Blending water... Hard & thru whole house Softener & RO... what to expect???

[Magnum Man]

so the water that has previously gone into my tanks, has all been through my softener ( we have hard well water & the whole house goes through the softener )... pre tank tests of the water look like this...
Iron...0
Copper... 0
Nitrates... 0
Nitrites... 0
Chlorine... 0
GH... 25
Alkalinity...300 ( max on my test strips )
Carbonate Hardness... 300 ( max on my test strips )
ph... 8.4 ( max on my test strips )

the GH in most of my tanks test at 75 ( not sure why that is higher than the base water??? )

I'm installing an RO unit, & will be running the RO into a graduated 30 gallon plastic drum, that I can add trace elements as needed... I unusually do a 30-35% water change weekly, but no longer than every 2 weeks... I know ph, & many of the readings are on logarithmic curves... any guesses where I would be after a 30% water change the 1st time with straight RO water???

I would like to have a few soft water tanks, & I'm willing to use straight RO, with minerals added back... just trying to figure out what is likely to happen 1st water change, & after the 2nd change

 

[seangee]

pH, as you say, is logarithmic and affected by other factors so that is impossible to predict.
Everything else is linear so you could just use a spreadsheet - example for GH at 30% w/c

 

[Byron]

Just to clarify the numbers. GH is 25, is that 25 dH or 25 ppm [ppm = mg/l]? The Alkalinity at 300 I assume is ppm (?), and presumably the test strip measures GH and KH in the same unit, so the GH is then 25 ppm?

 

[Magnum Man]

I think so… I can check the directions to confirm….

So the peat beads I added to 2 of my canister filters is starting to soften, however the 45 gallon is nearly as dark as coffee… just wanted to test that before the RO gets installed… I would not be happy with the color, even if it gave me soft water

 

[Colin_T]

If you have hard tap water, you don't need to add minerals to the reverse osmosis (r/o) water. Just mix some tap water with some r/o water for the desired GH.

You were having problems with softwater fishes dying straight after being added to tanks. You might have been killing them with sodium. Ion exchange units in houses often replace calcium and magnesium with sodium. If the GH is high (and it appears to be), you might have been getting a lot of sodium in the water, which was killing the fish. It could also be a combination of extremely hard water and sodium, and other factors.

You should check the waste water ratio on the reverse osmosis unit. Some are better than others but they all waste a lot of water.

-----------------

SOLAR STILL
You can make a solar still to give you pure water until you get the r/o unit set up. It would give you pure water, no waste water and be free to make pure water, it just requires a bit of sunlight. And from what I have seen on the news lately, America is nice and warm so you could probably get a lot of water purified.

Get a large plastic storage container and put it outside in the sun.
Pour a bucket of water into the storage container.
Put a clean bucket in the middle of the storage container. Have a rock in the bucket to stop it floating around.
Put the lid on the storage container.
Put a rock or small weight on the lid in the middle, so the lid sags above the bucket.

As the sun heats up the container, water will evaporate and condense on the underside of the lid. The water will run towards the centre and drip into the bucket. When the bucket is full of water, you put it into a holding container and put the bucket back in the storage container with another bucket of tap water.

You get pure water with a pH of 7.0, 0 GH, 0KH and no wasted water, no power used and it's cheap to set up.

 

[Magnum Man]

That was my concern with the soft water… and since the whole house is softened , through the softener it might be easier or better to use all RO water, going forward, rather than blending RO and softener water??? If there are too many sodium ions, it may be better to add a mineral supplement, that’s made for fish

I could collect rain water, but we've had very little rain lately... the buckets of water up & down the basement stairs is the main problems with condensed or rain water collection...

 

[Magnum Man]

another question... so first off, our water is very hard from the well, so I think all the water faucets in the house are through the water softener... once I put the RO in my fish room, it would be hard to do anything but RO into my tanks... I suppose I could add back some more softener water ( but that doesn't sound like the best way to go )... & I'm planning on diluting that out of what is already in the tanks, with the RO water during water changes...

if I wanted to do another rainbow tank ( been thinking about a tank of the smaller varieties ) or an African tank... I would assume I can just mix more of the aquarium mineral blend in to make the RO water hard again, just without the softener sodium ions???

this kind of answers my own question, but this is a picture of the product label... ( I've not bought yet, if there are better options, please let me know...

 

[Byron]

Something is wrong here, in the understanding. The GH you confirm is 25ppm. That is very soft water. You said this was pre-softener, so straight from the well with no filtering or softening. Correct? That is very soft water. GH at 25ppm is equivalent to 1.3 dH.

The Alkalinity or carbonate hardness is a different parameter, and it is very high. This will prevent changes to the pH, so it will remain what it is in the well water.

A comment on mixing RO and "mineralized" water or using Replenish. This depends upon the fish species. If they are soft water, you would be better not mixing anything, just use the water from the well pre-softener. [The KH is a different matter.] If you decide on fish requiring harder water, like some rainbows, livebearers, rift lake cichlids, that tank need the GH raised considerably. The GH of the well water is no where near sufficient. Using some sort of mineral additive would be ncessary. These fish must have calcium and magnesium in the water in order to function properly. But all soft water species do not, the GH of the well water is fine for these. Again this is only with respect to GH.

 

[Magnum Man]

sorry, the water is not soft... ( said that at least a dozen times ) the writing is so small I couldn't read the fine print... it is 300 mg/L ( maxed out on the test strips ) that is 17ish dGH... everything I'm reading says that is hard ( too many scales for the same thing )

I could not read the scale ( as the print was so fine ) until I printed this...

 

[Byron]

sorry, the writing is so small I couldn't read the fine print... it is 300 mg/L ( maxed out on the test strips )

What is, the GH or the KH? Previously the GH was confirmed at 25ppm, the KH at 300ppm.

 

[Magnum Man]

both are maxed out at 300 mg/L

 

[Magnum Man]

BTW, I did not say ( or at least mean to say ) that any tested water, that I posted results from, were presoftener... every spigot in the house has been through the softener... the water is so hard mechanical things quit working... in fact, we have 4 hydrants ( outside faucets ) that were on the un softened well water, & they are all broken right now... so until I get those fixed, for the outside animals, I'm drawing softened water from the house... I may be able to find a bleed hole or some such, in the well pit to get enough water to sample... but it's hard... as it is, we go through house softeners about every 4 -5 years...

wondering how long my RO unit will last, because of how hard the water is here

all 4 of the bottom tests on the strips posted above are at or above the maximum the strips can test for...

 

[Byron]

I assumeyou have had a professional test made of the well water if you drink it. Maybe you don't, but the point here is that it may contain high minerals that are injurious to humans. Yo would want to know.

Going on from that, any water for the fish must come from the well not through any softener. I agree with another member who suggested the softener might have been the cause of so many rapid deaths. But going forward, you want the well water or some pure water (RO, distilled, rain if otherwise safe, alone or mixed according to fish species needs). So you need to know the GH, KH and pH of the well water on its own. You cannot begin to consider mixes without knowing these parameters. Or you can use straight RO if soft water fish species.

 

[Magnum Man]

I would have to replumb the house... if I can't run the RO from the softener fed water, I guess I'll just dispose of the fish hobby... we tried running the well water into the house before... threw away much plumbing & fixtures, not going there again...

last test on the well water was 20 years ago, & it was safe to drink, but very hard... this is my wife's family's century farm... everything here has been in her family for over 100 years...

 

[Byron]

I would have to replumb the house... if I can't run the RO from the softener fed water, I guess I'll just dispose of the fish hobby... we tried running the well water into the house before... threw away much plumbing & fixtures, not going there again...

last test on the well water was 20 years ago, & it was safe to drink, but very hard... this is my wife's family's century farm... everything here has been in her family for over 100 years...

I can't help with the softener and RO unit, as I have never needed RO fortunately. Someone will know though.