Awesome news, thankuYou wouldn’t need a full tank of spring water just the % that brought you comfortably into their range, then the same % with every water change.
I will get some asap
Awesome news, thankuYou wouldn’t need a full tank of spring water just the % that brought you comfortably into their range, then the same % with every water change.
Ooh thanks for the tip, I shop at asda so was going to buy from there but I will be careful! So I want just water no added minerals etc?Be cautious of spring water. That is not pure water and will contain minerals so you will have to look at the analysis on the label. And its quite fashionable for spring water to be hard because some quack started a craze by saying that you should only drink hughly basic water - and loads of people believe that.
It also means you have to stick with the same brand - and if its a "budget brand" even then be careful as they may get their spring water from different sources. RO or distilled water is your best bet as you know exactly what you are getting that way.
I hope to have fry so I dropped my water PPM down to 50ppm. I am lucky in the fact that I am on city water that is run through their RO plant. City well water is 228-235 but the lake water is run though the RO plant and my tap water is at 134ppm. I just happen to live in the right part of town. Many bottle water suppliers have RO water. There is a refill station that I can refill my 5 gallon water jugs. They are the same jugs that are on top of water coolers.
Yes, that's right. Next time you are in Asda look at the labels on the bottled water and you'll see how much they contain - look for calcium and magnesium as they are the hardness minerals.
It is pure water that is used to reduce hardness - reverse osmosis (RO), distilled, deionised etc.
I would prefer to use something with zero calcium and magnesium to lower hardness. Those levels will give a hardness round about 7 to 8 dH.
I followed your advice and waited till I found ro water thanku for explaining it so clearlySorry for the confusion.
To summarise:
Your tap water hardness is 16 dH. Bronze cories can go as high as 11 dH while pygmy cories can only go up to 9 dH. Your tap water is too hard for them.
The Asda water has a hardness somewhere between 6 and 9 dH. This is a good hardness for cories.
But it would need to be all bottled water not a mixture or the hardness would still be too high, certainly for the pygmies.
Using all Asda water would mean using 30 litres a week to do water changes on a 60 litre tank - that's 15 bottles. And there's the other consideration mentioned by seangee - Asda may not stick with the same water supply, they may change it.
The other problem in changing from your tap water to Asda water and later changing back to your tap water mixed in with some form of pure water is that you would be switching back and forth between waters with different chemistry. This is not very good for fish. If this was my tank, I'd stick with all tap water until you can sort out some RO water.
Thanku to everyone for your help
good news!!!! I have found somewhere to get ro water from now and I have also found a willing person to go get it for me
So I have ordered more pygmys to increase my total and I will be using mostly ro water in their tank.
I'm thinking at least a 50/50 split between ro and treated tap water? Then after that my subsequent water changes will be split the same ie if I take 40L out I will replace with 20L ro and 20L tap.
How does that sound to everyone?
Yes definitely will test it first, I trust the aquatic shop I got it from but you can never be too careful!Theortically sounds good but its always good to test it before you use it, great news you've found a source of RO water .