# Fresh Water Questions



## iupui1299 (Sep 23, 2010)

My family and I have a 55 gallon fresh water tank that is kind of our family hobby. We have been using tap water since we started it about 4 months ago.  Fish seem to be doing great. We have been thinking about switching over to the Reverse Osmossis water. There are a few fish we would like to add that do better in softer water. My question is do you need to add water conditioner to RO water? The water we had before was pretty hard so we had to treat it. Thanks for any help!


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Conditioner is to remove chlorine and chlorimines mainly. It also helps remove heavy metals. You may not need to necessarily treat RO water with conditioner, but having a tank that is 100% RO water is a bad idea also. The hardness in your water is what keeps your ph stable...remove all of that and your left with the potential to have ph crashes which will stress and kill your fish. At the most I would add 50/50. This should knock your hardness in half.

What is your current hardness in kh? What fish is it that isn't doing well in your water?


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## majerah1 (Oct 29, 2010)

Agreed with above.Also I have heard that RO will remove other things like necessary nutrients and minerals that may make plants healthy.


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## chris oe (Feb 27, 2009)

What I heard (and probably you need to read the manual to find out for sure what the model you're considering suggests) is that you have bottles of additives that you add back in after the reverse osmosis, to bring the water back up to the correct level of buffering chemicals and such. Probably the pet store that sells them can also tell you more about what they would do, use 100% or what proportion of tap to r/o. My local pet store sells r/o water that you can cart away in buckets, which is another option if you want to see how that water works out for you, if it does what you want it to or not.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Yes there are gh boosters that put the natural minerals found in water back in like magnesium, calcium, etc.. Not sure though if it brings the natural buffers back in or not. That's all part of your hardness so I'm not sure.


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## mec102778 (Feb 17, 2011)

One of the more experienced members can correct me if I am wrong for the following: Fish are forgiving in their water to slight degrees, an akaline fish for instance that is usally found in water with a PH of 8.4 can tollerate a range from 7.6 to 8.6 but will always do better with the PH as close to 8.4 as possible.

My first suggestion would be not to make a change to the main tank until you know what the change will do. you could use a 5G Bucket and mix and match the water and run tests to see what it does. But if your tank is already established and the fish are happy making a change in the water condition (hard to soft) could be bad for the current fish.

Research the current fish to determine their water parameters, and compare them to the ones you want to add.


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## majerah1 (Oct 29, 2010)

From my experience,I have kept fish that were happiest in PH of 6.0 in water with a PH of 8.4 and they did just fine.The trick is to acclimate slowly,doing the drip method.Messing with the chemestry of the water,to me,is asking for trouble.If you mess up mixing it and add the new water too fast it can have devastating outcomes possibly resulting in fish loss.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Well...if the intent is to change water parameters then adding in RO water with your tap is one of the safest methods to get there.


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## majerah1 (Oct 29, 2010)

That is true.Me though,I would mess it up,lolz.


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## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

I use straight untreated tap water, live plants, and peat moss in the substrate.

Ph rises to 8.4 and higher

But kh stays at 4 and gh stays at 9 degrees and both for years.

Fish that are "suppposed to require a pH of 7 or less" do just fine. Like neon tetras and hachetfish.

I would not recommend you use ro/di

I would recommend peat moss in the substrate and live plants.

I also use no mechanical filter and do no water changes.


my .02


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## iupui1299 (Sep 23, 2010)

Thank you everyone for your replies! I guess the main reason I thought about using the RO water was because I thought it was just better for the fish. After reading I am learning that there is a lot more to it than that. Another thing is I really wanted to add a blue ram. I have read they need a softer water....which is why I started looking into the RO water. I am going to purchase the testing equipment to get a better reading on my ph levels. We have several fish right now which are doing great. We have a black angelfish who the whole family just adores as well as a 5 inch Bala shark. I do not want to do anything that could possibly hurt those fish or any of the others. Thanks again for all input and advice!


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## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

Agreed

best to not fix what's not broken.

Sounds like a good tank.


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