Cycling My Tank :0

[coco*butter]

Day 17
24 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 0- 0.25ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 72 was 76 all this time until now

Added Ammonia 7.5ml at 5:00pm

 

[waterdrop]

Hello everyone and thank you for your advice! I have a hose outside of my house that I use to water my grass and garden, that the one that doesnt go through the system so it straight from the city water. That is the one I use to fill up my tank with my python hose.
Anyhow is my R/O water still good?
Thanks again

We've still got a lot to get straightened out about this. Be sure to post up complete stats on the water that comes from the outside hose (and therefor is not the RO water or the house-softened water.) RO water is special, it is the one way that we actually -lower- pH reliably when that's absolutely necessary but it must be mixed in some ratio with "normal tap water" because normal tap water has calcium and magnesium and other things we *want* for both fish and plants. Anyway, that's just to get us started...

WD (still hoping OM47 or some of the other RO/softener experts come along...)

 

[coco*butter]

Day 18
24 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 0.0ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 5.0-PM {Nitrate}
PH= 72

Added Ammonia 7.5ml at 6:00pm
Added Ammonia 0.5ml at 7:00pm =4PPM


TAP WATER
CITY WATER
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 0-ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 0.5-PM {Nitrate}
PH= 74

 

[waterdrop]

OK, good that you've got your source water stats posted up so we can refer to them later if necessary. 0.5ppm NO3 in the tap water is not so terrible, it just means water changes should not be expected to get your tank NO3 level -below- that of course.

Any chance you have a spigot that taps off of the water supply -prior- to it going through the RO unit but still indoors? Out of interest, would there be any physical problems with being able to -add- a tap (a simple hose feeder faucet type piece of hardware) to the line prior to the source water going through the RO unit but after it has come in from the outside?

Can't remember if I'm repeating myself but the problem with RO water is that it needs to be -mixed- with regular tap water so that you get some "hardness" into the water. Fish need that to protect their cells from osmotic problems. Also, live plants need some of those nutrients too.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[coco*butter]

Day 19
25 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 0.ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 68 maybe 70

Added Ammonia 8.0ml at 8:00pm

 

[coco*butter]

still Day 19
12 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 1.0ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60-62 Ph going way down and fast

Atte: WD- me and hubby are try to figure out what your trying to say. That you want the tap water to go through the R/O and skipping the softer-water system or just haveing some some tap go to my house without going to any of them?
thank so much, we still looking into it.

 

[waterdrop]

I'm thinking that a tap-off prior to *either* of them (ie. straight from the source with no softener and no RO) would be useful. It might still turn out that you would end up combining some of that "source" water and some "RO" water in some sort of percentages, but I know for sure you won't want all RO water. I'll try to PM OM47 and tip him off to this thread, he's the expert if he has time as he has to fool with this sort of water stuff himself I think. Note that you're probably ideally going to want to do KH/GH tests in addition to your pH and other tests you already do. API and TetraTest and some others make KH/GH liquid kits, so you might be on the watch for those. They're usually not at the LFS.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[coco*butter]

Day 20
25 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 0- ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 64

Added Ammonia 8.0ml at 11:30pm

 

[OldMan47]

The garden hose connection is usually set up to give raw water because the salt in the "softened" water will kill the plants in the garden. That is a good choice for refilling a freshwater tank. For a salt water tank you would use RO water and treat it with the salt mixes they sell for that purpose.

A softener uses an ion exchange process where sodium ions, Na+, are substituted for calcium ions, Ca++ or magnesium ions, Mg++. Because of the charge difference, it takes 2 sodium ions to replace one calcium or magnesium ion. The end result is more total dissolved solids in the water but it is also what people want in their water. The calcium and magnesium are the things that make soap hard to dissolve and rinse away and are also the thing that makes "hard water deposits" inside the pipes and around fixtures like the faucet in the kitchen.

The problem, from a fish perspective, is that fish with a reputation for needing soft water really need water that is low in total dissolved solids. The TDS in "softened water" has been raised by a domestic water softener so it makes a bad choice for soft water fish. For the soft water fish that I am trying to breed, I am mixing 1/3 RO water and 2/3 tap water to end up with the desired TDS. For most fish to thrive, the RO in the mix is not necessary but for these particular killies, I was advised to run my water around 200 ppm of TDS for best results. My tap water at 325 ppm of TDS was just a bit too hard for them.

 

[coco*butter]

Still Day 20
12 hour check
Amonnia= 0.25pm
N02= 1.0ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Atte: OldMan Thank so much for your infornmation really help clear it up. So am good with the house hose to fill tank and treat the water before adding in tank when fish are in. I added buckets to the list with the other kits I will need to get. So when I do a 50% water change in the furture, I will need to treat it before adding, so the python hose wont work there either, just to remover, not to fill. How would I fill the tank with so much water that need to be treated?
Thank you

 

[bagu]

brilliant diary you are keeping!

 

[waterdrop]

brilliant diary you are keeping!

Yeah! I like her colors... combined with the avatar I feel like I'm visiting a happy nursery! Keep plugging away with the water chemistry, I don't understand it all either!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[coco*butter]

Day 21
24 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 0- 0.25ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Added Ammonia 8.0ml at 11:30pm

Still Day 21
12 hour check
Amonnia= 1.0pm
N02= 1.0ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Thank you for your nice comment guys lol. What is it that u dont understand water drop?

 

[waterdrop]

Day 21
24 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= 0- 0.25ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Added Ammonia 8.0ml at 11:30pm

Still Day 21
12 hour check
Amonnia= 1.0pm
N02= 1.0ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Thank you for your nice comment guys lol. What is it that u dont understand water drop?

The stuff about the well water, the water softener and the RO water. I'm not good at diagnosing and working out the best way to deal with that situation. OM47 is the best one I know for that and when he gets going I still sometimes don't understand all of it.

For instance, I think he's explained some about what a water softener does, but I still think we need to diagnose your situation and figure out what would be best for you. I actually can't remember what your source water pH is, did you tell us that? And I know we don't know what your general hardness and carbonate hardness are.

I guess the things we -do- know for sure are that we won't want to use output from the house softener for the fish tank, right? And we (well, I) know that RO combined with normal tap water is a way to bring pH down if that needs to be accomplished, but we'd still need to feel confident that your source water is "ok." I'm not sure we've discussed that yet.

I guess what I'm saying is that my suggestion that a tap to supply the source water (prior to it going through the softener or the RO unit) was a "speculation," not a piece of advice and I'm still hoping for an explicit analysis of the situation by OM47 and or others of us to the extent that that sort of thing can be done over the internet...

Hope that makes better sense,
~~waterdrop~~

 

[coco*butter]

Day 22
24 hour check
Amonnia= 50.pm
N02= - 0.25ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-80ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Dear WD I did added the the tap water info. This water doesnt go through the water softner nor R/O. This the water I use to fill my tank.