Understanding San Francisco Water/Preparing For Changes in SF Tap Coming This Fall

[Samantha]

According to swatter.org

"In fall 2016, we will begin delivering a new blend of drinking water that combines a small quantity of groundwater from local wells with our existing supply blend from Hetch Hetchy, Alameda and Peninsula reservoirs. This Local Water project diversifies our water sources and makes our drinking water supply in San Francisco even more reliable."

As a San Franciscan, discus keeper and a person who's already well on their way setting up a home discus breeding project this is a concerning development. I have five tanks going at the moment and do 20% water changes twice a day. i'm not the most savvy on the matter of water but i've been told by more experienced local hobbyists that our SF tap water is good enough out of the tap (once treated for chlorine/chloramine) to keep most adult discus. So far i've done alright with my turqs but in doing research for my home breeding project i found this information about San Francisco water ...http://sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=634

first question, i was really confused by the information shown in the grid towards the bottom of the page that lists our current San Francisco water standards. if i interpret it correctly (and i probably don't) our water values my vary from "good for breeding discus" to "will kill your adult discus for sure" is that right? and if so how can one prepare for such dramatic variance in water parameters?

my second question is what should i expect/prepare for when at some undetermined movement "this fall" the water company starts adding water from local wells to our current Hetch Hetchy water supply?

Thank you for your invaluable support,

Samantha

[Second Hand Pat]

Hi Samantha, I only looked at the bottom grid on your link and basically that is your water now as the report is from 2015 so I rather doubt it will apply once the new water source is added. Perhaps you could ask for a report on the well water being added and go from there.

You might consider aging your water if you are currently not doing that. You also might consider getting a test kit for KH/GH and perhaps a ph monitor and measure yourself. You can also think about adding a RO unit in the future if your fish react adversely to the new water.
Pat

[Samantha]

After contacting sfwater directly i learned some useful information about out local supply and the changes coming in the fall. Turns out San Francisco is broken up in several different water zones and depending on what zone you're in your water may or my not be changed to include local well water in fall of 2016. Even more useful, i found out that sfwater has a weekly water process sheet for each zone with the current parameters for that week. You can request to be added to an email list and receive the weekly water info by contacting Julie McDonald @ sf water (650) 652-3110 and requesting to be added to the weekly water process sheet.