care about.

What fish do you have?
What is the hardness? Is it GH or KH that you are testing?

You should not have to add any salt to a freshwater aquarium. In most cases you really don't need to worry about hardness, worry about water quality. Keep the water quality up and the fish don't care if it is harder or softer than what they would have had generations ago in nature.

Your tap water's hardness could also have been what has changed and it may have nothing to do with anything going on in your tank.

 

[jasurf21]

Thanks so much.... unfortunately right now I only have testing strips so I'm not sure what numbers I am currently running. I need to invest in a good testing kit.

I was wondering about water hardness though and I learned a lot from your post appreciate it. I will post back when I get a test kit with #'s.

I have a 30 gallon tank with:
6 Neon Tetras
2 Balloon Mollies
2 German Blue Rams
2 Otocinclus
1 Freckled Cory Cat
2 Nerite Snails
Also have 2 Cabomba plants

 

[Fishguy2727]

Throw out your test strips, they are completely useless. You can guess more accurately than they will ever tell you. Honestly unless you are trying to breed the only thing you really need to worry about is nitrate. If you can keep the nitrate concentration under 20ppm before water changes then you are doing enough water changes (I would still recommend at least 20% weekly). If you want to get into any of the other chemistry be careful. Many people obsess too much over the numbers and try to fix them in spite of the fish thriving. This leads to chemistry problems that cause 10x as much harm to the fish than if you just didn't mess with it.