MamaBarb said:
Well Onyx - you might not be a biologist, but you might be a lawyer :laugh:
Lol.. I'll take it as a compliment.
BTW Onyx - I see your loc is listed as Gulfport - Ivan did you guys pretty bad as well - did you and your fishies come thru OK?
Ayup. Came through just fine. (Thanks for asking.
) I actually ran away from the storm, went to stay with some relatives in Jacksonville, FL. The majority of the storm (from what I saw on tv, and from what the neighbors said) went east of Gulfport, we just got a bunch of rain and some wind here. Everybody say a prayer or something (for the non-religous) for those people east of me! They were hit bad.
Vanlaar: Thats no problem.. ask anyone that knows me, I like to hear myself talk anyway.
About salmonella: I wouldn't be surprised to find it in some tanks, but I wouldn't think it would be in all that many.. I dunno, I'm not a microbiologist either.
About RO water: I know of many many aquarists that use RO water as the only source of water that goes into their tanks. RO water (unless the RO unit isn't working right) should only contain water, and nothing else. It will have some dissolved air from dispensing it, and perhaps some metals if metal piping is used after the water is treated. With this in mind, you should know what you are doing when you use RO water. It has NO buffering ability (it is as soft as water gets), so a very small amount of acid or base added to it will affect the pH alot more than it would in hard water. Other than that, using RO water is fine. Some fish are happier in soft water, they just need the fish keeper to keep tabs on the pH very closely. (Discus and neons are two examples that come to mind)
My tap water is extremely soft , so I wouldn't be worried about putting some RO water in my tanks instead of tap water to do water changes. But if someone has very hard water out of the tap, the pH and hardness will be affected, stressing out the fish. Depending on how bad the water is in the tank, the stress from a pH swing might be less than the stress from the water already in the tank. If I had hard water and I had to use RO water I would just add a little bit at a time. (I would think that a high ammonia level is more stressful than a mild/moderate pH swing) I don't have any experience with hard water though, so I could be wrong.
