Softest water in the UK!

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 29 Jul 2003, 13:44

Although this is an article based in cosmetics "research", it interested me as I have often thought that Edinburgh water was unusually soft.

http://www.edinburghnews.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=817642003

Jools

DeLBoD · Post by **DeLBoD** » 29 Jul 2003, 19:16

So what are you're tap water parameters then?.

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 30 Jul 2003, 13:23

When it comes out of the tap it's about pH 7.5. Drops to 6 within 48 hours of being turned over by a filter.

Jools

DeLBoD · Post by **DeLBoD** » 30 Jul 2003, 13:42

I got ph 6.8 - 7 from the tap and drops to ph 6.2 - 6.4 after water treatment.
And GH 1-2
Thanks.

Post by **Barbie** » 31 Jul 2003, 21:12

Please don't take this wrong, but I hate you both!

*can't find the green with envy monster icon*

Barbie

Post by **Shane** » 01 Aug 2003, 00:19

Barbie,
I know that Spokane tap water is really horrible, but there are some very key advantages to hard water. First of all, you are very unlikely to have deadly pH crashes. You are also better off for spawning many spp. because by adding rain or RO water you can massivly change the water's conductivity, pH, etc and trick your fishes. Bogota tap is darn near pure rain water. This makes it harder to get fishes to spawn as adding rain or RO water has almost no effect on the water's chemistry. It is also impossible to buy "hard" water while you can easily buy a few cheap gallons of distilled water and change your chemistry. The only fish that I have had spawn for me here were Ancistrus, which pretty much spawn year round even in nature. I think that nothing spawns because the water chemistry is just constant all year round. I also am not heating my tanks, so with a constant temp and constant chemistry, nobody is getting any signals to start reproducing.
-Shane

Sid Guppy · Post by **Sid Guppy** » 01 Aug 2003, 10:56

My tapwater here's like this:
pH 8 (and it doesn't drop!)
Gh 11
KH 6-7

and with a little bad luck it sometimes contains nitrates and phosphates too; because there's about 130 million chickens and 80 million pigs sh****ng in our provice and -in a dry period with little rain- it seeps through, to the deep water in the ground.....

Wash your clothes with it, drink your coffee, do the dishes,take a shower....oink oink!

For that last matter, I've got whopping good biological filtration rigged up. And I use iron to take out the phosphates (in case of the big Rifttank, a handfull of nails in the filter)

As for the other:
Choose your fish wisely! And use tons of peat if you're attempting to breed riverine rainforest species.

So far bred in the last year only:
Ancistrus

(yeah, I know, anyone breeds 'em)
Lophiobagrus brevispinis, twice (second nest was eaten by cichlids; they're working on the third now, first nest: root around forum for pics)
Synodontis polli (eggs fungused, but working on a solution for that)
Synodontis petricola dwarf, repeatedly
dozens of Riftlake cichlids

Well, I'm off to wash my hair with Pork&Fowl-anti dandruff

Post by **Barbie** » 02 Aug 2003, 08:46

Sheesh Shane, want to trade? I'll send you some of my water if you'll send me some of yours?

When I was in Anchorage the tap water was a pH of 7.8, but 3 degrees kH and 8 degrees gH. It was very easy to knock the pH down with a days pretreatment in a barrel and some acid buffer, and it would stay relatively stable. I loved it! I moved there from Kansas City, where the water came out of the tap like a liquid rock. kH 17 and gH 25+ with a pH of 8.4 out of the tap that would buffer UP over time. It was nuts, but my fish loved it. I even kept discus in it (with pretreated and peated water of course

).

Spokane isn't TOO terrible. The kH is 7, the gH is 9, but the buffering capacity of the water here has withstood any attempts at acidifying it in a pretreatment barrel. Even with the addition of acid on 3 consecutive days, the pH will be right back up at 7.8 the next day. I'm planning to break down and plumb in the RO unit this weekend I guess, much to my disgust.

I felt like it was a waste, and then realized I probably won't make more waste water than we lose out of the pool I love so much in the back yard anyway (yeah, I know, any way to justify a means to an end). I'm trying to figure out a way to just plumb the waste water to run out into the pool at least during the summer months, hehe.

Why couldn't you add rift lake salts, or some other pH buffering product to your water Shane? If they aren't readily available there, just tell me which ones you need and I'll get them on the way. Even a piece of coral dropped into the tank would leech out calcium and measurably increase your hardness in water with a low pH to start with, no? Since I've moved, the only thing spawning are the p. nicholsi, and I don't even have a tank set up for them yet, so they're basically just feeding the petricolas in the tank with them.

I've yet to test for phosphates here. I'm kind of afraid to. The planted tank is having a cyanobacteria issue at the moment that I've never had trouble with before. Usually it burns itself out once the tank stabilizes, but this one has lasted 3 weeks. I guess its time to break out the test kits. I've just never been as thrilled with the whole scientific end of the hobby. A friend of mine says its because I'm a girl

Either way, I'm still terribly jealous of all of you with your rainwater tap water. I had a MUCH easier time of modifying that type of water than I did changing harder water. You're very lucky

Barbie