Acclimation Question

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 9/16/2022 at 2:50 PM, modified lung said:

Did you happen to get your info from aquariumscience.org? I strongly recommend not taking everything on that website too seriously.

I hope this isn't thread hijacking; I'd actually started writing a whole new thread but it got really long.  If it doesn't go against the etiquette here to ask, I'll try to briefly put my question: I keep cardinal tetras, honey gouramis, and Amano shrimp (and some hitchhiking bladder snails) in a small community tank that will soon be upgraded to a 55 gallon community.  Because my local fish store offers free RO water, and because my water softener-treated tap water has (after 24 hour off-gassing) parameters of about 8.1 pH, 10-ish dKH, and about 1 dGH, I have been doing water changes with a 1:1 RO:tap blend, along with enough Seachem Equilibrium to bring the mixture to about 6 dGH, and I've been very successful with it.  Before I started cutting my tap with RO, the fish were fine, but I had all kinds of problems with Amano shrimp going on walkabouts and nerite snails just up and dying.

So now that I'm planning this new, much bigger tank, I was originally going to keep doing the 1:1 RO:tap blend, because it's been working.  My hesitation is that, while the RO is free, it's a 40 minute round trip to get it, and I can only take so much at a time.  I could buy and install an RO unit (and I still might) but either way I'd be spending time/money/gasoline.

So that brings me to what I stumbled upon at aquariumscience.org, namely the claims there that pH, GH, and KH aren't important, at least to fish (plants and shrimp are also discussed but at much less length).  This was exciting, because it would be so much easier if I can just use the water that comes out of the tap.  But because it seems too good to be true, and because it seems to fly in the face of everything else I'd heard about pH/GH/KH, I'm hesitant to ditch the blend.

With all that said, should I stick with what's been working and suck up the drive or installing an RO filter?  Or is that unnecessary step that just makes water changes a hassle?

For the record, in addition to the cardinal tetras and honey gouramis, my eventual planned stocking for the 55 will include sterbai corydoras and Apistogramma cacatoides, which are, to my understanding, all fish which would appreciate lower pH, GH, and KH.  Additionally, once the new tank seasons some, I'd move the Amano shrimp over, and then turn the current small community tank into a Neocaridina davidii colony, which are also (I think!) lower pH/GH/KH animals.

[Janoš Bećar Pecaroš]

Have you tried increasing the tap water hardness to 6 degrees before using it in the tank? Without RO water.

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 10/6/2022 at 2:51 PM, Ištvan Bećar Pecaroš said:

Have you tried increasing the tap water hardness to 6 degrees before using it in the tank? Without RO water.

Do you mean by using the bypass valve on the water softener?  If so, no, I haven't tried that, and truth be told, I don't know the GH of my tap water before the softener gets to it.  My current procedure is to estimate how much water I'll need to add in (based on how much I have siphoned out or will have siphoned out), add about half that amount to my bucket, add the other half from my tap, then stir in my measured amount of Equilibrium to bring the GH up to about 6, then pour the combined bucket into the tank.  So in that sense, sort of; I'm increasing the blended RO:tap water's GH from 0-1 to about 6.

Mostly I'm using RO to cut the pH.  If there was some kind of slow, safe, long-term buffer to make the pH go down, a sort of anti-crushed coral, I'd just use that, but my KH is high enough (about 10 dKH) that no amount of wood or catappa leaves will do the trick.  So I'm really just trying to dilute the pH, so to speak.

[Janoš Bećar Pecaroš]

On 10/6/2022 at 2:11 PM, Rube_Goldfish said:

Do you mean by using the bypass valve on the water softener?  If so, no, I haven't tried that, and truth be told, I don't know the GH of my tap water before the softener gets to it.  My current procedure is to estimate how much water I'll need to add in (based on how much I have siphoned out or will have siphoned out), add about half that amount to my bucket, add the other half from my tap, then stir in my measured amount of Equilibrium to bring the GH up to about 6, then pour the combined bucket into the tank.  So in that sense, sort of; I'm increasing the blended RO:tap water's GH from 0-1 to about 6.

Mostly I'm using RO to cut the pH.  If there was some kind of slow, safe, long-term buffer to make the pH go down, a sort of anti-crushed coral, I'd just use that, but my KH is high enough (about 10 dKH) that no amount of wood or catappa leaves will do the trick.  So I'm really just trying to dilute the pH, so to speak.

I mean the water you would put in the tank. If the water is very soft, you said it’s 1 degree after softened, and you use that for shrimp, they would probably not do good. The shrimp need harder water so they can molt properly.

Basically, preparer your tap water the way you do it, skip RO water, make sure the GH is at least 6.

[modified lung]

On 10/6/2022 at 11:32 AM, Rube_Goldfish said:

So that brings me to what I stumbled upon at aquariumscience.org, namely the claims there that pH, GH, and KH aren't important, at least to fish (plants and shrimp are also discussed but at much less length). 

This is true to a degree. Fish are very adaptable and most will do fine at any reasonable level of pH, GH, or KH.

But it's not true if you consider their ratios relative to each other.  Fish need the ions in the water to be balanced. That means the closer the GH and KH are to each other the better.

So most fish will be fine at both 3 GH + 3 KH or 10 GH +10 KH (they don't have to be exactly the same). But maybe not at 3 GH +10 KH or 10 GH + 3 KH. 

Adding pH, you basically want to avoid weird combinations of low pH and high KH (especially with low GH) or to a lesser degree high pH and low KH.

This kind of thing usually isn't talked about because ion imbalances don't happen in water very often ...that is, unless you're adding too much of something to the water or it goes through a softener. 

Test your water before it goes through the softener. If you have a bypass valve, you might be fine just using that.

Edited October 7, 2022 by modified lung

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 10/6/2022 at 8:00 PM, modified lung said:

That means the closer the GH and KH are to each other the better.

So is it fair to say that, if my pH/GH/KH are all somewhat on the high end or all somewhat on the low end, either way I'd be okay?  Even with what are natively soft water fishes?

[modified lung]

On 10/7/2022 at 6:30 AM, Rube_Goldfish said:

So is it fair to say that, if my pH/GH/KH are all somewhat on the high end or all somewhat on the low end, either way I'd be okay?  Even with what are natively soft water fishes?

There are always some exceptions but that's usually true. My licorice gouramis, for example, are from peat swamps with almost no TDS (GH and KH are part of TDS). They do fine in my water which is 8 GH, 6-7 KH. But they won't breed and their eggs definitely won't survive unless both those numbers are close to zero.

There's probably a limit when it comes to long term health though. I always thought something like over 12 GH might be pushing it for soft water fish. I've never actually had water that hard though. If I'm remembering right, I read neon tetra growth gets stunted at over 1 ppt salinity which is equal to 1000 ppm TDS, but 12 GH + 12 KH is only +/-350 ppm TDS.

Things like shrimp and snails don't do as well in soft water though because they need more calcium. Unless they have a very high calcium diet. There's probably exceptions to that too though.

There are so many different species and they each can be so different. The only real way to know if what you want can handle your water is to try and see.