I was told by a friend that you can you 100% distilled water in a new fish aquarium and it is just fine for the fish... is this possible? also, would you need to treat it using any chemicals? What if i am using regular tap water... then what chemicals do i need to treat it with?
Distilled water... is it safe?
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bs6749
Aquarium Advice Addict
Nothing wrong with distilled water whatsoever. I used it in my 10 gallon grow out tank that I am raising GBR fry in and they are perfectly healthy. It is essentially pure water and the only reason that it is called "distilled water" is because of the process that was used to get it to nearly pure water. The water was boiled free of impurities nand collected in a separate container after cooling, this is essentially the distillation process. RO water (reverse osmosis) is water that has been forced (by adding pressure) across a semipermeable membrane in the reverse of the normal water flow.
QTOFFER
Aquarium Advice Addict
100% distilled water would not be good for fish long term because it is lacking trace minerals that they need to survive. It also gets quite expensive unless you have your own still or reverse osmosis unit.
Some people use distilled water mixed with tap water (usually 50/50) if their tap water is unusually high in nitrates or other environmental contaminants. Others mix defined salt formulations into distilled water in order to replicate specific water parameters like Lake Tanganika or Lake Malawi. These salt mixes contain all the trace goodies that distilled water lacks.
Unless you have particularly crappy well water or are breeding Rift Lake cichlids, you should be able to get away with tap water.
The only additive that you really need to add is a dechlorinator. Look for one that removes chlorine, chloramine, and heavy metals. All of the products on the market that remove these three things are fine. Some have extra bells and whistles like slime coat enhancers. They're all pretty good, IME.
Whatever you do, don't ever use chemicals to change your pH. They work for a short time until they're exhausted, and then the pH will swing back to its original level. Most fish are pretty tolerant of stable suboptimal pH, but intolerant of rapid pH shifts.
Some people use distilled water mixed with tap water (usually 50/50) if their tap water is unusually high in nitrates or other environmental contaminants. Others mix defined salt formulations into distilled water in order to replicate specific water parameters like Lake Tanganika or Lake Malawi. These salt mixes contain all the trace goodies that distilled water lacks.
Unless you have particularly crappy well water or are breeding Rift Lake cichlids, you should be able to get away with tap water.
The only additive that you really need to add is a dechlorinator. Look for one that removes chlorine, chloramine, and heavy metals. All of the products on the market that remove these three things are fine. Some have extra bells and whistles like slime coat enhancers. They're all pretty good, IME.
Whatever you do, don't ever use chemicals to change your pH. They work for a short time until they're exhausted, and then the pH will swing back to its original level. Most fish are pretty tolerant of stable suboptimal pH, but intolerant of rapid pH shifts.
The other problem with distilled water or RO/DI (reverse osmosis and deionization...DI sometimes done alone, but they're usually done together because the RO membrane will clog up very quickly if you don't pull out the bulk of contaminants first), is that the pH is unstable. Without anything to buffer it, even a small bit of acid or base will lead to a big swing in pH. The salt mixes to reconstitute it will prevent that, however.
7Enigma
Aquarium Advice Addict
Just stick with your tap water and a good dechlorinator (Prime for example). You can always top up the tank with distilled since the water that evaporated left its salts and impurities behind, but at water change time I'd recommend just using the tap water.
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