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well, i am having troubles, the local fish stores RO is out of commision and i need to do a water change, no one in my area has a RO, and i need water!

i went to the store and purchased some non carbonated,non mineral plain drinking water. it has been run over activated charcoal and thats it. i am hoping it is safe...

i added some aquasafe tap water conditioner to 10 gallons of it, and i am letting it sit, tonight i will test it and see what its at. i dont have a way to test hardness or alkalinity, so i will have to take a sample in tomarrow to have it tested...what are my concerns?

i know that getting any water other than out of a RO machine is risky, but, i have to do something. the tap water i have in my town is nasty! its chlorinated,and its hard, ph is off, its nasty stuff. our cat got a internal infection from drinking as the vet called it "contaminated drinking water". if the cat can get an infection from it, im not sure i wanna add that water to a fully stocked tank.

so, what should i be looking for when i test it? ph, ammonia,hardness,alkalinity....anything else? (sodium maybe?)

HELP!!!

A ph test can give you an idea of the hardness. Also distilled water should be available from any store that sells drinking water. While not quite as pure as ro water it's pretty close. Provided you don't have extremely sensitive fish I would buy distilled water and treat it exactly the same as you do ro water. Even if you do have sensitive fish the distilled will be closer than anything else but depending what you use to add minerals and buffers back into the ro water you might end up with slightly harder water using distilled since it isn't as pure to start with.

What fish do you have?? Also what do the towns people use for drinking water if is that bad.

Have a look in [link=My Profile]http://
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Keith

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I have barbs,corys,a south american bumblebee cat,and a bn pleco. wide range of fish, and i keep the water very soft. ph at 7.0.

i also have a seperate beta tank with one male beta.

i am still learning about water quality issues. one of my co workers is bringing a full water test kit tomarrow so i can see all the results.

p.s. most of us drink bottled water, but alot still drink from the tap. the water tastes bad, and from the impurities and chlorine if you run 3" of water in your bathtub the color ranges from green to brown depending on the day. no short term health problems have been reported, but it cant be good for long term health. if i wash my car with the water straight from the tap, it will leave white spots, which isnt too unussual, but what is unussual, whatever is in the water eats through the clear coat and etches the spots into the paint.

Hi,
I cannot believe that your water is that "bad" coming
from the city treatment plant. The EPA should have shut
it down ages ago and forced them to make the necessary
repairs to bring the water into compliance with Federal
Standards. Where are you?

As far as the water from the stores is concerned, you have
basically three types. "Bottled", "Distilled", and "RO".

Bottled water is water that is collected from a protected
source, run through charcoal filters, and then bottled.

Distilled water is water that has been boiled, and the
steam collected, condensed, and then the condensed water
is bottled and sold. This is the PUREST WATER. ALL the
impurities remain behind in the boiler. In fact, if you
are going to use distilled water in your tank, you will
have to "reconstitute" it by adding minerals to the water.
The use of Distilled water in an aquarium, exclusively,
will eventually cause malnutrition in plants and some of
the inhabitants as macro minerals such as Calcium (Ca)
and Magnesium (Mg) for instance, are missing. If you are
going to use distilled water, it is generally mixed with
tap water, to "dilute the soup" and then added to the tank.

RO, or Reverse Osmosis water, is water that is run through
a Reverse Osmosis Filter and can contain some various
minerals. The "quality" of the output of this filter
depends upon the membrane through which the water flows.
You can purchase various size pore membranes for the filter
depending upon what you are trying to eliminate.

Hope this helps...
Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

I was always told that distilled water is only around 95% pure since some things can be carried with the water that turns to steam. While my ro water claims to be 99.99% pure and tests 0 with a TDS meter. Although a quick search tells me that to keep the distilled water coming out pure the boiling chamber has to be flushed frequently and current distilled water is 98-99.9% pure. So if your using high quality ro versus high quality distilled they should be pretty much equivalent.

ok, got it tested...no chlorine. alkalinity is ideal, hardness is pretty soft, at about 15, similar to my RO's water. i added some treatment to it prior to the test, so it looks like i have found a winner.

Last edited by reun at 12-Dec-2005 03:28

Hardness is the measure of dissolved minerals in water. It may be measured by parts per million (ppm) or German degrees of general hardness (dGH) or conductivity (microsiemens). I assume that 15 is 15 ppm or less than 1 dGH (1 dGH = 17.9 ppm).

Most fish require some measure of hardness to form their tissue and exoskeleton. Your current water regime may be too "pure" or devoid of beneficial minerals for good fish health.

Hardness also is a pH moderator. A KH (carbonate hardness) of 3 or more dGH is recommended as a buffer to prevent a pH crash. Acidity increases (pH lowers) as a tank matures. The lack of an adequate buffer, KH, is like walking a high wire without a safety net. Fish react badly to rapid increases in acidity. Remember that pH is a logarithmic scale, a pH of 6 is 10 times more acid than a pH of 7 while a pH of 5 is 100 times more acid than a pH or 7.

Last edited by Bob Wesolowski at 13-Dec-2005 01:23

__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

i use ph buffers that keep the tank at a consistent 7.0, the water i am adding has slightly higher ph, 7.3, and it has some hardness, as does the RO water i get from the fish store. the water i added was at 15ppm, hence why i didnt want to add in pure distilled water without a mineral sort of addative.

Measure your KH. If your KH is less than 54 ppm or 3 dGH then you may be courting disaster. Please go to the following link: http://faq.thekrib.com/begin-chem.html.

__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright