Tap water or rain water?

[Glyn Oliver]

Hi everyone, I am new to all this and I have aquired a 45 ish litre tank that was not being looked after, the fish were basically left to fend for themselves..... Anyhow, there are 5 neon tetras, 4 red male guppies and 3 pristella tetras, which all seem to be doing very well now after 7 weeks at my house. Anyhow, I have been doing partial water changes every week or 10 days and have been using rainwater collected in a water butt and my question is, will this cause any problems? Are there advantages / disadvantages in doing this. The water collects in a sealed butt after running off the conservatory roof.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[chrismiller21]

I would be worried about the stuff that's on the roof that gets collected by the water. I am going to guess it is a glass roof. But bird poop and dust will all run off with the water into your bucket and then into your tank. I have put buckets into the middle of the yard to collect water that did not wash over anything. I would also worry about the PH swings if you are not exclusively using the rain water.

 

[Glyn Oliver]

Thanks for that, I have always used rain water from the same butt and I am getting a lot of the green string / hair type algea stuff growing in the gravel. For the size of the tank I might as well start using tap water.

 

[melosu58]

As far as rain water you have heard of acid rain. All this emmissions and chemicals in the air come down in the rain so I would never use rain water. Tap water depends on the treatment center on how they filtrate the water. The best option would be an RO/DI unit.

 

[nereksnad]

greetings.

i would also advice against rainwater. you can't know for sure what is in it, and the price of tap water isn't that high that it is worth setting up a rainwater collecting system and take on the possible disadvantages there are to using rainwater imo.
that you have to bring in the water and heat it up before using it is probably more expensive than tap water.

 

[Glyn Oliver]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I have decided to stop using rainwater and go onto tap water so got some water conditioner yesterday (checked out our water supply, contains chlorine and not chlorimine) and did a 20% water change last night, the fish seemed a lot happier, guppies became more lively, neons ventured mid to high in the tank instead of hanging around the bottom, as did the pristella tetras.
What I want to know is, would it be ok to do 20% water change every day for the next few days to try and dilute / get rid of all the rain water in the tank, its only a 48 litre tank btw.
Thanks again in advance.

 

[nereksnad]

i wasn't aware that any countries outside of the US added chlorine to their water supply, this surprises me.

anywho, you sould be fine with changeing 20% of the water every day for the next couple of days. it is great that you fish appear to be more satisfied now.