Changing parameters of city water

Terry

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Nov 14, 2018
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New Mexico
I’ve been using a TDS meter to monitor the tap water at my house and I’ve noticed that the measurements of the tap water can change by a factor of two or more almost overnight. I looked into the Santa Fe, NM water parameters and found that the water is mixed from different sources, wells and reservoirs, according to demand and what’s available. At the beginning of July, I measured 180ppm TDS in the tap water and today, 7-Aug, I measured 120ppm. Last winter, tap water was running 60 - 80ppm and recently as high as 210ppm. The GH and KH of the city water change, too. When the TDS of the city water was around 200ppm, the GH and KH were 120ppm and 80ppm respectively and the pH was 8.0. Today, TDS was 120ppm, GH and KH were 30 and 40ppm and the pH was 7.0 - 7.5
How will changing source water affect my aquarium plants? I‘d welcome suggestions about how to manage the issue or just ignore it. My 75g tank is very low tech.
 
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Allwissend

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I heard of people having this issue first hand, maybe they can provide some more input.

If I were to be confronted with this issue, I would probably add a GH booster, such as Equilibrium to a target GH value, say 100ppm . The reason for this is that most plant don't really enjoy Mg and Ca poor water. I would not really mess with the KH. Even with a 50% weekly water changes it would still be slow enough to not worry about shocking the system.

With a low tech tank I would guess plants are not going to be very affected but as a proactive management give them some extra Mg and Ca when the water is having that low GH. High tech I would say maybe use a Reverse Osmosis but even then it's not really required.
 

Terry

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Nov 14, 2018
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New Mexico
I’ve been using Thrive C and it seems to boost the GH and KH in the tank to 120 and 80ppm. I distill water for my carnivorous plants and I never would have noticed he TDS changes, except after running the still, the residue left in the bottom of the still varied. I do use the distilled water for the makeup water for the big tank. The tank is a work in progress. My goal is an attractive habitat for the fish.
 
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Allwissend

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Terry

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Nov 14, 2018
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Could the additional bicarbonates come from the fish food? It's the KH that seems to change when I add the Thrive C. The GH stays constant at 180ppm and the KH goes up to 80ppm. I'm using CaribSea Peace River for the substrate and it should be inert. There are a few rocks in the tank that I've used to hold the plants down. The rocks are from my Dad's rock collection and are tumbled agates and other silicate materials. All of the rocks have been in the tank for years.

The tank is a make over that I started on July 1. The original set-up had a gravel and laterite substrate and when I originally set up the tank in 2013, the plants grew like weeds. As the years passed, the plants did less and less well until finally all I could grow was jungle val and algae. Over the years I tried everything, more light, different plants, more water changes, fewer water changes and I never could get the plants to grow as they once did. I finally decided to swap out the gravel for the Peace River. When I did the change, I didn't mess with the canister filter and I replanted the jungle val and some apos.

The tank in question is a standard 75gal set up with an Eheim 4+ canister filter, Finnex Ray 2 light, Brand X T-8 light that is used to hide the light leakage from the Finnex (the tank is next to the TV). Tank temperature is, and has always been 78-80F. I am also using an EcoTech wave maker that I recycled from a reef and an auto-fill system, also reused from the reef.

I do a 15% water change every week and I add 1T (about 15ml) of the Thrive C. Just after I added the gravel, I put in a handful of SeaChem plant tabs and situated the tabs under the rooted plants.

I've noticed that in the last few days the plants seem to be picking up and looking a little better. Maybe I'm just impatient?

Here's a picture of the tank BBA and all. I didn't remove the BBA from the sides of the tank because the pleco likes it. She/he leaves tracks in the like a lawn mover through tall grass. The otos also snarf around in the BBA. The pleco is a mistake and I'd like to rehome him/her, however, Patty/Paddy Pleco is my husband's favorite fish and DH won't hear of any re-homing. The are also four clown loaches, 4-6in long, a pictus cat, and a red tail shark in there somewhere. The fish are noticeably more relaxed, if less visible, with lots of plants in the tank. All the fish are about 8years old. I'm good at keeping fish, I need to work on my plant skills!

Fish Tank.jpg
 

naty

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Aug 11, 2021
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PL
That's interesting, could you try adding some Thrive C say 10mL in 1L of the distilled water in a separate container and see by how much the KH increases. The distilled water would isolate the source to the fertilizer.

Regarding the issue with changing water parameters, I agree make sure Ca and Mg or GH in general is at suitable levels. I don't see any plants in there that are particularly sensitive to changes or need exact parameters.

Regards
Naty