Controlling water stability with pure water?

If you do a water change you'll need to mix the DI and tap water the same ratio everytime to maintain stability.

If you tank is lightly stocked, heavily planted, and low tech you can top off with DI or RO water and only do a water change a couple times a year. This is particular to this type of a setup.

I used to mix distilled with tap to lower KH and thus pH in my tank, but I had a good conversation with a LFS owner who told me I'm just wasting time and money because the fish he and chain store pet stores sells are bred in similar water condition as our tap and the fish will do just fine without altering my tap water. If it wasn't true he'd be out of business because lots of customers would be bringing him dead fish all the time. The most important thing to remember is stability, fish will be healthy in a stable tank. Having said that though I do use distilled/tap water mixture to keep at least my TDS constant for top offs.

I soften my rock hard Ohio water using rain water. It's like anything else, once you get the hang of it, it's no big deal.

Dennis

M00n3at3r said:

We don't really get much rain here though. I used snow melt and i noticed a temporary drop, but it's almost back now. I need to figure out a long term solution though. I really only need to drop the pH a little. It's at like 7.8, 8, so I just want it down to low 7s.

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A nice piece of mopani would drop the ph close to where you want it.

I have super hard water, and I have found it is easiest to just live with it. If things are going wrong in your tank, a water change (or series of them) is often one of the best places to start to get things right again. If you just live with what you have, that water change is going to be so much easier!

My pH is 8.3, GH and KH are in the mid 20's. A huge piece of driftwood has no measurable effect on my water parameters, although it does yellow the water some and the fish seem to like it. I've found that fish such as African rift lake cichlids thrive in my water (no surprise there) and breed to the point of being a nuisance. And most other fish do just fine. A few years ago I tried Cardinal tetras, a species I have avoided for their reputation of being a bit delicate and needing soft acid water. Over a few years time I lost 1 fish out of the 5 I originally purchased. So I tripled my school of them. The second batch is doing just as well.

Unless you are trying to breed finicky wild species, most of what is available in the pet store will do fine in hard alkaline water. Just keep it clean and they are likely to thrive.

On the other hand, I have pretty much failed at plants... So if you are trying to do plants, I have no advice!

As far as chemistry is concerned, you will always have to cut your tap with distilled water to keep your altered parameters. If you do every water change with tap, eventually you will make your way back to the tap water parameters.

wren

There are only a few fish like cardinals that have trouble as adults in hard water (they have a lower ability to excrete excess minerals and end up with calcified organs in hard water). But most fish are able to function fine in harder water. The key point is breeding, hard water will harden fish eggs membranes faster and that prevents fertilization. The young of many of those required soft water for breeding fish will grow better in harder water though because the harder water supplies minerals for their bones.

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I've got 1250 square feet of collection surface, so for each inch of rain that falls, I get about 750 gallons of rain water. To get my Ohio water close to neutral 6.8pH - 7.2pH, I use an 18:1 ratio of rain to well water.



Dennis