TDS is 0 - What to add back?

[leslie]

We have 4dGH well water but the builder was required to add a water softener to remove manganese. With the softener the TDS is 0. What do I need to add back to the water for the discus? Is there a product I can buy? How do I add it back if I am not aging water but rather going directly from tap to tank?

Thanks,
Leslie

[discussmith]

I'm curious. What kind of softener is used to remove manganese? If it has resins specifically for manganese but is still recharged with salt then your TDS cannot be 0 as the resins exchange ions of sodium for the minerals being removed so TDS is just with different elements but still the same level. I'm unfamiliar with what levels of manganese constitute a danger so don't know if adding water from before the softener is safe to reconstitute some hardness or not. There are products available but of course this just adds costs to water changes. If you want to raise the waters buffering capacity to avoid PH crashes you can add baking soda.

[leslie]

Salt is used. I had the LFS test the water with their meter. Maybe they were wrong.

[leslie]

We have decided to have the water (softened and direct from the well) tested at a testing facility to figure out exactly what is in it. I think only then will we know what needs to be added back or removed. Thanks for the responses.

[Eddie]

Reef builder and reef advantage calcium. Both are made by sachem.


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[leslie]

I actually bought some Seachem Discus Trace to use until the water quality report comes back from the lab (it will take about 2 weeks). I obtained our original report from the town and it seems that the only reason the softener was added was because of slightly high Iron content (0.587 mg/L vs. the allowed 0.3 mg/L). The raw well water had 14.3 mg/L Calcium, 1.04 mg/L Magnesium, 6.95 mg/L Sodium, 40 mg/L (2.3 gpg) Hardness, 48 mg/L Alkalinity and 75 mg/L TDS. It will be really interesting to see the new report on the softened water although we pretty much know that the Sodium will go up while the Calcium, Magnesium and Hardness will go down. The original water actually seemed pretty good and we are disappointed that they chose to deal with Iron via a water softener. At any rate since the Calcium and Magnesium are low to start with we don't expect the Sodium levels to skyrocket. I bought the Seachem Discus Trace because it has the trace minerals minus the Sodium. I am not sure however that it will be the correct thing for us to continue to use once the report comes back.