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I'm having some trouble with my well water (long story) and I need to buy bottled water for my 6 gal betta tank.

I go to the store... and there's distilled water, spring water, etc etc etc... about 5 million kinds of bottled water. What is the best one to use for fish? I know that some of them literally have ALL the minerals taken out, and that's not good either. I also know that the pH of the bottled water will be lower than my well water that's about 7.6... so I will have to make the transition slowly... but I can't make it TOO slowly as my well has a seeeeeeerious problem at the moment.

Anyway... if anyone can tell me what water to buy, I can get busy and start acclimating my fish.

HELP HELP!!

Go with the mineral or spring water. Try to stay away from the distilled water unless you're mixing it with other water to lower the pH. *Some* mineral water may actually have about the same or higher pH as that coming out of your well. Whatever you get, make sure you test the pH of it and acclimatize the fish properly.

Hope that helps a bit.

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I would suggest the distilled water myself...but you will have to "reconstitute" it. Distilled is made through forced evaporation - viruses, bacteria, minerals, impurities, etc in the water can't follow the water through the process so is left behind. It's about the closest you can get to RO ( reverse osmosis) water at the supermarket.

As with RO water, it will need to have kh/gh added back, through either aquarium products made especially for reconstituting RO water, or by baking soda for kh, Epsom salt for gh, etc. One teaspoon of baking soda will raise the kh approximately 1 degree in ten gallons of water.

If you do not reconstitute the distilled or RO water, ya might be headed for a ph crash down the road, and some unhappy fish. http://www.aquaria.info/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=10784&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Anyways, like I said, I would go with the distilled, and just reconstitute it. I personally don't trust "spring" water, after seeing one of these "springs", and as for mineral water, check out some of the ingredients here - http://www.mineralwaters.org/ .

I didn't see anything on that list that isn't going to be found in well/tap water, or even anything that would be remotely harmful to fish.

The real problem in using straight distilled water doesn't have anything to do with general or carbonate hardness, it's the fact that distilled water is just too pure. The distillation process strips the water of minerals the fish actually need to be healthy. Adding baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), just isn't enough to replace these essential minerals and make the water habitable for the fish. The only time that using distilled water in a freshwater aquarium is advisable is when it's being mixed with some more natural form of water for the purpose of lowering pH or hardness.

For a betta that's used to your well water, any spring or mineral water should be absolutely fine as long as you acclimatize properly. Distilled water, as suggested in the post above, is a bad idea on its own. It would need to be mixed at least half and half with some harder water.


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Thanks guys! I went to the local store (I live out in the middle of nowhwere) and they only had distilled water. I bought a couple of gallons of that and just mixed it with my well water to get the pH about 7.2... It's better than just my straight well water at the moment... but tomorrow I'm making the trip to a bigger town to find spring water.

THanks again for your help!

I meant for the epsom salt and baking soda if you were cutting it with other water and wanted to match the kh/gh, etc...and the commercial reconsitituiting products such as RO RIGHT and similar products contain the minerals you are talking about if you're going to use it straight. As for the mineral /spring water thing, I have family that works in the industry.. I'm not going to argue about it, but you're not going to catch me drinking it, and I certainly don't want my fish swimming in it.

Looking at the big picture... they live in the middle of nowhere and the closest place sells distilled water, which with effort can be used in an aquarium by itself ( commercial products for that). Does she really need to drive to the " big city" to buy spring water? Depending on frequecy of water changes, that's a lot of gas? Or build a shed to put all of it?

Andrea...do you have a neighbor with better well water that wouldn't mind you coming over and filling up a few 5 gal jugs up every once in awhile? Or a friend that lives in the closer city?

you could use mineral water, or use a neiboughs tap.

I've heard people usually use arrowhead, dont know the reason, but they do.