Soft water/Ro unit

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Pyramid_Party

Pyramid_Party

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Aug 6, 2008
4,916
4
68
Monterey, CA
Hi,


Anyone got experience with this? I may be keeping some south american fish and need to drop the PH and hardness. Right now I am at a PH around 7.8-8.0 and water is fairly hard.


I have not clue about how to work an RO unit and maintain softer/acidic water. What would a routine be like? How would and should I first start to soften the water so that fish and plants do not go through shock? What about water changes and top offs? What are the dos and don'ts? I just don't wanna make any noob mistakes. I'd appreciate if someone helped me with the ins and outs about this. Thank you.
 
I would just use your tap water to keep the pH stable and prevent swings, which is much more important than meeting a certain pH high or low requirement.

I have angelfish that live, spawn and thrive in my liquid concrete my city calls water. Even the eggs hatch and the babies thrive in the 8.0-8.2 pH water.
 
Hmmm that's interesting. Because I hear that rams and angels etc wont breed and babies won't survive if the water is not soft/acidic. And I was considering purchasing an RO Unit. What kind of Angels do you have BTW? Where did you get them also?
 
These particular ones that have bred, and the babies were viable were koi angelfish that I got from a guy who breeds them in Texas. He drove up here for a club meeting and auctioned some of his babies. They were nickel sized when I got them.

I'm trying to upload a video to PB...not sure if it'll work.
 
If it were me, I would try to breed them in your tap water, and see if clean water with a well cycled filter will do the trick. I use temperature fluctuations and feeding to trigger my angels to breed, this may or may not work with the rams. IME, messing with pH and hardness causes more problems than are actually worth messing with it. Frequent water changes will also help a lot (25% 2xper week is ideal, but I do 50% weekly.)

I also read that the water needs to be soft/acidic for the angelfish eggs to hatch, but I decided to wait it out and see, and I had wigglers three days after they were laid.

Here are my little angel babies :)

Okay, I don't know how to make PB post the video for you...
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v234/rawkmysawksoff/Fish Pix/?action=view&current=AngelFish.mp4
 
Yeah I am just afraid that if I put the cash down for some EB rams and they die, I'd be upset. I've heard from some people that its better to use soft water. But I don't know. EB Rams aren't cheap, at LFS they are $25, and like $70 for a pair online. Plus I don't like LFS Rams, they are poor quality.
 
I don't personally have rams, but I believe most people have trouble with their high intolerance of nitrates in the water. I believe if they are acclimated appropriately and kept clean, you won't kill them, but may not be able to get them to breed.

Do you have a TDS meter, or could you have access to one? If you decide to buy an RO and go that route, you will definitely need to monitor your water as you make it, and a TDS would be the best way to do that.
 
Total Dissolved Solids meter. It will help you pinpoint the perfect mix of tap to RO should you go that route. Straight RO or DI water is not a good option, so if you were to add back minerals manually, or mix tap and RO/DI, you would want to be able to monitor it. Kind of like how Saltwater peeps use a Hydrometer or Refractometer to determine their specific gravity (salinity) of the water they are using.
 
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