Water changes with a water softner

Well it all depends on what way is going to make more work for you. IMO, they both sound fine.
I wouldn't reccommend adding outdoor water straight to the tank since it might be too cold, even in small amounts it would affect the temp, and if its a large tank then doing so many small changed will be a pain in the bum. If its a small tank then the new water temp will affect the tank more.

I see two ways:

You could fill up a new garbage can with water from the outside tap and bring it inside (or use a hose to fill it inside so you dont have to move it), add a heater overnight to raise it up to desired temp.

OR

You could just use your indoor tap water, temp adjusted by the faucet, and add baking soda to raise up the PH.


-Diana

That's not a fun situation to be in. I would think one of two things:

1) Do water changes with inside water and buffer (I do this now, its only a small PITA now that I know how much to dose and how often)

or

2) let water from outside faucet stand for a day to get it to room temp, then do 10-20% change with romm temp water to keep as stable as possible.

I'm really not sure, but I think I like option 1 better in your situation. What's everybody else think?

A good water change will take care of that


I think the using inside water and then adjusting ph is what i would do, since that is what i do now. I use baking soda and everything works well. Even if you didn't change the ph, as long as you have buffers in the tank a 10-15% change wont effect the overall ph very much. And then it would only be like that for a little while until your buffers took care of it (ie-crushed shell).

Household water softeners generally work by exchanging sodium and potassium ions for calcium and magnesium. The water thus "softened" is not actually lower in mineral content at all; it is just more suitable for household applications in that it doesn't clog pipes as badly and is easier to wash with.

Generally, it is better to avoid using water treated in this fashion for fish, especially ones that may be salt intolerant. You say that you have a cichlid tank, but not what kinds of fish are in there. Central American cichlids may not have a problem with salt, but South Americans and West Africans will. Also, the Rift Lake cichlids are not exposed to salt in their water at all (the mineral content there, while very high, does not include any sodium chloride), so they may not do particularly well in it either.

If you decide to use outside water, you should get a trash barrel and bring the water inside and let it sit before using it. Extremely cold water will release extra oxygen when brought suddenly up to tank temperature, and these tiny bubbles can actually harm the fish if they are exposed to them. Also, very small water changes are ineffectual at maintaining water quality, so you should still be doing 10% or more at a time (personally, I never do less than 25%) in order to make the process beneficial for your fish.

Just curious, but I have a water softener as well, and to make sure that I don't get any unwanted salt (sodium chloride) into my aquarium, I just push a bypass valve that is on the water softener unit.

Perhaps you have a bypass valve as well?

Darkblade: excellent point. The water that enters the tank will then be unsoftened, but sodium-free, which can be much less problematic for some fish. That would then more or less solve the problem, as long as the cichlids in question do not require water that is actually soft in aquarium terms (that is, low in mineral content and buffering capacity). If you are trying to keep sensitive species, however, you would then need a reverse osmosis unit to get the GH and KH down to friendly levels (other water softeners such as peat and those awful pH down chemicals don't really work, especially when the water is really hard).

Unfortunately, the bypass valve only prevents new incoming hard water from entering the water softener. All the soft water remaining in the pipes is still soft water until it's all flushed out.

I've been using soft water for my various tanks over the years (both salt/freshwater) without any ill affect. Even though the water is "soft", my gH & pH remains fairly high.

Of course you could always use Aragonite for your substrate which will keep your pH over 8.

Just remembered. Near where my water softener is located, a tap has been installed on the main water supply line before it enters the water softener. Maybe yours has a similar installation?