Ro water

HI Professor

I have red many posts on Ro water and not found the answer to my question .
Is ro water good for discus if the water is mixed rite .Would you recommend buying A RO unit .By reading I found that Clean RO water is not suitable for Discus which makes sense but is it good to own . I have tried to find recommendations from well know Breeders such as Jack Watley and no information or recommendations on using RO water .

Please Prof what do you recommend with your experience ,I know you have told me not to tamper with water to much but there are so much different tales on water please give some advice .

 

My BAD Proff i just found information on RO water, you have previously replied and answered another persons questions which answers mine thanks any way...


Keith, Singu is perfectly correct, he means you need to measure your general hardness and carbonate hardness. You have only measured KH, and I would expect the carbonate hardness to be very low, but you need to measure your GH and I would expect that this could be a little higher, but not much more than 1 GH.

There is a general misunderstanding that if your pH is high, say 8, your water MUST have a high hardness, but this is not correct, you can increase the pH without increasing hardness by addition of a tiny amount of caustic soda or a smaller amount of lime and this is often done by municipalities in the Western Cape so stop erosion of cement pipes (say from Voelvlei to Cape Town). However, this does not mean that you need RO water as a matter of fact I would view the use of RO water as completely unnecessary in the bigger Cape Town area. I am only too happy with my tapwater which has a pH of 7.5, when I do water changes in my aquaria, in which the pH tends to drop all the time. I fight a constant battle to keep the pH from dropping below 4.5 using bicarbonate of soda in spite of the water from the tap having a pH of 4.5. The acidification is the result of the production of nitrate in discus tanks which results from strong feeding.

So, forget about RO, save your money for other equipment.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Salim,

Regarding RO water. I live in the Roodepoort area, where our tap water is of poor quality. Now I have a discus tank which require reqular water changes. I have invested in a RO unit, as I do water changes every 2nd day. I use two products to make up the loss of the esstential minerals e.g Kent's Discus Essential and Kent's RO right. I have had no problems thus far. This after I have spoken to the professor and also introduce a new food regime using prof's food. So for me this works, but it does not mean that it will work for you.

 

Yes thank you for letting me know as in the cape its not recommended to much

 

Hi Salim, I stay in Benoni - Gauteng - and use RO water for my soft water community tank, but I add Tropic Marin PRO Discus Mineral : I keep Rainbow pipe fish, Choc gouramis , and scarlet gem badis.

They all need really good water quality, and I do +/- 20% water change once a week.

So I can't comment on Discus, but sofar its been working really well for me!

All the best

 

Hi,

A little off the topic.

Where do you get additional water minerals from? I havent really seen this at the lfs and is it expensive?

Thanks,

 

Hi Jwalker, Ill PM you to keep the thread on track!

Ciao