• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Tds/ro tap water

Samjpikey

Member
Joined
22 Mar 2013
Messages
859
Location
Devon
Hi guys .
I've never really kept 'designer' shrimp before so Im in need of some opinions please.

My tap water has a tds of 66 , kh of 2 and gh of 3.
I live in Devon and the water is nice and soft :)
Is it really worth me messing with ro water ?
I tested my water at the end of the week before a water change and the p/ms are

Tds 165
Gh5-6
Kh 3-4 .
(I have Ada soil )

Cheers
 
To Raise hardness and tds to suit your shrimp. I presume the tds in your tank comes from ei and tank waste.
My tap waters like yours and i struggle keeping crs in my high tech cube. I'm thinking about a low tech shrimp tank and using shrimp minerals to get the right water parameters when i try again
 
Ideally what parameters do we need to keep crs ? A shrimp breeder told me to try lower my gh for crs :/
 
Couldn't say about the hardness sam.
Tds should be about 150-180ppm
Alan at keen shrimp said my tap water was nearly perfect for crs/cbs when i ordered my painted red sakuras and asked a few questions. he also said the rules don't seem to apply when keeping them in a high tech tank but too much co2 is a problem that will kill them very quickly.
 
Tds 130 -160, gh5-6. Kh would ideally be 0-1. I use rainwater re mineralized to tds 145. My tap is good at tds45 gh2 kh0-1 but the water companies can randomly add stuff.
 
Hi Sam,

He probably meant Kh should be 0 - 5, not Gh.
Your tap water sounds excellent, you obviously can't test it for everything as Lindy says - My water company added something that killed a large number of my Neocaradina a few months ago... :(
If it were me, I would add dechlorinator and some Salty Shrimp GH+ to bring the TDS up a little (150ish) and test this on a small tank of CRS before anything expensive.

Do you know what the pH is after 24 hours?
 
Yep I'm adding a dechlorinator without fail , always have but no I'm also going to start letting the water stand for 24hrs before.
Not sure of the tap ph after 24 hrs , I will see what the is .
The tanks ph is 6.4 and drops to around 5.4 after co2 .
Cheers
 
I initally used treated tap water, but was never completely happy. the way the CRS sometimes reacted after water changes was a little worrying.

Having kept marines for years, i had a RO system available. Furthermore i was concetrating on breeding CRS and Blue Bolts.

The parameters that work successfully for me are.
Temp 22c
TDS 130
PH 6.5
GH 5
This is consistently achieved by using. RO. Salty shrimp GH, and ADA amazonia.
 
My water company added something that killed a large number of my Neocaradina a few months ago...
Which is why in UK we must use dechlorinator. Most water companies use chlorine in the water, easily removed by all dechlorinators as well as self degassing in 24hours, but some are now using chloramine and also put chloramine in the water in emergencies ie pipe burst. In my last house we had a pipe burst out in the road and I received a leaflet pushed though the door that said "due to water contamination from the burst pipe extra "chlorine" (read chloramine) was being injected in the water and one of the items not to do was use it for fish tanks".
 
Glad to looked through the posts before asking the same question. Just got my tds pen and read 41 tds :) also from Devon. Glad I checked it before shelling out for a ro unit.
 
Back
Top