Treating R.O water

[breezer40]

I have just purchase a R.O unit which I will be using for freshwater fish. My reason for doing this is because of losing a whole tank of plecs due to chemicals being added to my water supply by the water company.

I have the R.O unit all working but would like to know what people use to make the water safe for fish. Adding tap water is not an option because of the reason mentioned.

I have been told by my LFS that kent R-right is probally not the best thing for freshwater fish (he said it was more for marines) and have been given some Kent Black water expert. Has anyone used this and if so what are your thoughts..also any other products you recommend?

 

[Gavmoore23]

I treat my ro water with Sera Mineral Salt & Sera KH Plus

 

[Lateral Line]

Kent RO Right is fine for freshwater tropicals. What you need to be VERY aware of, is RO water has no buffering capacity and negligable mineral content. It will tend to wards acidity because small amount of CO2 will disolve in it. Blackwater extract will make it more acidic. Thus you will have ultra soft poorly buffered acidic water - this is great if you want to keep and particulaly breed difficult blackwater river fish.

If you put fish from your lfs into the tank, that have probably been used to alkali, hard mineral rich water, they will suffer extreme and probably fatal systemic and osmotic shock. You can, of course, acclimate fish back to their natural water type, (I notice all of your fish are soft acidic types), but it takes time, I typically quarantine and adjust for 2-3 weeks before putting new fish into established RO tanks.

No short answer therefore. What you need to do is decide what your strategy is, do you want your RO tanks to be "clean" tapwater type tanks, easy to maintain, easy to stock etc., or do you want the hassle of continually monitoring your water and tweaking your chemistry, but have a better environment for your fish? Or some middle ground - it is easy, for example, to up your buffering capacity with some NaHCO3, still very soft, but more stable.

Easy huh!