Water help

[RichNJ]

On 3/13/2024 at 12:47 PM, lefty o said:

ill double down, i use water softened water in my tanks, and i add salt to the tanks on top of that. never had an issue with my amanos doing this, nor my fish, nor my plants. pretty much every animal on the face of the earth needs some salt in its diet. co-op Cory uses tons of crushed coral, anybody want to guess how much salt is in coral? i dont know the answer, but its more than what a water softener is putting in your water. if you cant taste the salt in your tap water (you should not be able to, if you can, something is wrong with your softener) its not enough to bother anything.

i am leaning in your direction too. If the salt was too much, i think I'd be killing plants, which I am not.  I think that either my 30-40 nitrates or the shock of being in a tank with fish is what kills my Amanos....or I should maybe acclimate over several hours and not just 60 minutes or so.  Another thought is the Easy Iron ....but the Coop says it shrimp safe...and we all trust the Coop.

 

@lefty o

Edited March 13 by RichNJ

[Tony s]

@RichNJ the question is . Do you think you have high iron in your well. They can test for that. or you can get a test for that. My water will coat anything it touches. turning it into a rust-colored mess. it's been known to discolor leaves of grass if water hose has been left on too long. on top of that we have iron bacteria in our well. so the water can be in a bucket and still be rusting. (I actually need to get a testing kit and measure it myself). in order to fight that inside the house we did a softener, but we also added a hydrogen peroxide system to kill bacteria. apparently, it also kills beneficial bacteria. Which is why I do RO. trust me, I wouldn't if I felt I didn't have to.

If I'm not wrong (i can be), doesn't shrimp have an intolerance to high iron levels? Maybe it's worth a test for you to find out for sure. or maybe your water softener company has that number already?

[RichNJ]

On 3/13/2024 at 1:13 PM, Tony s said:

@RichNJ the question is . Do you think you have high iron in your well. They can test for that. or you can get a test for that. My water will coat anything it touches. turning it into a rust-colored mess. it's been known to discolor leaves of grass if water hose has been left on too long. on top of that we have iron bacteria in our well. so the water can be in a bucket and still be rusting. (I actually need to get a testing kit and measure it myself). in order to fight that inside the house we did a softener, but we also added a hydrogen peroxide system to kill bacteria. apparently, it also kills beneficial bacteria. Which is why I do RO. trust me, I wouldn't if I felt I didn't have to.

If I'm not wrong (i can be), doesn't shrimp have an intolerance to high iron levels? Maybe it's worth a test for you to find out for sure. or maybe your water softener company has that number already?

thanks I really don't know what my tap water is in iron content, or how to test it.  We have public utility water sourced from the ground (which is well water).  Just don't know our iron levels at all.  The public utility report doesn't disclose iron.

I do use Easy Iron though, so i suppose this could be a culprit putting me over the edge with the shrimp.  The Easy Iron is the one variable that wasn't in my quarantine shrimp tank, where they survived for one month before dying.  I think I may water change the Easy Iron out to eliminate that as an option, and then try again with another small batch of Amanos. 

@Tony s

Edited March 13 by RichNJ

[Tony s]

My lfs has an iron test. I haven’t picked it up yet. But I should. I believe it’s made by Sera