Water changes

I use water from my fish pond for water changes. I assume this is sensible?

 

No, use clean water. You are puuting all the waste of the pond fish into your tank. You should check the No3 reading of the pond water, it is going to be high.

 

Thanks. I'm going to take samples of the tank and pond to LFS for testing today.

I have two alternatives to the pond water.

Two questions:
1) I can use tap water (will let it stand for 24 hours). Should I stick an airpipe and a air stone into this while it is standing for 24 hours? Should I do / add anything else?
2) I also have rainwater drums (I collect the water via the roof gutters and store it in drums to water the garden). Would this be better than tap water?

Thanks.

 

2) No - it would be like using naked RO or contaminated water (dust and stuff from your roof)
1) Yes ... but letting it sit might not be enough.
a) you need to get rid of the chloramine (Think CT also pumps it)
b) or you can filter it.
If b - yes you can RO and mix it back with normal water, but my understanding is that CT water is soft and RO will make it hard so that could be a shock to the rest of the tank if you get it wrong.

Best is to test the local water from the tap and then decide how you want to prepare it. But the members in CT will be able to give you some good idea what works for them.

 

RO water will not make water hard. It softens water. But you need not use RO water if you are in the cape Region. The water is soft already. So just dechlorinate the tap water. We prefer to use Seachem Safe to chechlorinate water, as a little goes a heck of a long way!!

 

Thanks I still have some dechlorinator left for my pond. I'll use that until I can stock up on Seachem Safe.

 

You get small bottle of sechem safe, for quite cheap. You use 1 tiny spoon to dechlorinate up to 150L of water. It works like a bomb!

 

yep, i use the seachem prime, 2 drops per 20L lol

 

Sheesh... I use 1ml dechlor per 4L water (1 teaspoon for 20L). Think I'll be looking for Seachem Safe as soon as it's finished.

 

safe is the concentrated powder form of prime, if you buy a big bottle of safe you will not need dechlorinator for a long long time.

 

I dont understand the reason for letting your water stand for up to 2 days if you have added a dechlorinator? Isnt the point of letting it stand is if you dont have a dechlorinator? I just check the water is roughly the same temp, add enough dechlorinator and slowly add it to my sump so it goes through all the filtration including the charcoal and ive never had an issue. is letting it stand just to be extra careful? Obviously im talking about water for specialist fish.

 

what about getting a RO unit...with just high grade carbon filters on it??? it is more expensive but at least you not adding anything to get rid of something. it should just get rid of all the nasties like chlorine/chloramine and leave the PH GH kH alone?? or is my logic wrong.

 

You let it stand because you want the ph to stabilize, you really want a stable ph when you keep sensitive fish like discus or rams.

 

Awsum thank you, i thought there
had to be another reason

 

Just think of it! Fish use osmosis to either take in or get rid of minerals and salts they need. This from the water they live in. RO water has everything removed from it! Have any of you seen what happens to Discus in RO water! The cruelest thing you can do is use that water, not even good for human consumption actually! It is just a liquid.
Use a plain carbon filter if you want to filter water. The carbon will remove the chlorine. If you want to use rain water then you need to harden it as it is extremely soft. This done by either dropping in some limestone rocks into the tank, putting in some marble chip or adding in a box of Bicarbonate of Soda. The human body cannot properly use pure rain water if not slightly hardened.

 

@scotty maybe read the whole thread before you post a reply ?? not once was it advised to use pure RO water, using pure RO water is idiotic and the unstable ph will probably kill the fish long before they die from a mineral deficiency. If you read the thread you would see that it is advised to mix RO with either tap water or a comercial remineralizing products to get it to the wanted/required hardness. Some people are lucky and get soft water from the tap but some of us have extremely hard water from the tap and the only way to soften it is to use an RO unit, using carbon would have almost no affect on hardness. That is the only reason for using RO (to get soft water and NOT to get pure clean water). I would also not say that rain water is "extremly soft" (just soft) because it will vary depending on pollutants etc etc.... RO on the other hand IS extremly soft and for this reason a useful tool to get specified water parameters for some sensitive species. I would also not recommend the use of RO unless you have the correct testing equipment or test kits to ensure you have the correct hardness before you put fish in it.
I will also never use any kind of stones to harden water becuase it will be hard to measure as this will take some time, just mixing with some tap water is alot easier... Maybe visit www.simplydiscus.com/forum (the water chemistry section) and you will see that this method has worked for thousands of aquarists around the world for a long time.

 

Human consumption of RO water, maybe have a read through this little article aswell.

http://www.squidoo.com/reverse-osmosis-water-truth-safe

 

Dope - right you are .. it removes the compounds ..

I still prefer my JHB water - 0.3 micron filter, UV filter (think this is a stretch unless you run your water at 3 drops a minute) and the carbon filter on the final stage.



I replace cartages +- 12 month .. but do all my water changes via this. Pipe on the spout straight into the tank.

Thanks @Singularity and @Sean J

I only had 1/8 of that story.

Later Ferdie

 

Hi @f-fish been digging around and found this. ....I just bought on of these will they work for wc's

Thanks in advance

 

It probably will - but it depends on the expected water volume you need to filter on WC day - the larger the filter the more you can filter without replacing the filters them selves.

If you are doing a small volume then this should work without any issues.

Later Ferdie