Quick question on ro water and tap

[himdie]

So my tap water here in cali is very high in nitrates atm since there's a drought so I'm gunna need to get me a ro/di filter but my main question is if I do around 3 parts ro and 1 part tap should there be enough minerals going into the water?? Tap waters ph is around 7.6 or higher out the tap and nitrates are close to 40 =/ it's for dirted planted tank btw

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[BBradbury]

Your Tap Water

So my tap water here in cali is very high in nitrates atm since there's a drought so I'm gunna need to get me a ro/di filter but my main question is if I do around 3 parts ro and 1 part tap should there be enough minerals going into the water?? Tap waters ph is around 7.6 or higher out the tap and nitrates are close to 40 =/ it's for dirted planted tank btw

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Hello him...

Fish from the local pet store will be fine in treated tap water. You shouldn't add anything to it. Reverse osmosis water is sterile. It has no mineral buffers. Buffers in the tap water keep the water chemistry level and safe for the fish and plants.

Nitrates in th 40 ppm range aren't life threatening, so get some floating plants to use them. Acurel makes a nitrate removing filter media. Don't play around with the tap water, you'll do more harm than good.

B

 

[Fresh2o]

I suspect that other minerals/salts are high just as well. Are there fish in the dirted plant tank? If not, then I would not worry about the tap. If there are, then I would be concerned about elevated TDS. A TDS meter would be handy in this case. You could carry on using the tap water for WCs and top off during the week with DI. Or if you do cut the new water with DI or RODI, then, as with anything else, do it gradually and monitor it.


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[himdie]

I understand that but I've been doing the ro and tap with my 40g and my livestock and plants are doing well but last time I dint go out to get ro and used straight treated tap I got a bit of a bacteria bloom and 2 of my 2 year old neons died so I checked my parameters and the only diffrence I saw was that my nitrates we're rlly high at 80+ and that was a day or 2 after doing the water change =/ that's why I'm a bit scared to use the tap water hehe and also i used straight tap for the 60 I just got and nitrates are somewhere around 100 the vial gets pretty dark red

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[himdie]

No nothing in my new 60 just plants until either the nitrates levels out or I cut the water with ro to reduce them

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[phishfriend]

Do you dose ferts? If your tank is heavily planted. It should be processing those nitrates down. Did you check your readings daily after the water change? If so, you should get a good picture of how long it takes your system to process the nitrates. If it's not dropping over a week after the water change. Then there is something else wrong.

 

[himdie]

Not fertz in this tank just dirted and im pretty dam sure the dirt isn't contributing to the nitrates since I had a similar experience when I used the tap for my other tank and it killed 2 of my neons =( on a side note I just planted the tank 2 days ago so the plants prob need some time to settle and grow in

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