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BLUElobster99

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Mar 15, 2013
Messages
736
Location
New Jersey
Ok so over the summer my parents had a water softener installed into our house. We originally had very hard water and it did all sorts of damage to our pipes. But how does this affect my fish? I originally used half RO half tap. For the summer i was able to take water from an outside faucet that hadnt gone through the softener. Now that it is getting cold i cant get water from outside. I did some research and found that it is not recommended to use water from "domestic water softeners" because it adds salt and sodium chloride.

I have three tanks right now 10 gallon: blue crayfish
25: phantom pleco,checkered barbs,banded barbs
5:snails

So what do i do? I know my snails and my cray need hard water so how would i harden RO water?
Should i use 100% ro with the pleco? The RO ph is around 6.5 which might be too low for the barbs in the tank

But is the tap water safe????????


I did some tests and got these results


RO water: ph:6.4 kh:5 gh:5
Tap water: ph: 8+ kh:1 gh:12+
Half RO half tap: ph: 7.5 kh:5 gh:1
 
You might have to go all RO and use a remineralizing product, as some shrimp keepers do. Salty shrimp is one I've heard of, have never used any of them though. Hopefully someone with more knowhow will answer.
You're correct that water from home water softeners is not good for fish.
 
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