Softened water?

[BlazerFRS]

Hello everyone;

About 2 and 1/2 months ago my g/f bought me a nice little fancy tail goldfish from the lfs. When she bought it it was appox. 3 inches long. They told her it would be fine in a one gallon bowl with no aeration and no filtration 8O !

Having not yet discovered this wonderful site, we trusted the lfs and tried the bowl out. To our befuddlement, within 12 hours our fish was gasping at the surface. So we promptly switched her to another bowl I had laying around; slightly larger, but with more of a horizontal configuration. We thought that this would be fine, as the fish now had greater suface area for gas exchange... but about 24 hours later she was again gasping at the surface. At that point I got a 2 gallon hex with aeration, but still no filter. She's been darting around in that trying to eat everything ever since.

After reading all the info on this site about the nitrogen cycle and filtration, i'm surprised my fish survived at all (O2 deprivation along with starting 3 cycles in about 4 days can't be too good for a fish). I've now purchased an eclipse system 6 (6 gallon) with filter and biowheel for my fish's new home. I'm planning on trying to plant it, although i'm sure she'll tear the plants up pretty good!

I just wanted to start by thanksing everyone for being providing such a great source of information to the utterly uninformed, such as myself!

Wow this is long; anyway here is my actual question:

At home I have a 400+ ft deep well; thus the water is extremely hard and laden with sulfur and whatnot. We have a water softener, but I have been afraid to use the water from it, as part of the softener system adds salt to the water (trace amounts only i'm sure). So just to be safe I've been using water from my fish pond out back; which has worked well so far. I was wondering if anyone on here uses softened water, and what their experiences have been.

Thanks for continuing to read this... it's become much more of a book then i was expecting...

 

[Fishyfanatic]

My brother uses water that goes through a softener also. The house has a well that goes through a limestone bed. So of course the waters pH is high, but the water is soft. The hardness is high enough though that it hasn't really fluctuated. Do you know what the hardness level is in the softened water?

 

[BlazerFRS]

I just did a test on one of those 5 in one test strips from jungle (not the best, i now realize, but it's better than nothing I suppose)

GH is 25 ppm
KH is ~100 ppm (looked between the 80 and 120 color on the test strip)
and the pH looks to be about 7.5

Nitares and Nitries are zero, as I would hope

 

[Fishyfanatic]

It's Nitrites and Ammonia that should be 0. You should have present Nitrates if the tank is cycled. But I am assuming that the tank is not cycled. Get a liquid reagent Ammonia test kit. In fact, get a liquid reagent Master Test Kit that tests for pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate. They are about $20 online after shipping from www.bigalsonline.com. I recommend the Aquarium Pharm. kit.

 

[BlazerFRS]

No, no; I'm sorry I wasn't clear that's how the water tests straight out of the tap not the tank.

The 2 gallon is basically cylced; I get no ammonia, a trace of nitrites and about 20 ppm of nitrates most times. I assume the nitrites are still present b/c a 2 gallon hex simply isn't large enough for a 3" fancy tail... that's why i'll be moving him to the six gallon, along with some of the old substrate, tomorrow hopefully.

 

[coolchinchilla]

I use softened tap water in my tanks. Just realize that to the fish it doesn't seem "softened." Just because you exchanged some mineral ions for some sodium ions dosent' mean that you reeduced the amount of disolved solids in the water. So you can't quite assume that fish that like soft water will think it's soft water.

HTH.
coolchinchilla