Help Needed for Water Report

[Ibz10]

So I am having a very hard time understanding my water report and would like some help to dissect it. I have looked at numerous posts, calculators and articles but can not get my head around any of it. I wish to understand what my (out the tap) PH, GH, KH and anything else that will be useful for me to know is. Using this information can hopefully help me keep the right type of live stock. Ideally I would like to keep some CPD and shrimp (neo or cardinia). I also have access to spotless water near me if it is better to use either completely or mixed with tap water. I have attached my water report. Happy to answer any questions and look forward to learning and understanding.

Please helppppp

 

[MichaelJ]

So I am having a very hard time understanding my water report and would like some help to dissect it. I have looked at numerous posts, calculators and articles but can not get my head around any of it. I wish to understand what my (out the tap) PH, GH, KH and anything else that will be useful for me to know is. Using this information can hopefully help me keep the right type of live stock. Ideally I would like to keep some CPD and shrimp (neo or cardinia). I also have access to spotless water near me if it is better to use either completely or mixed with tap water. I have attached my water report. Happy to answer any questions and look forward to learning and understanding.

Please helppppp

The AF059.pdf says 108 mg/L ( ppm ) of Ca that amounts to 15.12 GH (assuming your water is overwhelmingly Ca and very, very little Mg). Your alkalinity is quoted to be 230 mg/L thats equivalent to 12.8 KH. With this level of alkalinity your straight tap is probably somewhere around >7 - 8.5 pH.


Other Notes: (I misread the columns in my original post): Sulphate is 73 mg/L (high), Sodium avg. 37.5 mg/L (high but manageable with mix of RO). Chloride 61 mg/L. And conductivity is 640 uS/cm on average. roughly a TDS of 320 ppm.

If you go spotless (RO) I would mix 60% RO / 40% Tap or at least 50%/50%

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Simon Cole]

The reason that sulphates and conductivity are high around Uxbridge is probably due to agricultural fertilisers entering the drinking water.

 

[MichaelJ]

The reason that sulphates and conductivity are high around Uxbridge is probably due to agricultural fertilisers entering the drinking water.

Yes, Simon... it looks like it.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Simon Cole]

@MichaelJ There is possibly quite a bit of phosphate in there too.
I am keeping an eye on this thread. It will be interesting to learn more about keeping shrimp.

 

[MichaelJ]

. It will be interesting to learn more about keeping shrimp.

In my experience the key is to provide just enough calcium and magnesium but not too much either (magnesium helps the shrimps absorb the calcium) … and a low’ish EC 150-350 uS/cm (75-175 ppm TDS) due to their limited ability to perform osmoregulation and to keep it stable - which can be a bit of a challenge. Not too acidic waters (6-7 pH is a good range) with Ca in the 20-30 ppm range and Mg 5-10 ppm range (~4-6.5 GH) and you’re all good for pretty much all species of shrimps. If you go too far beyond these mineral numbers the chances of fail molts increases depending on the diet and how well the stock is adapted. That’s simply the reason why you have conflicting stories from people happily keeping shrimps at say 15 ppm Ca while others have them dying under similar conditions… other than that, supplementing with botanicals keeps common shrimp diseases at bay and provides excellent sources of biofilm for them to snack on. Copper, Zinc and Nickel should be kept at an absolute minimum - shrimps are super sensitive to these metals. Food wise, you can add algae wafers, protein- and mineral sticks, scalded spinach, peeled cucumbers or zucchini’s… they love all that. Happy shrimping!

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Simon Cole]

Not too acidic waters (6-7 pH is a good range) with Ca in the 20-30 ppm range and Mg 5-10 ppm range (~4-6.5 GH) and you’re all good for pretty much all species of shrimps.

That is very much what I was thinking. The Ca:Mg ratio at 3:1. I also think that your observations about EC are rather astute. Quite a few of us, including myself have noticed that amano shrimp will crawl out of tanks, and I often felt that was an EC/TDS related issue. Great advice about diet.

 

[Ibz10]

Thank you for the replies, @MichaelJ does this mean I am at a disadvantage when it comes to keeping livestock? I currently have a 30Litre planted tank which I will be journaling soon. Rather than using only tap water am I safe to begin water changes at a 60% RO and 40% tap water. Id hesitate to commit to using only RO water at the moment.

 

[Kaliilo]

Thank you for the replies, @MichaelJ does this mean I am at a disadvantage when it comes to keeping livestock? I currently have a 30Litre planted tank which I will be journaling soon. Rather than using only tap water am I safe to begin water changes at a 60% RO and 40% tap water. Id hesitate to commit to using only RO water at the moment.

I cant help much but I had the same question a few days ago. I am literally down the road from you and my two nanos are currently running on tap and the plants seem very happy. My 30l has a ton of shrimp in 100% tap from watford and they are happy and breeding. I am also worried about other livestock though so my other two tanks will be mixed with Spotless Water, its a very cheap way of diluting your tap. I had a lot of help from forum members on the best way to go about this and it will open up my stocking choices massively. Google Spotless Water...they are everywhere. FOund them out from this forum as well
(heres the thread with helpful advice from the forum) Spotless water...help me understand

ETA: sorry I just realised you already know about spotless water, serves me right for skim reading lol

 

[Ibz10]

@Kaliilo haha. Yeah last thing I want is to be careless and just get whatever I like in terms of livestock which would be a disaster. I struggle with plants dying let alone fish and shrimp. Where did you get your shrimp in Watford from? Its good to know we are literally neighbours. Maybe if you decide you have too many shrimp I could take some from you as the transition maybe easier due to similar water? What percentage would you do for tap and spotless if you did use it in your 30L?

 

[Kaliilo]

@Kaliilo haha. Yeah last thing I want is to be careless and just get whatever I like in terms of livestock which would be a disaster. I struggle with plants dying let alone fish and shrimp. Where did you get your shrimp in Watford from? Its good to know we are literally neighbours. Maybe if you decide you have too many shrimp I could take some from you as the transition maybe easier due to similar water? What percentage would you do for tap and spotless if you did use it in your 30L?

My 30l shrimp tank is 100% tap. Really heavily planted though and took advice from the likes of @dw1305 to include floating and fast growing stem plants. My shrimp were from Wildwoods and a little garden centre near me called Kiln Nurseries (called Squires now I think) but Crewes Hill is not far from us (30mins) and has Wildwoods/Maidenhead Aquatics as well as some smaller LFS.
Once my little shrimp colony has established properly id be happy to pop some shrimp down to you I am also Affinity Water so our tap water is pretty much the same thing.
My 60l will be 70% spotless water and 30% tap because I dont want to hassle of adding loads of stuff back so I will use my tap water as a buffer to keep the minerals up and it means im not limited to hard water fish.
My 110l was going to be a mixture of the same but I want Daisys Ricefish which love hard water so I may do a much smaller ratio or just keep it hard.
My shrimp tank has had no issues at all - literally no algae or anything. My only issue was shrimp deaths due to planaria (not water related) and once I treated that the tank is ticking along nicely. Plants all look decent

 

[Kaliilo]

The link I added previously to my own question about Spotless Water has some really decent advice on mixing and how to do it from the other forum members as I was clueless

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
A thread for you <"TDS of London Tap Water"> from 2012.

This document, "Baseline groundwater chemistry: the Palaeogene of the Thames Basin" - <"https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/12600/1/OR10057.pdf"> has all you would ever want to know about Greater London's tap water.

The AF059.pdf says 108 mg/L ( ppm ) of Ca that amounts to 15.12 GH (assuming your water is overwhelmingly Ca and very, very little Mg). Your alkalinity is quoted to be 230 mg/L thats equivalent to 12.8 KH.

There may have been some water from the "Bagshot Bed (Bracklesham)" aquifer, that would be softer than the water abstracted from the Chalk aquifer. In London all the water is hard, but the actual composition is quite variable dependent upon the proportion of water from the Thames, the London Clays, Chalk boreholes, the Lea valley reservoirs etc.

Other Notes: (I misread the columns in my original post): Sulphate is 73 mg/L (high), Sodium avg. 37.5 mg/L (high but manageable with mix of RO). Chloride 61 mg/L. And conductivity is 640 uS/cm on average. roughly a TDS of 320 ppm.

The water has elevated sulphate (SO4---) levels due to pyrite oxidation in the "London Clay" . You can <"taste it some times">.

The process of pyrite weathering is an entirely natural mineral dissolution process. However, dewatering of the London Palaeogene aquifer since the late 1800s has allowed air into the dewatered part of the aquifer via wells (see Section 3.2.2), and “windows” of thin or absent Clay over several decades. This has allowed pyrite oxidation, which could not have previously occurred at such a rate owing to the scarcity of oxidising agents (Flavin and Joseph, 1983; Rainey and Rosenbaum, 1989; Kinniburgh et al., 1994). .......

cheers Darrel

 

[Ibz10]

Thank you @Kaliilo, slowly going through the other posts and am leaning towards doing a 70% spotless and 30% tap water (or the 60/40 not sure what would be better) and see how I get on. Will check out the shops you have mentioned and I'm sure end up spending more than I should.

Once my little shrimp colony has established properly id be happy to pop some shrimp down to you

That would be great thank you for offering I will be waiting patiently 😂.

Ideally I would like to be able to keep CPD and have a fascinaton for Tangerine Tiger shrimp. If 30L is too small for any CPD would happily wait and upgrade when I can.

 

[Kaliilo]

CPD are tiny I think though if I recall they may need a bit more space than usual as I think the males can bicker. Dont quote me on that though, im sure someone else with experience on them will chime in.
I dont know much about tangerine shrimp, they are pretty though!

 

[MichaelJ]

Thank you for the replies, @MichaelJ does this mean I am at a disadvantage when it comes to keeping livestock?

Not at all @Ibz10 , If you go with 60% RO and 40% Tap your GH will come down to 6 GH, KH 5 and an EC 256 uS/cm (125 ppm TDS). These numbers are just fine for shrimps. You should add a bit of Epsom Salt (MgSO4) to raise the Magnesium content a bit, this will help both plants and shrimps. Say 0.5 g when you do the 50% (15 L) WC that will add ~3.5 ppm of Mg relative to the WC water - you will usually get a bit from fertilizers and your tap water while very low, is unlikely to be zero.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Ibz10]

Not at all @Ibz10 , If you go with 60% RO and 40% Tap your GH will come down to 6 GH, KH 5 and an EC 256 uS/cm (125 ppm TDS). These numbers are just fine for shrimps. You should add a bit of Epsom Salt (MgSO4) to raise the Magnesium content a bit, this will help both plants and shrimps. Say 0.5 g when you do the 50% (15 L) WC that will add ~3.5 ppm of Mg relative to the WC water - you will usually get a bit from fertilizers and your tap water while very low, is unlikely to be zero.

Thank you so much @MichaelJ this makes it super easy for me to understand, really appreciate it. Does this mean I can keep cardinia shrimp also?

Will have to donate to forum as a thank you haha

Edit: just to confirm if I wc my 30L at 50% that would consist of 15Litres at 60%RO (9 litres) and 40%Tap (6 litres) with 0.5g epsom salt mixed in? Luckily ive learnt to use 2 buckets so can set up the second bucket before a wc. Am i able to use any epsom salt as I think mrs has some laying around.

 

[MichaelJ]

Thank you @Kaliilo, slowly going through the other posts and am leaning towards doing a 70% spotless and 30% tap water

You're fine with 60%, but 70% is better.... there is a thorny bit in your water report which is your high sodium contents... 37 ppm. With 60% RO that comes down to 15 ppm.... if you push it to 70% RO you can drive that down even further. We really do not want Sodium in our aquariums beyond trace amounts if we can avoid it.

Thank you so much @MichaelJ this makes it super easy for me to understand, really appreciate it. Does this mean I can keep cardinia shrimp also?

Yes you can. Bee/Red Crystals will be just fine (I currently keep Bee and Cherries in waters not too far off from what you're going to have with 70% RO). Make sure you drip acclimate them, as most problems when introducing shrimps arise when the EC/TDS of the source water is too different from your tank water - if the TDS is too different and you introduce them too fast they can suffer from TDS shock.... I have always slowly drip acclimated my shrimps and only introduced the shrimps when the holding container TDS and tank TDS would differ around 10-15 ppm. Same goes for water changes, make sure the WC water and tank water do not differ too much in terms of TDS (you will need a TDS meter of course to monitor that, won't set you back more than 10-20 GBP).

Cheers,
Michael

 

[MichaelJ]

Am i able to use any epsom salt as I think mrs has some laying around.

It needs to be 100% pure like this... do not use the bath-salt type of epsom salt - more often than not, that will be scented or not 100% pure - yes, my wife occasionally use it as well and its "nicely" scented - but completely unusable for an aquarium

Edit: just to confirm if I wc my 30L at 50% that would consist of 15Litres at 60%RO (9 litres) and 40%Tap (6 litres) with 0.5g epsom salt mixed in?

Yes, that is correct. In case you go with 70% RO (I am leaning toward that due to the relatively high Sodium contents of your Tap), it would be 10.5 L RO, and 4.5 L tap. Would bring your GH down to 4.5 and EC 192 uS/cm (TDS 96 ppm). Perfect! with some nice headroom for fertilizers as well, of which you won't need much of in a small low tech tank.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Ibz10]

You're fine with 60%, but 70% is better...

Thanks @MichaelJ , definetly going to do 70% over 60% . Luckily I already have a TDS meter and will now make good use of it. Also have a 25L container of RO water ready and will be doing my first wc on Thursday. Planning on doing 2 a week and eventually once a week.

Yes you can. Bee/Red Crystals will be just fine

Oh yes! Have been looking forward to getting some tangerine tigers

It needs to be 100% pure like this

Noted and ordered, mrs can keep all her epsom salt haha

10.5 L RO, and 4.5 L tap. Would bring your GH down to 4.5 and EC 192 uS/cm (TDS 96 ppm). Perfect! with some nice headroom for fertilizers as well, of which you won't need much of in a small low tech tank.

You couldnt have made it any easier👍🏽👌🏽, i do have c02 being injected through a nano kit does that make it high tech?