Not aging water

[Anonapersona]

If I use CO2 to maintain the tank water at the same pH as the tap water, and use a dechlorinator as I refill... can I get away with not aging water for my discus?

[Carol_Roberts]

The whole point is stable pH. Can you keep the pH within .2 morning, noon and night with CO2 injection?

[Anonapersona]

The whole point is stable pH. Can you keep the pH within .2 morning, noon and night with CO2 injection?


Hmmm, maybe. Without many plants to consume Co2 and then give some back during the night, it might stay quite stable.

As I spread these young fish out into tanks around the house I'm going to run into problems storing water. These buckets in the kitchen are such an eyesore and I bought a 55 gallon drum but my husband had a fit when he saw it. I don't think having that in the kitchen or even the house will be an option.


Second question.... pH is actually the "power of hydrogen atomes", right? So, it seems like if you add 50% fo pH 8.0 and 50% of pH 7.0, you'd get much closer to 8.0 than to 7.5, since the 7.0 is actually one tenth of the 8.0...? And if you have 7.6 + 8.0 the effect would be even less, right?

I may need to actually test this, I'll be doing water change on the 110 today, I'll check to see what the tap pH is and the tank is before and after a 50% WC.


Whoa! That's strange, the cichlid tank has almost the same pH as freshly drawn tap water. I wonder why? OK, testing aged tap water... hardly any difference! I may be in luck, with fresh tap at 7.8, tank at 7.9 and aged tap at 8.0, that's so little difference that aging water may not be needed --yipee! Maybe with careful temp monitoring I can do this from the tap. Oh, yes, that would make this so much more do-able.

[Carol_Roberts]

I'd rather see you change from the tap than run CO2 in the tank. Have the water cascade into the tank during refills. This will help add oxygen to the tap water.

[Cosmo]

Hello again Anonapersona,

Get yourself some large liquid storage containers and park them remote (mine are in the basement) then run the water to your tanks with a pump via either water line or hose. Jehmco has a the largest and most varied supply of storage tanks that I've been able to find, but I'm sure there must be other suppliers as well. I got 2 65 gal ones from John and plumbed them together out of the bottom bulkheads. Use a high pressure low head diaphram pump to fill the tank on the second floor and a quiet one powerhead inside one of the tanks to fill the tanks in the basement.

Came about this when my wife became unreasonable and told me I had to get my RO and 44 gal trash/water container out of the second floor shower stall :) ::) ???

good luck
Jim

[RyanH]

Doesn't it stink when the wife kicks you out of the bathroom? ;D

I bought a pump for this purpose at Lowe's not too long ago. It's runs great and saves me a ton of time and effort. It cost me about 30.00 bucks.

I'm at school right now and I can't remember the brand name. I'll post it later.

[DiscusBob]

I used to age my water and my discus did very well. Now I siphon out 1/2 the water from my 125 gallon set up and refill directly from the tap once a week and everyone does fine. In fact, I have 2 pair that are constantly spawning.

I just try to keep the temp the same and add Amquell as it fills. I don't worry abouit pH as it will only go up which doesn't bother them, and the fact that the tank is planted seems to even things out quickly.

[Carol_Roberts]

This method works best when the pH from the tap is fairly close to or higher than the pH in the tank.

[Anonapersona]

I've reached a compromise. I'm keeping one large bucket to age water, not two, and when that bucket runs too low for the pump, I mix tap water with that is left inthe bottom of the bucket pumping out while filling the bucket to which I've added dechlorinator.

So, only the last 3 or 4 gallons is tap or tap mixed with the last water in the bucket and it is of the right temp from the kitchen sink. Most of the water used each day is aged and heated just right, and I can still do larger water changes without having two huge buckets there. For now, the tap pH and the tank pH is pretty close, but in winter that might be different, so I'll use mostly aged water.

The discus do not seem to mind and I think it is important that I get the water changes up from 20% to 30% since there are so many fish in the tank (23 -- 2.5" to 3.0+" in 50 actual gallons)

[Carol_Roberts]

That sounds like a good compromise ;D