# Should I warm my water change water??



## •Cai• (12 Jan 2016)

Hi all, 
I've currently got some red cherry shrimp and ottos in my tank. Tomorrow will be first day of water change for them. My question is this:
Do I need to warm the water that's to be added to tank to stop so much of a shock to shrimps or will it be ok as it is? I believe I read somewhere that this could be a problem with shrimp. 
Cheers


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## aaron.c (12 Jan 2016)

Do you have a combi boiler or hot water tank?

If you have a combi you can use hot water from the tap.

Shrimp do prefer more stable water temperatures. 




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## •Cai• (12 Jan 2016)

I have a combi boiler. I thought hot from tap carried all sorts of nasties in it?


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## aaron.c (12 Jan 2016)

Generally the problems are to do with metals that get into the water as it is kept heated in the water tank. Combi boils don't have this problem as water is heated on demand and not kept in a tank 


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## Dr Mike Oxgreen (13 Jan 2016)

Is there something wrong with using a kettleful of boiling water?


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## zozo (13 Jan 2016)

I never do and never have a problem with it.. Even see my fish and sometimes the shrimp come and play in the stream of the colder water from the hose when refilling.
Only  in wintertime, when the tapwater is very cold, i don't do a 50% water change only 25% and more often. With 25% the temp goes doen from 25 to 20 c an hour later it's 22 c again. It even seems that f.e. if you like to breed certain kinds of fish you have to lower the temp to 19 C to trigger them to spawn. Also i read everywhere that shrimps skin after a water change, never red anything about preheating the water is is a pre. And indeed i also notice my shrimp skinning after i did. But why would shrimp skin after a water change? I'm not putting anything in there different than already is, i rather take something out. I never did read an explaination about it anywhere.. Comeing to think of it, it probably is the sudden temperatur drop causing them to skin (earlier than planned?). Might the same happens in nature after a heavy rain, when cooler water comes down the mountain in abbundancy and dropping the temp. I can imagine we mimic a heavy rain day with our water change..


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## dw1305 (13 Jan 2016)

Hi all,





Dr Mike Oxgreen said:


> Is there something wrong with using a kettleful of boiling water?


That is what I use. 

Because I use rain-water, and have a small water change every day, I draw the water from the water butt the day before I use it and store it in the house to warm up. Our house isn't very warm, so I usually just add a small amount of boiling water to it before use. I don't measure the temperature, I just a finger to confirm that it is warmed. 

Our tap water is good quality, but hard. When the water is boiling it won't hold any dissolved gases, and because CaCO3 is only soluble in equilibrium with CO2, the freshly boiled water doesn't add any dKH or dGH. 

If the conductivity of the tank has fallen below ~80 microS I add a small amount of cold tap water to raise the conductivity back to ~100 microS (I know that this adds dGH/dKH, because of the tap water analysis from Wessex Water).

cheers Darrel


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## mort (13 Jan 2016)

I always heat it a little and do the finger test. This is mostly as I have soft water fish in a hard water area and plenty of RO lying around. I tend to adjust the temp with some hot tap water, as it buffers the ro a little.


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## •Cai• (13 Jan 2016)

Thanks for all the informative answers everyone.


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## PARAGUAY (13 Jan 2016)

I always use boiled kettle water to the tap water left in buckets before using tap safe and left to get at living room temp.I accidentally put water too cold in once (going back to zozos point)it got spawning behaviour with the barbs and the fish di not seem too bothered .Sort of reminds me of huge changes in the wild in rainy seasons thinking about it. I know we read books and things about temperature,water preference for certain fish etc anybody who reads Heiko Bheler articles knows this is sometimes not the case were often he discovers species living in temperature and water in the Amazon as an example totally different from what we previously thought possible In some of the older books the authors did not have tech. and modern methods to record everything as these days


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## zozo (13 Jan 2016)

Just a little off topic maybe, or maybe not.. But this makes me remember back in the days when i still did jogging in the park. I live near a rather large pool of water 600 t0 800 meters in lenght. it's a sandpit they started diggin and sucking out sand about 80 years ago. They actualy opened up a few acres of subterranean river or waterplate whatever it is called and quite deep as well up to 20 meters. In the hot summers i jused to go jogging to that lake swam across and back and ran back home. I oftenly noticed during those swims streams in this lake where the temperature dropped significantly to rather very cold. Probably crossing a source spring where water comes up.

I also did fishing there and in the hot summer days you see carp sunbading and tracking around bellow the surface.. I never noticed them deviating from their route and crossing the same cold spots as i did in my weekly swim. I rather believe they where less affected to the change than i was, for me it always was a kind of scary feeling crossing these cold streams kinda cramps your muscles a bit and colder water sucks down and feels harder then warm water.  After all they are the fish we aren't..


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## ian_m (13 Jan 2016)

This is what I use to pre-heat water for water changes.

http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/water-change-heater-project.25877/


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## Derek113 (13 Jan 2016)

I change 50ltr twice weekly. I fill a 50ltr bin with water and use an aquarium heater and power head. Put them on the night before. 
I find adding cold water to the tank can be good for some fish, white cloud minnows seem to like it.
But for me its like a draught from a door.


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## Marc1t (13 Jan 2016)

I use a 5 gallon bucket from a home brew shop fitted with a kettle element stick an aquarium thermometer on the outside. Works a treat for me.


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## Dr Mike Oxgreen (14 Jan 2016)

I use a mixture of rainwater and tapwater to give me the target KH and GH that I want. In my case, mixing 2 litres of tapwater with 4 litres of rainwater gives me KH 4° and GH 6°, which is hopefully soft enough for my chili rasboras but not too soft for my shrimps. I boil a litre of the rainwater rather than boiling the tapwater, which would destroy some of the KH in the tapwater and I'd end up with the wrong hardness. This gives me water that's a couple of degrees cooler than the tank water, but not enough to cause shock. I've never felt it necessary to match temperature exactly.

But I don't tell SWMBO, because she'd probably freak if she knew I was boiling anything other than tapwater in the kettle!


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