water

[madworld1]

i have a tank that holds 640lt of water and was told to use RO water i changed it bit by bit over a few months now as money is tight the cost of the water has rissen to £4 for 75lt i want to know if going back to tap water thats treated is all that bad.

 

[Bloo]

First a few questions:

1) what fish are you keeping ?
2) why did you change to RO ?
3) what are your stats (GH & KH & PH) if you do not use RO water ?

 

[Tolak]

Depends on the type of fish, & how your tap water tests. I've been using tap for years, ph is 7.7, pretty hard, but the fish do fine.

If you are going to change from ro to tap, do it slowly so the fish can get acclimated to the new water.

Tolak

 

[madworld1]

FISH lots of tetra,plecostomus,clown loach,clown ruby cichlid,corydoras,molly,guppy i changed water on advise from shop and the guy there knows hisfish but may want to make a few quid

 

[madworld1]

not sure what readings were b4 i changed to RO WATER

 

[Bloo]

LOL I sort of guessed you keep fish but I wanted to know if there was a specific reason (such as trying to breeding) or keeping Angels / Discus or other types of fish that require a certain type of water - often only achieved with RO water.

Well it's really hard to tell you what right or wrong unless we have some indication of your water stats. You might live in a part of the world where the tap water quality is very poor and harsh. By all means it should be OK to revert back to using tap water (over a period of time) but without knowing what sort of tap water you're talking about it's impossible to say

 

[Bloo]

not sure what readings were b4 i changed to RO WATER

OK, well in that case, I suggest you ask your LFS to test your tap water for you and tell us what your GH, KH and PH readings are. If you have an established tank (which I understand you have) there is little point in giving us readings for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.

If you'd like to know more about GH, KH and PH in general, here is a very good website / article.

 

[madworld1]

I SEEM TO HAVE TROUBLE WITH PHOSPHAT EVEN WITH RO WATER THE WATER HERE (SUSSEX ENGLAND) IS HARD, I USED TO FILL BUCKETS WITH TAP WATER ADD WATER CONDITIONER BUT MAY NOT HAVE WAITED LONG ENOUGH TO LET IT GET TO WORK AS I WAS TOLD TEN MINUTES WAS LONG ENOUGH

 

[dwarfgourami]

I imagine your water would be very similar to mine here in Hampshire (=cows crapping on chalk= high nitrates and as hard as nails). I have been using ordinary tap water and had no problems though I do keep a couple of bits of bogwood in the cory tank to bring the ph down. The lfs also use tap water so the fish are used to it. If you do change over you probably need to do it slowly as mentioned above.

 

[OohFeeshy]

Even in hard water you don't really need anything to alter it. I'm in Portsmouth, and don't use anything special. You lfs will have the same water as you, don't panic or mess around with it too much.