Szat Clear Water

[slippery slimecoat]

I am sorry to say but you are following a path to nowhere. Looking at water parameters just through NO3 is just not right. These resins release free chlorides which negatively affect fish blood accid management and put them to stress. We have had an extensive debate over it and the unilateral conclusion is that freshwater fish just don't like these chlorides. Some of them more and some if them less. Africans not at all. My chlorides levels out after a week of using no3 ion exchange were 150mg/l compared to 15mg/l coming from tap. It's like dosing 1 table spoons of salt per 10 gallons of water. Plus these free chlorides may have different affinity the loosely joint chloride and sodium ions from salt. Perhaps you should be looking at other ways how to get source water with lower nitrates than you currently have from tap.

I wouldn't call it a path to nowhere. It's been and is a learning process (for me, if not for anyone else). I'm not endorsing this product. Simply documenting what I've experienced with what basic test kits I have. If you can instruct me on how to test for chlorides, I will certainly look into it. If you have links to these discussions you've had with others, I'd enjoy reading more about this.

 

[malawipraha]

The problem is that it takes a lot to kill the fish and also you might not experience problems right away. Wild caught African predators are more sensitive kind so I have seen negative impact including them getting bloat pretty fast which caused me to dive into this issue and the conclusion based on reading tons of scientific research papers confirmed what I d's trying to research. Just Google chloride cells in fish gills, how they manage pH of fish body, principles of osmotic pressure in those cells, and make conclusions yourself. Our discussion was in Czech language on a closed Facebook group so there is no way to share it for you simply. However, as I mentioned, different fish have different sensitivity for this. Recently I saved a fish tank of 200 gallons where owner at the end disclosed that he used water softener in his restaurant where the fish tank was located... the fish survived for about a year, many of them died but lot of them survived. They were awful but lived. You couldn't appreciate more the sight of them when they got pure water after I found out.

 

[malawipraha]

For chloride ions test you must go for professional labs unfortunately. Over here it costs about 50 dollars per test.

 

[slippery slimecoat]

Interesting. I will do a bit of Google searching as time permits. While not wanting to sound like I am discounting your experience, I do believe it is worth noting the volume and application in which you used the resin versus a couple small bags floating in my sump. I cannot help but to assume I'd see much less chloride than what you have by the way you stated using the resin in an earlier post. Think it is also worth noting again as well that I am continuing to do 70-80% weekly water changes while using this. So hopefully not letting anything build up too dramatically.

 

[slippery slimecoat]

Just a quick update (or perhaps lack thereof). I have been extremely busy with other aspects of life in the last month since the last post. I have not tested the water. I also missed one weekly water change about two weeks after I recharged the Szat Clearwater resin. With that said, behaviors and appetites all seem well. Saw no noticeable ill effects from the missed water change. That's not saying I condone the lack of water changes. But... life happens. And thought it was worth noting the fish (at least visually) showed no signs of stress from it.