Softened Water?

[pacman]

I have always used unfiltered, unsoftened water from our outside tap for water changes.

We live in a hard water area and have a water softener (block salt type) that treats the water supply inside the house and there is also a seperate, unsoftened but filtered water supply in the kitchen for drinking/cooking with.

May seem like a daft question, but I was wondering if it's ok to use the softened water in my aquarium?

 

[Katty]

I actually ran across this yesterday while wandering around the internet.
From Wet Web Media

Domestic water softeners

Domestic water softeners do not produce soft water in the sense that aquarists mean. What domestic water softeners do is remove the temporary hardness (such as carbonates) that potentially furs up pipes and heaters by replacing it with permanent hardness (such as chlorides) that does not. While you can pass this softened water through a reverse-osmosis filter to remove the permanent hardness as well, until you have done so, you shouldn’t consider the softened water as being suitable for soft water fish.

In fact, aquarists are divided on whether the resulting softened water is safe for keeping fish at all. The odd balance of minerals in softened water is not typical of any of the environments from which tropical fish are collected. While the chloride levels are much higher than those soft water fish are adapted to, the levels of carbonate hardness are too low for the health of hard water fishes like Rift Valley cichlids, goldfish, and livebearers. So the safe approach is not to use it in any aquarium, and instead draw water from the unsoftened drinking water source in the kitchen.

 

[Mikaila31]

I never had any issues fish wise with softened water. My plants definitely seem happier without it, the switch from softened to softened threw some of my tanks off balance much more then I expected. Brought up some algae issues. Fish eggs are definitely easier to hatch now.

 

[pacman]

Thank you for your replys

I was worried in case the water from the softener would have an adverse effect on the fish and plants. I think I might just stick to the tap water I have been using.

Thanks again.


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