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It was clear to me that where the sore was on the fish the slime coat seemed non existent so I took a chance on the Aloe, giving the fish a temporary slime coat until it healed.

It was pretty bad and after the treatment it healed quickly so I just assumed it was the Aloe.

I had a fish with a bad sore on its side many years ago. I netted it, dabbed the area dry and then painted some Aloe gel on the affected area and within a week it was fine.

I’ve never bothered checking things like GH and KH, maybe I should? I’m a bit dubious about the accuracy of some test kits and they aren’t exactly cheap are they. Any recommendations?

Do you have access to rainwater? I collect rainwater in a water butt from a shed roof and mix it with some tap water and my plants grow really well. Only easy to grow plants like Anubias and Aquatic Moss etc.

After cleaning the water butt I decided to weigh it down with 5 - 10 litres of tap water with a TDS of 275 ppm. After last nights downpour I now have a full water butt of 210 Litres of water with a reading of 18 ppm. 💧😊. I too wish I had more storage.

After I filtered the water I decided it was a good time to empty and clean out the water water butt. Having done that I checked the gutter and downpipe. As expected the gutter had some leaf litter in it which I hosed out. The downpipe though had a solid plug of dirt about 6 or 7 inches long in...

I normally take water from a butt connected to the gutter from my shed roof. The Butt gets emptied and cleaned out once a year. The water from it normally reads about 30-35 ppm. The other day the rain was so heavy I was collecting overflow from the gutter and after passing it through some...

The Good stuff. I usually collect rainwater from a water butt that’s fed from a large shed with a rubber roof. It rained so heavily yesterday though I decided to collect some from the overflowing gutter. I normally get a TDS reading of about 30ppm from the water butt. Direct from the gutter...

I used to live in London and I could never grow plants very well. Using rainwater and a bit of filtered tap the plants in my two Nano’s need constant trimming they grow so well. I don’t have CO2 or use much in the way of ferts. Substrate is plain sand.

That’s a shame. We have an under sink Brita filter we use for hot drinks and cooking and it does seem to remove some of the hardness? I’ve never measured it but the kettle doesn’t get limescale on it until it’s time to change the filter again. A filter lasts about 10 months with our use. Our...

I live in a hard water area and like Darrel I use rain water. Mixed with filtered tap when I need to.

At one point many years ago I used to put tap water in a large container and run an airstone in it for an hour or so before using it. This was to help get rid of any chlorine. I no longer bother though as I use very little straight tap water and that goes through a filter anyway.

I filter rainwater through kitchen roll. It’s stored outside until I plan a water change then I fill up some 5 litre containers and bring them indoors to sit on the radiator to warm up a bit. I also use a small amount of filtered tap water. I’m only servicing a 60L and 37L Nano so a 2.2L...

Strange it says not for limescale. We have a single Brita filter under sink unit that we use for the kettle and our food steamer and we haven’t had any limescale buildup at all so far.

So am I but I haven’t bought any plants or inmates for this tank for years. Where else could they be coming from do you think? I do put some tap water in as well …

I’m sure the coffee filters I use are finer than any net but some stuff still manages to get through somehow.

All of them but particularly worms. I don’t like seeing them in the tank, small water flea types are ok and don’t seem to cause a problem though. And actually no, it’s not a lot of work, I just leave it to drip through. Less work than cleaning out the filter.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I filter the rainwater from my shed. Either through coffee filters or even kitchen roll if I run out. I normally do this two or three times. I’m just wondering though if there’s any type of fish and shrimp safe chemical I can add to the water once it’s filtered...

I saw a Seachem Alert combo pack for £7.49 so thought I’d give it a try. Not sure what my PH is though, what do you reckon?! 😂

Apart from the water changes you could try adding some Seachem Stability or something similar? https://seachem.com/stability.php

I don’t normally do much water testing but with Shrimps in one tank and Fish and Shrimps in the other perhaps I should. I’m wondering what test kits folks on here are using. Do the 6 or 7 in one types work well? Buying separate tests could work out expensive.

I looked at the latest water quality report for my supply area and the only mention is Chlorine. When I used to use tap water I just drew off enough for a water change and ran an air stone in it for a while.

Is this for removing chloramine. I didn’t think it was used much in the UK, mainly the US?

Yes, me too. Your advice all those months ago to use rainwater for my two Nano’s is still much appreciated. I laughed the other day watching a guy struggling with 50L of RO water from the LFS. I wonder how much he paid for it, any ideas?

I use mostly rain water in my 60L and 37L Nanos. Before using it I filter it through some kitchen towel to get any of the larger particles out of it. I just checked it after filtering with a TDS meter and got a reading of 23ppm. Out of curiosity I checked both Nanos, the 60L read 280ppm and the...

I haven’t found a skimmer that actually works long term without sucking in Shrimps. I was a little dubious but I added a home made diffuser yesterday and it does seem to have got rid of the surface film. I need to quieten the air pump now, or at least put it on a timer so it’s only on overnight.

You can some fancy water butts these days.

I’ve never tested the rainwater I use apart from TDS. It’s collected from the roof of a large shed with a rubber roof. I’ve been using it for a long time now and the Fish, Shrimps and plants don’t seem to mind it. TDS when I last checked was around 50. The water butt is 210L. I have two of these...

We used to use them where I worked many years ago to protect the water heaters. Given the huge amount of salt we got through in a year I always thought they had to be a bad idea. Why Salt-Based Softeners are Being Banned | Pelican Water

I use about 90% Rainwater mixed with hot tap. Virtually gone are the calcium deposits I used to get on the glass and equipment.

Following Darrel’s advice I’ve been using mostly rainwater with a bit of tap and it seems to be working very well. Ok, I’m only using easy to grow plants and moss but they’re growing like mad and the shrimps have increased in numbers a lot. I think I had a couple of Cory eggs the other day as well.

One of the worst aspects of hard water is what it does to the tank and equipment. I now use mostly rain water and that’s fine but years ago I was forever trying to scrape limescale off everything.

Who knows, I’m just using a basic TDS meter. The tap water I use for topping up goes through a Britta filter first and amounts to about 5 or 6% of the total so not sure how little chlorine or chloramine that amounts to. I was wondering about H2O2 as a disinfectant to kill anything unwanted.

I collect rainwater from a covered water butt. I line a funnel with kitchen paper to filter out any large particles but in practice it doesn’t get too dirty. The water is then stored in a couple of ten litre containers indoors to warm up closer to tank temp. It’s then mixed with a little tap...

I’ve been using mostly rainwater as well and it’s been great not having to clean limescale from the tank and equipment.

I bought this one and it seems to be consistent. Not used that often but I test tap and rainwater sometimes. I also checked my jug filter and Zero Water did indeed read 0! :) https://www.waterfilterman.co.uk/water-testing-meters/326-hm-digital-ap-1-aquapro-tds-meter-water-tester.html

I haven’t used test kits for many years. Once the new tank is cycled though and the lockdown is over I want to introduce some fish and wondering if I should test the water. I’m thinking that maybe at least a nitrite test would be a good idea but what do folks think?

Looks like it’s about 7.2 in your general area? http://waterquality.anglianwater.com/mergedreport.aspx

6.5 straight out of the tap sounds quite low for the UK?

If you enter your postcode here it should give you a water quality report. I couldn’t find the TDS though. https://www.affinitywater.co.uk/my-water/water-quality/quality-in-your-area

I thought our tap water was bad enough at 280. A TDS of 480 sounds very high, have you checked the published data from your water supplier? I’ve been using rainwater in my Nano’s with great success so far. Good plant growth and the shrimps are breeding like mad. No need for things like water...

Good question I look forward to seeing some answers. I suspect you may need to provide a bit more information about your tank though.

I don’t know I’m not a chemist but the first article says “Vitamin C neutralizes chloramine”.

Bit more technical. https://www.fs.fed.us/t-d/pubs/html/05231301/05231301.html

Sorry if this has been linked before but I’ve only just seen it and thought others may find it of interest. https://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/topic/120544-dechlorinating-with-vitamin-c-ascorbic-acid-ascorbate/

Good point Darrel. There’s no space for another butt next to either of the existing ones but I may be able to place another one fed from the house roof. Once our patio makeover is finished in August I will look into that, thanks.

One water butt collects from a clay tiled roof the other from a plastic (shed) roof. All gutters are plastic and so are the butts. I’ve been using rainwater because my tap water is quite hard and I really dislike the lime scale that collects on the tank and pipes etc. My tap water is 268 TDS...

I just wanted to see if the water was suitable for certain inhabitants. I’ve not seen conductivity mentioned for this, just PH. For most things it seems to need to be between around PH7 and PH8. I have no way of knowing what the stuff in my water butt is but I could add tap water if it’s too...

Anyone use these? I just want to make occasional checks of the rainwater I’m using at the moment. I don’t use CO2 so not sure how much it’s going to change anyway. They sell PH4 to PH9 papers for a couple of quid on the auction site.

Sounds like a good option.

If as you said earlier the TDS from your RO water is only about 25ppm I wouldn’t have thought it would be a problem?

It’s a real shame you don’t have ordinary tap water as you could have mixed it with some rain water.

The rainwater from my water butt sometimes appears to have a very slight tinge* to it but smells fine. The butt is thick green plastic with a fairly good black lid. It comes off a large shed roof that is covered in a black pond liner type material, the gutters are plastic as well. The last time...

I’m sure someone on here can help you.

We’ve got a couple of 210L water butts. I’m using the water from them at the moment in my 10L Nano along with some occasional carbonated water. I’m surprised you need a softener, I stayed in Galway for a weeks holiday years ago and the water was very soft there. It was sucked out of a local...

Not sure about Ireland but I thought here in the UK it was mandatory to have a mains water tap? The softener installers normally need one for routine testing. Sorry I can’t help with your question but do you have or could you fit a water butt enabling you to use rain water? I think you get...

If it did contain a lot of dust and other particulates would it show up with a TDS meter?

Anyone tried this in their planted Aquariums? I read some time ago that you shouldn’t drink it as it may contain some heavy metals. It has been suggested that it could be used for watering gardens though. Our unit doesn’t produce that much waste but it is very low in TDS at only 40. Rainwater...

As the trend for quite some years has been to replace old HW and CH equipment with Combi Boilers I wonder how many houses still have hot water cylinders? Our current house has a Combi but the last two had stored hot water.

I’m just starting an unheated and unfiltered 10L Nano. The only occupants until this evening was some Tetra Active Substrate and four Moss balls. I bought some Spider wood to put into the tank today and when I took the cover glass off I noticed quite a bit of surface film. I’m sure the culprit...

I hope this is in the right place. I took a reading straight from the kitchen tap and got 265ppm. I then took a reading from the drinking water part of the tap that goes through an in-line Brita filter and got 185ppm. Any ideas on what the filter is actually removing. It’s not much but certainly...

Hozelock sell a submersible water butt pump. I've got one somewhere that I used to empty the pond.

I don't, but it's daft not to really. You can bet though, if I set it all up it won't rain again for months! :lol:

My meter has just arrived and the results are ... Tap water (Surrey) 340 ppm Sainsburys "Caledonian" bottled water 109 ppm Rain water from my garden 13 ppm We have a water purifier at work so I'll check that out as well. Water at work (West London) 335 ppm and after going through the purifier...

Very informative Darrel, thanks for that. Now, as you've put me off drinking the stuff is it safe for me to drink (lots) of Beer instead! :lol:

I ordered a TDS meter last week as well so I'll be testing the clear stuff from all over the place when I get it! :lol:

Thanks very much Darrel, most helpful. Do you have any recommendations for a TDS meter? Something like this maybe: http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/tds- ... hermometer Or http://www.osmotics.co.uk/products/TDS- ... Meter.html

Are these any good, seem to be a good price. http://www.easypet247.com/product.php?id_product=39

Some folks say to just not collect the first ten minutes of rainfall due to possible contaminants in the air. Sounds reasonable to me!