Home water softener

[Dizcuz]

My whole house has a external water softener the water passes through. It runs through a plastic box that has some kind of large salt crystals in it (looks like crushed ice.). Can I use this water for water changes?

[MonkeyFist]

I use softened water for my aquariums. Dont have any problems.

[Second Hand Pat]

My whole house has a external water softener the water passes through. It runs through a plastic box that has some kind of large salt crystals in it (looks like crushed ice.). Can I use this water for water changes?

Best to do a bit of research on water softeners with fish. I have seen it recommended to bypass the softener by using water before the water reaches the softener for water changes.
Pat

[DJW]

I connected my fish water upstream of the softener so that I would keep the naturally occurring minerals. The salt type softeners swap calcium and magnesium (among others) for sodium ions if you put solar salt. The sodium works better with soap and is better in your water pipes, but to the fish the softened water is just as "hard", having the same or greater TDS. If it is difficult to plumb unsoftened water to the fish tank you might look into using potassium salt in the softener. It costs more but leaves the mineral content closer to what is ok for fish. If you look at the RO remineralizers like Seachem Equilibrium you will see that the main ingredient is potassium.

[Jack L]

IME
fish were fine with softened water, plants not so much

[DJW]

If you search older posts or google it, there has been a lot of discussion on the topic of water softeners for fish, and whether to use KCl rather than NaCl in the softener. The level of sodium in "softened" water will depend on how hard the source water is. One thing you can do is install a bypass on the softener and use that when you change water. My well water is very hard and I just didn't want all the sodium; it is especially hard on plants. I also thought about "forgetting" to ever add salt again to the softener but my wife wouldn't go for that.

[rickztahone]

Here is a somewhat recent thread that I started when considering using softened water for my discus:
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...water-softener

I ended up bypassing it though.

[Jack L]

Here is a somewhat recent thread that I started when considering using softened water for my discus:
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...water-softener

I ended up bypassing it though.

Hi Rick,
i have a whole house softener, i used it for fish (non Ds) it was fine. but plants did terrible. i switched to RO with add back minerals, in literally within 3 days the plants went from translucent to green.

i guess i could have tried softened water with added back minerals, to see how that did, but i didn't. i figured the added salt wouldn't be great for plants.