# Water testing



## TheBubblingScot (29 Sep 2017)

Hi,
What do you all recommend for testing water?  

I was looking at the API freshwater master kit, but some of the negative reviews on Amazon seemed to suggest it isn't a reliable test kit.


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## ian_m (30 Sep 2017)

Why do you want to test your water ?

What would you do with any results ?

Most people here do not use test kits (at least hobby grade anyway) due to the unreliable and un repeatable results you will get. Using a test kit and basing your plant/fish keeping on dodgy results is starting down the slippery slope of completely over complicating the situation leading to plant and fish issues.

The technical reason is hobby grade kits are notorious for suffering from interference from other substances. For instance nitrate test kits wont read correctly in presence of chloride and ammonia (and GH) falsely reads in presence of dechlorinators. As you don't know what else is in your tank you cannot rely on test kit results.

So no testing required.

Add water, add plants, add fertiliser, add CO2 and stare at your glorious creation.  oh and change a large %'of water frequently.


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## dan4x4 (30 Sep 2017)

I don't ever really sample the water on a routine check up kind of thing.

If you're growing plants you can find complete fertilisers to make dosing as easy as possible. 

Also  you don't have to use pressurised co2 depending on what plants you choose. You could go without this, providing you're using the correct substrate for instance soil or organic compost 

Depends what you're looking to achieve?


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## Zeus. (30 Sep 2017)

Ian nailed the answer OFC but i did get an API freshwater master kit myself just so that I could compare an established tanks results with a newly cycling tank to see if it was safe for livestock.


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## ceg4048 (30 Sep 2017)

Zeus. said:


> API freshwater master kit myself just so that I could compare an established tanks results with a newly cycling tank to see if it was safe for livestock.


And the comparison reveals zero reliable information.

The OP is advised to abandon test kits and simply concentrate on things that actually matter.

Cheers,


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## TheBubblingScot (1 Oct 2017)

Thanks all for the replies.  That's very reassuring.  Helps me a great deal.  I guess as long as I keep the substrate fairly clean and do regular water changes I should be safe.  

It's mainly due to wanting a planted tank with shrimp and fish.  But don't want to spend a lot of money just to have them go belly up because my tank conditions aren't favourable.

Thanks all.  As always super helpful peeps.


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## Zeus. (1 Oct 2017)

ceg4048 said:


> And the comparison reveals zero reliable information.



True but the tank had only been filled with water about a week after a long DSM, cycled the filter with tub of water and urea. So... thought it could do no harm as soon as the nitrites fell which they did very fast according to the test comparison, in went the ottos and amanos.

Sometimes 'you have to walk the path' to know the way, not been that way before you check your waypoints occasionally even if its obvious, it was my first planted tank. Plus I was putting nearly 50 amanos in.


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## Cactusface (19 Oct 2017)

Hi,
      I think the API kit is one of the better ones, Plants, fish and Shrimps...  What kind of shrimp? some can be very fussy on water parms!  No I don't check my water that much, but I'd like it to be right when I do, and what do Amazon know about it all anyway.....


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## AverageWhiteBloke (19 Oct 2017)

TheBubblingScot said:


> It's mainly due to wanting a planted tank with shrimp and fish. But don't want to spend a lot of money just to have them go belly up because my tank conditions aren't favourable.



Hiya, if you want to go about a bit of testing I would suggest just getting a TDS meter and possibly a PH pen both very cheap on ebay and reliable enough for what we are doing. i have to assume based on your name that you're in Scotland although you may not live there, that being the case your water is highly likely to be good for most species of fish as in very soft in minerals. Apologies if I'm teaching you too suck eggs because I'm not sure if you've kept fish before but the only real issue affecting adding fish to your tank is going to be Ammonia, Ammonia is very toxic to fish but in an established tank there usually isn't a lot of it about, you only usually get high levels when first setting up the tank until the filter matures so you could buy a product like <Ammonia Alert> to start off with to check if levels are safe to add some fish gradually. We get round this by doing lots of frequent water changes initially for roughly 4 to 6 weeks until the filter and plants are consuming ammonia faster than its getting produced.

Check out the <Substrate> section of the forum, some of the substrates in there deliberately add some ammonia when its new in the tank to kick start the process of the filter without having to do it with fish in the tank and risking their health. If some plants, fish and shrimp are your goal also take a look at <Low tech> section of the forum. The secret is if you don't want to complicate things too much don't use very high lighting over the plants and pick plants that do well under low lighting. Something that's also worth a read would be Duck weed index if you search for that. Basically you add some plants that float and they will give you an idea if you have enough fertiliser in the tank because if they are doing well so should the other plants. They're also excellent at sucking waste products like ammonia out of the water, provide a safe haven for fish to hide and shade a bit of light.

Coming back to fertiliser, if you keep lights low enough you should be fine using an all-in-one fertiliser bought from one of our sponsors in powder form which works out considerably cheaper than buying it premixed from shops, all you're paying for in the shop is 99.9% water and the bottle so if you're a true Scot that will work for you  You may also need a bit of magnesium which you can buy again from the sponsors or plain old epsom salts available off the high streets.

The TDS meter will come in handy for certain species of shrimp. Ones like Red Cherry Shrimp are pretty hardy and will tolerate most conditions but some of the more fancy varieties like a low TDS. Luckily for you your water will be fine for them but over time your TDS may rise, solution is just change more water.

Above all don't get tempted by the lights they're not that important in a planted community tank. they're a bit like Gremilins that way  Other than that water testing is a bit hit or miss because hobby grade tests we buy in the pet shop aren't that accurate and the results don't mean much to fish health anyway. Even the scientists who reside here can't get accurate results with thousands of pounds worth of equipment and a PHD so spend your money on fish and plants, far more enjoyable.

Just to add, when you're good to go get some pictures in the Journal section, it's far easier to help with problems if we can see what you have done from the start and we all like following each others tanks and looking at pictures.


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## chrisjohnson (19 Oct 2017)

Am I right whilst reading this whole no testing approach, that nobody is concerned with nitrAte levels, even if they could potentially be quite high.  I live in London and the nitrates striaght out of my tap are about 40ppm. Therefore putting this straight in to my tank will only increase every time I do a water change. Iv started to do water changes with lfs RO water as I really want to reduce my nitrates. (Purely because he internet constantly tells me that high nitrates can be 'extremely harmful' in high measures).


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## ian_m (19 Oct 2017)

You won't get issues until nitrates are over 1000ppm range. Due to a timer failure I dosed 350ppm for a week with no fish issues. Biggest pain was cost and b*gger all difference to the plants.


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## Konsa (19 Oct 2017)

Hi


chrisjohnson said:


> Am I right whilst reading this whole no testing approach, that nobody is concerned with nitrAte levels, even if they could potentially be quite high.  I live in London and the nitrates striaght out of my tap are about 40ppm. Therefore putting this straight in to my tank will only increase every time I do a water change. Iv started to do water changes with lfs RO water as I really want to reduce my nitrates. (Purely because he internet constantly tells me that high nitrates can be 'extremely harmful' in high measures).



In planted tank the Nitrate is needed in decent ammount as Nitrogen is one of the Macro nutrients needed for plant growth.Many of us dose Nitrates on regular basis.There are few peole on here that have overdosed those in past (deliberately or not)with no ill effects on livestock.
There is one option that high Nitrates unless added may indicate previous Ammonia(toxic to livestock)spike that has been unnoticed and the aquarist assumes that the high Nitrate levels are the cause of the problem he has with his livestock while the truth is slightly different.
Those 40ppm NO3 from your tap will have no negative impact on your planted tank if U have good husbandry and healthy growing plants.U are changing water to clear debris and organic matter that will produce Ammonia.The plants will take care of some of it too and your Nitrates.That why plant and microbe filtration is far more effective than microbe on its own.
Take the information from the Internet and your lfs with a pinch of salt as some of it is a bit dated and far from the truth.

Regards Konsa


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## dw1305 (20 Oct 2017)

Hi all,





chrisjohnson said:


> Am I right whilst reading this whole no testing approach, that nobody is concerned with nitrAte levels, even if they could potentially be quite high.  I live in London and the nitrates striaght out of my tap are about 40ppm.


A lot of the tap water in the SE of England is pretty high in  NO3. The legal limit for drinking water is 50 ppm, but even that is <"sometimes breached">. 





chrisjohnson said:


> Therefore putting this straight in to my tank will only increase every time I do a water change. Iv started to do water changes with lfs RO water as I really want to reduce my nitrates. (Purely because he internet constantly tells me that high nitrates can be 'extremely harmful' in high measures).


As other have said nitrate isn't toxic until you get to very high levels, but usually high nitrate is the "smoking gun"  of previous high levels of the toxic ammonia (NH3) and nitrite (NO2). 

Ammonia and nitrite will be biologically oxidised to nitrate by micro-organisms (mainly <"Archaea and _Nitrospira_">) during biological filtration, but in a non-planted tank the resultant nitrate can only be removed by water changes, ion exchange resins or anaerobic denitrification. 

However things are different in a planted tank, the plants remove all forms of fixed nitrogen, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, and they are a <"lot more effective"> at this than most aquarium based literature suggests. If you have a large plant mass it can remove a large amount of fixed nitrogen, and nitrogen levels will fall, rather than rise, in the tank.

cheers Darrel


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## TheBubblingScot (20 Oct 2017)

So much good information here.  Thanks for the responses.  Glad I have all you clever boffins to fall back on.

@AverageWhiteBloke - Indeed I do live in Scotland.  Thanks for the nicely detailed response.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Oct 2017)

TheBubblingScot said:


> So much good information here.  Thanks for the responses.  Glad I have all you clever boffins to fall back on.
> 
> @AverageWhiteBloke - Indeed I do live in Scotland.  Thanks for the nicely detailed response.
> 
> ...


No problem mate, good thing about living up here is we get decent soft water from nice lakes and reservoirs perfect for the majority of soft water fish not like our shandy drinking colleagues from darn sarf who have to deal with recycled p/ss. 

Test kits will just tell you whatever you want to hear on the day, say it told you that something was high, maybe is maybe isn't, who knows, first thing you are going to do is change some water. Just change some water and have it done because changing water will also removes all the other crap in there that they don't do test kits for anyway and the fish will love you for it. 

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## dw1305 (20 Oct 2017)

Hi all, 





AverageWhiteBloke said:


> perfect for the majority of soft water fish not like our shandy drinking colleagues from darn sarf who have to deal with recycled p/ss


<"Sadly true">. 

cheers Darrel


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## chrisjohnson (20 Oct 2017)

thanks guys. This has made for interesting reading. Think I'm going to stop with the RO water changes. Get a few more low tech loving plants and slightly increase my weekly water changes from 20% to 30%.


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## dw1305 (20 Oct 2017)

Hi all, 





chrisjohnson said:


> Get a few more low tech loving plants and slightly increase my weekly water changes from 20% to 30%.


Can you have floating plants? they have access to aerail CO2 and are really easy to harvest. I like Amazon Frogbit _(<"Limnobium laevigatum">)_ as my <"duckweed">, but _<"Salvinia">_ etc are all good. 

I think, even in London, that <"rain-water is an option">, if you have somewhere to put a water butt? 

cheers Darrel


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## chrisjohnson (20 Oct 2017)

dw1305 said:


> Can you have floating plants? they have access to aerail CO2 and are really easy to harvest



my tank has a lid on it. But there is about 3-4 inches between water level and lights. Is this suitable enough to have floating plants?


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## dw1305 (20 Oct 2017)

Hi all, 





chrisjohnson said:


> my tank has a lid on it. But there is about 3-4 inches between water level and lights. Is this suitable enough to have floating plants?


Should be all right. 

cheers Darrel


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## kadoxu (20 Oct 2017)

chrisjohnson said:


> my tank has a lid on it. But there is about 3-4 inches between water level and lights. Is this suitable enough to have floating plants?


That's more than what I have on my Fluval Chi and the Dwarf Water Lettuce and Duckweed go nuts. I guess as long as the light doesn't heat up too much it's ok.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Oct 2017)

chrisjohnson said:


> Am I right whilst reading this whole no testing approach, that nobody is concerned with nitrAte levels, even if they could potentially be quite high. I live in London and the nitrates striaght out of my tap are about 40ppm. Therefore putting this straight in to my tank will only increase every time I do a water change. Iv started to do water changes with lfs RO water as I really want to reduce my nitrates. (Purely because he internet constantly tells me that high nitrates can be 'extremely harmful' in high measures).



As you can probably tell by now Chris we don't tend to take much notice of test kits results because of their unreliability as the results can be off by the person reading it, other chemicals in the tank throwing it out plus we're dealing with small quantities so would you tell the difference on a test kit between say 10 and 20ppm. Having said that where does the Nitrate legend and folklore come from and why does everything else on the internet tell you the exact opposite of what is said in here. It would probably make sense to understand the big differences between a planted tank and fish only systems.

Plants love Ammonia which is why it is in terrestrial plant fertilisers but fish don't its toxic to them. In a tank we have a biological filter which converts fish waste (Ammonia) into nitrite then nitrate. We don't have any evidence AFAIK unless some wants to link it (please do that would sort a lot of things out) that high Nitrates cause issues with the majority of our fish even at ridiculous values. You would get more issues from the salt the Nitrate came in on than the actual Nitrate as Ian suggests and others have experimented, sometimes deliberate sometimes accidental. In a fish only system there's nothing to remove the Nitrate after the conversion, your filter would need to be running anaerobic (without oxygen) to remove the Nitrate, if your filter is running anaerobic then really it's time to clean it because if it has no oxygen it won't be doing the Ammonia to Nitrite conversion which is by far the most important for the fish. So Nitrates keep building up in a fish only system which could I guess accelerate algae growth but TBH most things accelerate algae growth, if you have a glass of water in a sunny window algae would thrive off that  probably where most of stuff you find on the internet comes from so companies who sell Nitrate removing resins etc for people like you who already have plenty Nitrate in the tapwater so without RO water you will never get rid of it even with lots of tapwater changes, as such these products are legitimate in fish only systems and why everyone will tell you Nitrate is bad and causes algae.

Coming back to a planted tank, all the above doesn't apply other than the conversion of Ammonia to Nitrite. Plants love Ammonia even more than they do Nitrate because plants need to do a little bit extra work to convert Nitrate to plant mass than it does Ammonia, so in our tanks we have a competition going on between the plants and the filter to try and snatch as much Ammonia as they can, some people have even experimented with adding Ammonia with the filter knocked off to see how it improves plant growth  mixed results. Ammonia rarely ever becomes an issue in an established planted tank other than initial setup period while bacteria builds up on the surfaces and filter. Plants will consume a lot of Nitrate instead of the Ammonia really effectively, that's why plants are used to clean up contaminated water supplies and sewerage. Our biggest worry is running out of Nitrate. Plants need Traces, Phosphate, Potassium, Nitrogen, Magnesium and depending on how high your lighting is maybe carbon in the form of liquid or gas. Think of it as building a wall with bricks, sand, cement and water, miss one out and the wall will fall down. Nitrate and potassium being the ones plants use the most of.

So where does that leave us regarding testing, luckily we have two options available as a control. We have @plantbrain Estimative Index and @dw1305 Duckweed Index, one to tell you when you don't have enough and one that tells you how much you won't need given every thing else like co2 and distribution is in order. Firstly EI, loads of light was put over a tank and it was established that with light most of us don't have or would be necessary that there was a maximum amount of ferts you need to add, the figures were as follows..

Nitrate (NO3) 20ppm per week
Potassium (K) 30ppm per week
Phosphate (PO4) 3ppm per week
Magnesium (Mg) 10ppm per week
Iron (Fe) 0.5ppm per week

On the other end of the scale Duck weed Index will tell you if you've run out of ferts, floating plants get their co2 from the atmosphere where there's plenty of it so regardless of how much co2 you pump in the tank if floaters are failing chances are its your fertilisers in one way or another. So now we have a far more accurate test kit that looks better as well. Using the process of elimination we can combine the two methods to work out if we have any problems in our tanks. People will say listen to the plants not test kits.

Coming back to your tank and the suspected 40ppm Nitrate which will be an average from your water company, some days higher some days lower. Because plants consume a lot of Nitrate, up to 20ppm per week with high lighting or roughly 3ppm per day given half the chance even with the plants using just 1ppm per day with no extra from you and using tap water at 50% per week it's never going to go very high, in fact its going to go down.

Graph Below for 1ppm per day.







Now base that on 3ppm per day.





If you’re running high lighting, not dosing Nitrate and you do happen to have 40ppm out the tap as you can see on some days you are running dangerously close to running out just before the water change. Rather than worrying about Nitrate what you should be thinking is happy days, I get free Nitrate from my water company while all these mugs are paying for it. 

In the case of EI users, they just dose all the ferts at the highest level which leaves them able to concentrate more on co2 and distribution as they know the ferts are covered. Obviously how much ferts people's tanks will use will depend on how bright their lighting is, because we all have different lights we don't have to match the uptake to the light. We just need to stay in the range between EI and your floating plants dying. 

In your case, if you are lucky enough to have this much Nitrate, if you add Phosphate, Pottasium, Magnesium and traces at EI levels and the floating plants die chances are you've ran out of Nitrates. I hope this goes some way to explain why testing for Nitrates is pointless and why in planted tanks the same rules don't apply for fish only systems.

As you can see I have far too much time on my hands today waiting for the BT engineer coming out to install my phone line


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## chrisjohnson (20 Oct 2017)

thanks for taking the time. I'm going to have to read this a few times to digest it all. 



AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Our biggest worry is running out of Nitrate. Plants need Traces, Phosphate, Potassium, Nitrogen, Magnesium and depending on how high your lighting is maybe carbon in the form of liquid or gas.



so I dose 2ml per day of TNC complete. (I was using TNC LITE due to the fact I didn't want to add anymore nitrate to my tank) but since using the complete, I have noticed a significant growth, especially my anubias. 

I also dose 3ml of TNC CARBON per day. 


AverageWhiteBloke said:


> floating plants get their co2 from the atmosphere where there's plenty of it so regardless of how much co2 you pump in the tank if floaters are failing chances are its your fertilisers



I don't have any co2 going into my tank. the tables on the internet suggest my dissolved co2 is very low... My Kh is 6 and ph 7.8.  Iv often wondered if added co2 would be nessecary.   
Also my lights are very low. 2 x t8 30w each. 160l tank. 
sorry just spouting my thoughts. Still a novice really but I'm getting there.  Ta for the help.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Oct 2017)

chrisjohnson said:


> thanks for taking the time. I'm going to have to read this a few times to digest it all.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Just had a look at TNC lite, I hadn't heard of it. Looks like it's nitrate and phosphate free. Maybe if you have high nitrate the phosphate is what you were missing if you have seen an improvement but then again you said you were using RO so basically taking Nitrate out then putting it back in with your TNC Complete.

The light version might be OK given your lighting although phosphate is missing. Adding the liquid carbon will increase growth. I would say sticking to liquid carbon rather than gas would be your best bet for now. Depends which way you want to go mate, if you are buying your RO I would just use Tapwater and TNC lite and see how that pans out, if it's your RO system you could mix RO and tapwater to soften it and use the TNC Complete.

"For lightly planted aquariums & for aquariums with a high fish population." 

The high fish population part refers to what we were saying earlier about Ammonia, lots of fish will convert to Nitrate hence TNC has left it out of the lite mix and not many plants means you won't need as much. There will be some po4 in the tapwater and you get some from fish food. 

You could probably get away with lite if just using Tapwater. 



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## chrisjohnson (20 Oct 2017)

that's exactly what I have done. I was buying the RO from LFS. So iv decided not to do that anymore for the time being. Save me a few bob per week. 
I'm going to use the rest of what is in the bottle of my TNC lite then will go on to the complete.  Not keen on going down the co2 route. Hence why I'm choosing plants that are low tech. Anubias, crypts and valls. 
cheers mate.


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## dw1305 (20 Oct 2017)

Hi all,





chrisjohnson said:


> I don't have any co2 going into my tank. the tables on the internet suggest my dissolved co2 is very low... My Kh is 6 and ph 7.8.


You won't have very much CO2, but you can't use the table to estimate the CO2, based on the pH and carbonate hardness (dKH), it only works if you are adding CO2.

There is an <"explanation here">.

If you don't add CO2 (and I don't) the best way to maintain levels of all dissolved gases is to have a <"large gas exchange surface">, either by using  a wet and dry trickle filter, or having plenty of laminar flow.

cheers Darrel


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## chrisjohnson (20 Oct 2017)

dw1305 said:


> There is an <"explanation here">.



that is quite complicated to understand.  (possibly because iv had a few beers). 
anyhow, I have installed a power head, to help circulate the water.  
one thing iv been wondering is should it be directed to the surface (which will create bubbles/surface agitation), or underneath the water level just to move the water around.


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## chrisjohnson (20 Oct 2017)

haven't quite got the hang of this website yet.


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## chrisjohnson (21 Oct 2017)

so. After doing a small water change last night iv woken up this morning to two dead tetras. I didn't use RO water I just used my tap water. And even found a old heater which i put into the bucket of water before adding to my tank.
Used easy life filter media which is also used for dechlorinating. I'm not 100% about this product as it claims to do so many things within the tank as well as claiming to be 100% natural. Amonoa this morning rested at almost zero maybe 10ppm. 
what happened to my fish I wonder?


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2017)

chrisjohnson said:


> so. After doing a small water change last night iv woken up this morning to two dead tetras. I didn't use RO water I just used my tap water. And even found a old heater which i put into the bucket of water before adding to my tank.
> Used easy life filter media which is also used for dechlorinating. I'm not 100% about this product as it claims to do so many things within the tank as well as claiming to be 100% natural. Amonoa this morning rested at almost zero maybe 10ppm.
> what happened to my fish I wonder?


How long did you have the fish?

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## chrisjohnson (21 Oct 2017)

it's been a year or two.


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## ian_m (21 Oct 2017)

I assume you dechlorinated your water used for water change ?


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2017)

chrisjohnson said:


> so. After doing a small water change last night iv woken up this morning to two dead tetras.



Oh mate, that's a bummer. Have you used nothing but RO up to now? I'm imagining your tapwater is very hard. If you intend to go down the route of just using tapwater you might have to do this gradually. Do you have a TDS pen? If you haven't they're a very handy piece of kit to have in your arsenal, relatively cheap sub £10 on ebay and get on you can calibrate. TDS is a measure of the total dissolved solids in your tank, it won't tell you what it is made up of just what it all adds up to but that's fine because the fish only know what the total "feels like" Fish don't like to change TDS values in a hurry which is why we need to acclimatise fish when swapping from one tank to the other. Seems strange though if it was just a small water change. You might have to buy some more RO water and mix it with your tapwater at slightly less ratios over the next few weeks, Like a third Tapwater then half then two thirds until you gradually get to just tap. Just throw them both in the same bucket before changes but still add your dechlorinatior. Putting the new water in should be done as realistically slow as you can just to get your existing fish used to the new setup. Is getting some rainwater an option? Just stick a bucket in the garden this time of year, if you get 5 or 6 litres to mix with your tapwater it's better than nothing.

You could always just do what a lot of member from your neck of the woods do which is use 50:50 Tap and RO. at least you've halved your spend on RO water if you have somewhere to store it. London water really is crap for soft water species. Another thing I would also do is get those floating plants, I can't remember the name of the exact species maybe @dw1305 can point you in the right direction, post in the For Sale Swap Wanted section of the forum I'm sure someone will have some. I've just totally thinned mine out after a tank move but they are fast growers so if you want to hold back a couple of weeks I could post some of mine, I'm setting up a non co2 low tech tank over the next couple of weeks so maybe we can have a plant swap as the ones you have might be better suited for this tank. You have both TNC Lite and Complete so if you mix a bottle of each you could dose the Lite on most days and any signs of the floaters looking a bit ropey dose a couple days with the complete.

Another thing I would suggest is getting out and grabbing some Oak leaves if you can, if moving to harder water they are beneficial in stopping iron becoming toxic as well as all the other benefits of having Tannin and Humic acid brings to fish health. Try and get them away from high traffic areas ideally out in the sticks and store them dry. Give a rinse before putting in the tank.

I tend to think TDS change is the biggest killer amongst fish when moving them about, maybe why it was the neons that took the hit notorious for enjoying soft water but that's not definite mate just a possibility. Could even have been that your RO water filled tank was neutral to acid PH and your tapwater drove it up into alkaline which makes Ammonia toxic (usually ok in acid water although you really don't want any ammonia)

As for flow, try and keep your filter outlet and wavemaker thing pointing in the same direction, pointing at each other reduces their impact and just far enough under the surface to create a nice ripple to help with gas exchange.

I'm feeling your pain, I bought three Ottos from my LFS last week and was surprised to find that my LFS tank water  had a TDS of 500! I keep mine below 200 Max, even after spending 5 hours drip acclimatising which is quite difficult when the LFS only bagged them with 200ml of water i spent all week picking the poor things corpses out the tank one by one over the next few days. These fish are notorious for survival rates and generally in poor health at the store. Even though my water was much better suited for them in the long run there was some change they couldn't deal with, possibly co2, who knows. hence my next low tech setup is going to be a non co2 Otto only species tank and see if I can breed some stronger fish as a little project. I could only guess the LFS TDS was so high because he runs fish only systems and maybe it was the accumulation of keeping thousands of fish in a closed system. His water out the tap is like mine very sofy and low in TDS but its a decent shop with a very knowledgable owner so maybe he keeps it that was as a happy medium for all the various species he keeps, who knows.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2017)

ian_m said:


> I assume you dechlorinated your water used for water change ?


 Yeah he did Ian, looked at that product and it is a dechlorinator.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (21 Oct 2017)

BTW mate, forgot to mention, your plants right now are looking healthy so you're definitely doing something right. Any pictures of the full tank?


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## chrisjohnson (21 Oct 2017)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Have you used nothing but RO up to now?



the tank has been running for over two years now I think. And iv only started using RO in the last two months. And even then it's only been 20litres a week. so the majority of the tank is from my tap. 



AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Do you have a TDS pen?



I don't have one of these but am certainly going to look into it. 



AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Another thing I would also do is get those floating plants,



I was in another lfs earlier today (let's say one of the big stores) and they only had one floating plant in their tank and matey didn't know what it was called so i didnt buy it. 



AverageWhiteBloke said:


> I've just totally thinned mine out after a tank move but they are fast growers so if you want to hold back a couple of weeks I could post some of mine,



this is definitely some thing I'd be interested in. 




AverageWhiteBloke said:


> hence my next low tech setup is going to be a non co2 Otto only species tank and see if I can breed some stronger fish as a little project.



keep us updated on ur progress. never kept ottos before. So don't no much about them.


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## chrisjohnson (21 Oct 2017)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Any pictures of the full tank?



will try an get a picture of the whole tank when I'm home. not 100% happy with the way it looks..but then again are we ever totally happy.


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## dw1305 (21 Oct 2017)

Hi all, 





chrisjohnson said:


> I was in another lfs earlier today (let's say one of the big stores) and they only had one floating plant in their tank and matey didn't know what it was called so i didnt buy it.


PM me your address and I can send you a mix for p&p. 

I always have spare floating plants.

cheers Darrel


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## thdesilva2000 (20 Nov 2017)

Very good reading.  I did quite well with tap water up to now (North Herts Area, dKH 17 and dGH 19), grew all types of plants without trouble and fish were happy.  Got some Toninas about two weeks ago and within a week they were all gone.  Have no choice but to change to RO water.  I am starting slowly, 25% RO to tap for four weeks, then 50:50 weeks 5 to 8 and gradually increasing till I get 100% RO.  First four weeks, I am not remineralising as I am relying on the existing water, from week 5, I am doing DIY remineralising with the aim of keeping 3-4dgh and 2-3dkh (ideal for Tonina).  Does this sound sensible or am I victim of the Matrix?


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## dw1305 (20 Nov 2017)

Hi all, 





thdesilva2000 said:


> First four weeks, I am not remineralising as I am relying on the existing water, from week 5, I am doing DIY remineralising with the aim of keeping 3-4dgh and 2-3dkh (ideal for Tonina).


I've never grown _Tonina_ etc, but I probably wouldn't re-mineralise your RO water at all with a known weight of your salt mix. 

You can use your tap water to cut the RO with, you are only going to need a very, very small volume of tap, so it doesn't really matter too much about the quality of the tap water. You will only really be adding Ca++ and HCO3- ions, because of the geology (Chalk). 

Rather than aiming for a specific dGH/dGH value, you can use a conductivity meter to give you a datum (I'd aim for about 50 - 100 microS), and then use the <"Duckweed Index"> as an indication of when to feed the plants.  The conductivity will rise after the fertiliser addition, but will drop back down again as you use RO for the water changes.

If you would rather use the salt mix, you can. Just do the same, add the amount of mix that takes you to ~100 microS in the tank. These are very small additions of salts.

Again it isn't too every-bodies taste, but I would add enough tannins to tint the water. Oak leaves, or Alder cones, are fine for this, and should allow the pH to drop down below pH7. 

You will have to balance the amount of floating plant, and the tint, against the light requirements of the _Tonina_, and a lot of other <"plants aren't going to enjoy themselves">, due to the low nutrients and soft water.  

cheers Darrel


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## thdesilva2000 (20 Nov 2017)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all, I've never grown _Tonina_ etc, but I probably wouldn't re-mineralise your RO water at all with a known weight of your salt mix.
> 
> You can use your tap water to cut the RO with, you are only going to need a very, very small volume of tap, so it doesn't really matter too much about the quality of the tap water. You will only really be adding Ca++ and HCO3- ions, because of the geology (Chalk).
> 
> ...



Very interesting, for every 1L of RO, how much tap would I need to cut the RO with? A friend from the UK who successfully grows Toninas adviced the following:

“Here’s some info on the mineral I use in ro.  I use measuring spoons for the quantities, per 25 litres of ro with 0dgh and 0dkh. 0.5ml of calcium sulphate, 1.25ml of magnesium sulphate and 2ml of potassium carbonate, this should give you roughly 3-4 dgh and 2-3 dkh.  This should keep your water soft enough but stable enough for tonina but they are still a tricky plant”.

I am going to use DIY chemicals from Ebay so not aiming to spend a fortune on salts. I spent about £10 on the salts which is going to last two years with 50% weekly water changes. 

What are your thoughts? Thanks for the help.


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## dw1305 (20 Nov 2017)

Hi all, 





thdesilva2000 said:


> “Here’s some info on the mineral I use in ro. I use measuring spoons for the quantities, per 25 litres of ro with 0dgh and 0dkh. 0.5ml of calcium sulphate, 1.25ml of magnesium sulphate and 2ml of potassium carbonate, this should give you roughly 3-4 dgh and 2-3 dkh.


That sounds about right, and if the plants are growing that is a good enough recommendation. I'd make the salt mix up, as mixture in those proportions, and then add a very small amount of it to the water. Go away and wait a bit (for the potassium carbonate to fully disassociate) then measure the conductivity and repeat if necessary.

You are going to be dealing with very small volumes of salts. You also need to take into account the "water of crystallisation", so magnesium sulphate will be MgSO4.7H2O and ~10% Mg, potassium carbonate K2CO3.2H2O and calcium sulphate, the dihydrate etc. 





thdesilva2000 said:


> for every 1L of RO, how much tap would I need to cut the RO with?


It will be a very small volume, but most tap water will vary a bit during the year. That is the great joy of the conductivity meter, you dip it in and it gives you a reading. It is a lot easier than mucking about with very small volumes, or weights, of salts.





thdesilva2000 said:


> This should keep your water soft enough but stable enough


You can just ignore pH, your water will never be stable, vegetated soft water never is, either in the tank or in nature.

Because you have very little carbonate buffering, changes in the relative amounts of CO2 (acid from the dissolution of the very small percentage of CO2 that becomes H2CO3 and then H+ & HCO3- in solution) and dissolved oxygen (oxygen is the base in OH-) during photosynthesis will have a large effect on pH.

Acidity and alkalinity, and pH as a measure of them, isn't straight forward. If you have stable pH around pH7 in a planted tank, you don't have soft water.

cheers Darrel


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## thdesilva2000 (20 Nov 2017)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all, That sounds about right, and if the plants are growing that is a good enough recommendation. I'd make the salt mix up, as mixture in those proportions, and then add a very small amount of it to the water. Go away and wait a bit (for the potassium carbonate to fully disassociate) then measure the conductivity and repeat if necessary.
> 
> You are going to be dealing with very small volumes of salts. You also need to take into account the "water of crystallisation", so magnesium sulphate will be MgSO4.7H2O and ~10% Mg, potassium carbonate K2CO3.2H2O and calcium sulphate, the dihydrate etc. It will be a very small volume, but most tap water will vary a bit during the year. That is the great joy of the conductivity meter, you dip it in and it gives you a reading. It is a lot easier than mucking about with very small volumes, or weights, of salts.You can just ignore pH, your water will never be stable, vegetated soft water never is, either in the tank or in nature.
> 
> ...



Thank you Darrell, I tested the water and here are my results.

PH of about 7.8, GH 22 and KH 13

This at the end of the CO2 cycle (pressurised), drop checker is green.

This is a day after making 25% RO water change (no remineralisation), what do you make of this?







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## dw1305 (20 Nov 2017)

Hi all, 





thdesilva2000 said:


> This at the end of the CO2 cycle (pressurised), drop checker is green.


The pH is because of the CO2 ~ HCO3 equilibrium, at 400ppm CO2 you get a pH of ~pH7.8 when you have carbonate buffering. The drop checker is green because of the additional CO2 you've added, which has diffused across the air gap in the drop checker, into the 4dKH fluid and changed the colour of the bromothymol blue pH indicator, bromothymol blue is a narrow range pH indicator (yellow at pH5 & blue at pH8) with green about pH7. In the test tube the added CO2 will have diffused into the atmosphere and you then record the ambient pH. Adding CO2 doesn't affect the alkalinity, just the pH.

I'm not a CO2 user, you will need to find  some-one who has grown _Tonina_ with added CO2 to give you some idea of what fertilisation scheme they used. Because you have higher CO2 (which normally would limit plant growth) and higher light you may need to raise the nutrient levels (and therefore the conductivity) a lot higher. 





thdesilva2000 said:


> PH of about 7.8, GH 22 and KH 13


The dKH and the dGH should be much the same, this is because the source of the dGH (multivalent cations) and the dKH (carbonate hardness) is both from dissolved limestone (CaCO3), chalk is really pure CaCO3 (that is why it is so white) and doesn't really contain much else. The derivation of both dGH and dKH is a bit strange, but if you want to know the details it is in <"this thread"> and <"links">. 

The KH test kit you have actually measures alkalinity, using a modified acid base titration (you count the number of drops?). The pH indicator is such a wide range (it is a universal indicator) so it doesn't give you much precision, especially around pH7. If you've added 25% RO you have reduced your dKH and dGH by 1/4 (and also your conductivity by 1/4). If your test kits tell you different the problem is with the test kits.

That is why I like conductivity meters, they are robust and accurate over a huge range of water values. 

cheers Darrel


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## thdesilva2000 (20 Nov 2017)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all, The pH is because of the CO2 ~ HCO3 equilibrium, at 400ppm CO2 you get a pH of ~pH7.8 when you have carbonate buffering. The drop checker is green because of the additional CO2 you've added, which has diffused across the air gap in the drop checker, into the 4dKH fluid and changed the colour of the bromothymol blue pH indicator, bromothymol blue is a narrow range pH indicator (yellow at pH5 & blue at pH8) with green about pH7. In the test tube the added CO2 will have diffused into the atmosphere and you then record the ambient pH. Adding CO2 doesn't affect the alkalinity, just the pH.
> 
> I'm not a CO2 user, you will need to find  some-one who has grown _Tonina_ with added CO2 to give you some idea of what fertilisation scheme they used. Because you have higher CO2 (which normally would limit plant growth) and higher light you may need to raise the nutrient levels (and therefore the conductivity) a lot higher. The dKH and the dGH should be much the same, this is because the source of the dGH (multivalent cations) and the dKH (carbonate hardness) is both from dissolved limestone (CaCO3), chalk is really pure CaCO3 (that is why it is so white) and doesn't really contain much else. The derivation of both dGH and dKH is a bit strange, but if you want to know the details it is in <"this thread"> and <"links">.
> 
> ...



Thanks, will look into conductivity meter.

Yes, in this test kit, you measure the drops, NT labs test kit.

I dose 5ML of TNC complete daily (macro and micro all in one mix), my tank is 90L.

Will be putting up my weekly test results here if anyone is interested.

Spot on with your calculations, dgh was about 32 before RO, so roughly 1/4 drop after RO.

Thanks again 


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