Question About Home Water Purifiers And Update On My Tank Stock

[mahdira]

Hi everyone! I have a quick question about water purifiers. We've recently gotten a home water purifier (Puronics, which is used by NASA in space to..."purify water" and by Coke and Pepsi to make Aquafina and Dasani!). It's really neat and now our tap water tastes *awesome*~

But I'm not sure what to do about water changes for the fish. It's the kind of water softener that uses salt, but the water isn't salty. And I guess that the water is now technically very "soft"? It's dechlorinated straight out of the tap, so do I still need to add dechlorinator? I'm so confused and I've read a bunch of different things online, ranging from "use it straight out of the tap" to "don't use it at all and use prepared water from the LFS." I thought I'd ask here for some help!

~~~~~

Also, my 10G tank was previously way overstocked with a pair of "spotted African leaf fish"/Ctenopoma Acutirostre. I have since rehomed both fish to someone who has them in a nice big 55G. Unfortunately, they neglected to tell me that they had some neons in there...well, they don't have their neons anymore ;;;; I feel bad, but I was very up front with them about the fish, so... Apparently the Ctenopoma acutirostre are doing great, at least. ;;;

My heavily planted tank now has 3 little otocinclus and three apple/mystery snails (one very large, two very small...I suspect that the large snail is nibbling on them...). The water levels are great and I think I'm ready to add some "megafauna". The LFS recommended a pair of Kribensis, and I think they're beautiful fish (sexual dimorphism makes selected a male and female easy). The male gets to be about 4" and the female about 3". I have a nice hollow piece of "driftwood" for them to hide in and there are a ton of thriving plants, so it seems like it would be a good environment for little cichlids, especially since Kribensis reportedly tolerate a wide range of water conditions and are fairly forgiving fish. I dunno, we'll see!

 

[OldMan47]

If you have a home water softener that uses salt to regenerate the resin bed, it is indeed softening your water for things such as washing clothing. Unfortunately the mineral content is higher, not lower, than your raw tap water. It is not the kind of thing used to make purified water by the large bottlers. Those people almost always use a reverse osmosis process and then add back some specific salts for flavoring. Each one ends up with a slightly different salt mix that makes their own water taste a little different than the next bottler's water so they are able to sell the flavor they have produced.
Your kribensis is not a bad suggestion for a tank that small as long as that is all that you add to the tank. You must take into account that kribs are not at all friendly when they decide to start breeding. Even the otocinclus will be threatened when your kribs decide to breed.