Water softener bad?

[Millerman]

Are water softeners actually bad for aquariums? I've had a 10 gallon with a betta, corries, and neon tetra for about a year using the water softener water. I'm currently setting up my 55 planted but wasn't sure if this would be problem for plants. Does this also mean I can't have snails?


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[PNWaquarist]

That depends on how much calcium and magnesium they strip out of the water. I don't believe that the corys and neons will care. The snails definitely will. I don't know what the cutoff is for them, but I'd imagine that you'd want 8 dGH or more for snails.

 

[Fishfur]

Most water softeners remove the hard water minerals, the most common of those is calcium. Most inverts need a fair level of calcium in their water and in their food too, to maintain their shells, and most of them are not at all tolerant of salt. Catfish and other fish with tiny scales, [ often called scaleless] are not supposed to tolerate salt very well either.

Some plants need harder water too, though it's less critical for them. Some other fish that would do very poorly in such water would be species like mollies, which are really a brackish species. Best to research the needs of what you plan to keep.

Usually when a softener is installed there is at least one tap that's not connected to it. Often the outdoor tap, if you have a yard. Sometimes it's the laundry sink tap. If so, you can get unsoftened water from that tap.

 

[Millerman]

That's kinda the problem the only unsoftened is outside and I don't really like the idea of hauling buckets of water when it's -10 degrees outside in the winter. Is there anyway to add calcium back and remove sodium?


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[Fishfur]

You can add calcium but you can't really remove sodium short of distilling the water. You'd have to remineralize distilled water too. Some keepers who have RO filters do exactly that, but they don't have to contend with removing salt first. Home distillers are available, but even a one gallon model is not exactly cheap and you'd need a big one for any size of tank.

So long as it's not freezing outside maybe you could fill a large container in the house from the hose so you won't have to lug so much so far. Not sure what you'd do when it does freeze. Any chance of having an indoor tap installed that's not connected to the softener ? I know, plumbers aren't cheap either.

 

[Millerman]

Yikes so I guess this is sort of a big deal if I want snails


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[Millerman]

Using the API test strips it says
Outside-
Gh: max, 180
Kh: max, 240
Ph: 8-8.5
Inside-
Gh: max, 180
Kh: 0
Ph: 8-8.5



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[Fishfur]

It's that KH of zero that's the problem. No calcium at all. You won't have snails surviving in water with no calcium, I'm sorry to say.

 

[PNWaquarist]

The outside reading is pre-water softener, correct? How is the softener not putting a dent in your GH?

 

[Millerman]

I'm not sure this was actually just off the top off my head so maybe it did lower the gh I can do an actual test if you want, and yes the outside is non softened

 

[Fishfur]

That's a good question.. and I went and checked on what little I know about water softeners. My dad put one in when I was a kid and I had to get my tank water from the utility sink, which he left off the system.
One thing you could do, again, not dirt cheap, would be to install an RO filter. If you did that, it would remove the sodium from the softened water and then all you'd have to do is use one of the remineralizing products to bring the KH and GH up to what you need. No real simple solutions here, I'm afraid, if you want to keep inverts.

I'm puzzled too by the GH reading.. that doesn't make sense really.. Softeners only remove calcium and magnesium, so the GH of the indoor water should be a lot lower than the unsoftened water.

 

[PNWaquarist]

To my knowledge, softeners only exchange cations. They should not be removing your carbonate.

 

[Fishfur]

A zero KH is pretty much zero calcium, is it not ? KH measures calcium, GH measures general hardness, as I understand it. But I am SO not a chemist, so if I've got that wrong please educate me.

 

[Millerman]

Ok sorry for the false info
Outside-
Gh:120
Kh:180
Ph:7.5-8

Inside-
Gh:0
Kh:180
Ph: 7.5-8



And thank you very much for helping me try to resolve this problem

 

[PNWaquarist]

KH is a measurement of carbonate concentration. Most of the calcium that we find in water our supply is associated with carbonate ion, but the two are not inseparable.

If "hard" water (lots of calcium carbonate) were to go through a water softener (essentially a cation-exchange column), the column would release sodium ion and bind calcium ion. The carbonate should not be trapped in the water softener. (That said, I'm not a water softener expert, and I don't know which other processes may or ma not be going on in there.)

 

[Fishfur]

And zero GH is no help for inverts either. I am curious why the KH is what it is though, unless I have completely misunderstood the KH test, but so far as I know it's supposed to measure calcium.

I wish I'd paid more attention in chem' class way back when. Maybe I didn't 'cause Dad was a chemical engineer... and we kind of got OD'd on chemical stuff at home.

Edit.. just saw your reply.. it helps me understand a bit better. But I am no expert on softeners either. In fact the only reason I know anything at all was because when we had one installed in the house I grew up in, I already had fish and turtles and my Dad told me the softener water would not be good for them. So he left our utility sink tap off the softener, so I would have a water source that wasn't softened.

 

[Millerman]

The API test strips I have are also known to not be 100% accurate but this should be a good summary of my water

 

[PNWaquarist]

Ok sorry for the false info
Outside-
Gh:120
Kh:180
Ph:7.5-8

Inside-
Gh:0
Kh:180
Ph: 7.5-8

OK, that makes a lot more sense. Ca and Mg are trapped, but carbonate goes through.

I agree with fishfur that using RO water might be a good option for you. If you want to supplement calcium, crushed coral (calcium carbonate) would work. It can slowly raise your pH, but your KH (buffering capacity) is very high and that helps. If you could find calcium chloride somewhere, that would do the same without the pH change.

 

[Millerman]

The softener sodium isn't always up to date on the sodium refills so maybe my softener is out of or very low on sodium. This might be contributing to that


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[Millerman]

In your opinion would adding crushed coral raise my ph to high? What is a safe ph level? Is the sodium going to be bad still if I chose to not to use a RO