hard// soft water

[coty]

just bought a LCD Digital TDS Meter Tester..when i get it and if i find my tank has to hard of water in it. what can i do to make it soft? my tank is a 220 gal and with doing water changes no sure how i can..any suggestions:confused:

[coty]

any info would help...thanks

[jsalas623]

That should be fine unless your trying to breed them then that's when you need RO water

[jsalas623]

I live in Arizona where my TDS is 500+ and the adults do fine.

[Trevor W]

The TDS will give you a measurement of the total dissolved solids usually in ppm. It will not tell you anything else. You can have a lower TDS reading (within reason) but still have a neutral or above neutral pH reading. If you are wanting to know the general hardness or GH than you will have to get a seperate test for that. If you are meaning that you want to know how acidic(often called soft which is actually a GH term) or how alkaline (hard) your water is than you would be better off with a pH test kit. Typically though a really low TDS such as 100% RO will give you a lower reading on the pH scale and generally a low reading on the GH scale be cause it has removed the vast majority of minerals from the water. The values go hand in hand to a point but I personally wouldn't rely on one value to determine the other values and if I wanted to know exactly each value I would test for them individually.
Are you keeping domestics or wild.caught discus in your tank. The reason I ask is because I have personally found that in my higher TDS water (around 350+ppm) i have never had an issue with raising domestic discus and have even had alright hatch rates from multiple pairs. However if i wasa serious breeder i would of wanted to increase my hatch rates by adding RO water to bring my TDS down as well as lowering the hardness of.my water by taking out such minerals as calcium carbonate so that the eggs didnt harden as fast and had a longer chance of being fertilized. Also young domestic discus in my experience take many advantages from all the minerals in a higher TDS water. Wilds on the other hand thrive in different conditions being that they were born in the wild and if youd like to know more because im still learning about wilds myself id suggest reading through some of the great threads including one that second hand pat posted just today in her homesteader section. I hope this is helpful and if I am wrong on any of these point I am sure someone will correct me.
In short there are many ways to change these values. I personally dont mess with PH so I can't give you much info on that. If you are wanting to lower your TDS than just simply add RO at a percentage to tap water till you achieve your desired TDS. For GH you could do the same as your TDS and there you go or you could go with 100% RO or RODI water and remineralize it with such things as calcium carbonate and other minerals till you get it to the desired levels. For domestics as stated above I would not worry about these values as much as say wild caught fish.
I will be venturing into the world of wilds and for example I will do some experimenting before hand to determine what combination of tap and RO gives me my desired values. I will mix different % of both till I achieve my desired GH level than I will test the TDS and PH to see where they fall. If for whatever reason my TDS and PH levels are not what I like than I will have to adjust accordingly till I achieve a good balance that I am happy with. I could of course skip this and just go 100% RO or RODI and just re-mineralize it till I get my values but that will cost more and I will just do the tap/RO ratio. I hope this helps I am by no means an expert.

[coty]

very helpful...thanks alot..

[mmorris]

My water is soft so I have to add calcium and magnesium to raise the hardness for the fry .

[MSD]

Do you know the TDS Martha, mine is soft too and about 125pm. It goes from ph 7.9 to 6.8 in the tank but I dont use buffer and the fish seem great as I dont change 100%.

[mmorris]

Hi Mark, my tds is 70-80 (around there) and I raise it to over 200 for the fry.