Soften Your Water

[williamvo]

Does anyone know a great way to soften your water for the discus?

[Hedphelym]

add driftwood :)

[FishLover]

Some people use peat. I use Discus Buffer. The best way is R/O water but it will cost you. It also very slow so you need a holding tank and about 90% of water will be rejected.

Peat is good but it takes a lot of work since you have to pre-treat your water for hours/days before you can pump it into the tank. Discus Buffer is easier and cheaper. You will have to have a cotainer to treat the water first.

Driftwood is good if your water is not too hard.


It also depend on how big is your tank.

[madaboutfish]

I was looking through www.psifilters.com.au, and found that they have R/O units where the wastage rate has dropped to 50% by the use of flow restrictors. If anyones interested.

Nick

[Cliffeh]

Some people use peat. I use Discus Buffer. The best way is R/O water but it will cost you. It also very slow so you need a holding tank and about 90% of water will be rejected.

This depends greatly on the RO unit. I just upgraded to a 300 gallon per day unit and am getting a 1.25 parts waste to 1 part product at the moment at 50 psi and it fills my 100 litre container in about 3 hours or thereabouts.

[FishLover]

hmmm

300 g per day. That's not bad at all. I need about 40 g per water change, which means 30 g of ro water, 10 g of tap water. I guess I can get that 30 g about 2 to 3 hours. Still bit long but it is managable.

The problem is, what I'm going to do with the 40 g or so of rejected water? I will have to think about it.

Thanks for the update.

[Cliffeh]

Mine goes into a water butt in the garden and from there onto the flowers or into the pond... even the goldfish are benefiting from the RO ;)


I used to use HMA water but my water authority started playing with the water and my PH has crept up to 8 from around 7.5 :(

[williamvo]

when using discus buffer, do you have to add it everytime you change your water?

[FishLover]

Only to the new water you are going to put in the tank. You may have to treat the tank water once or just let the WC changes to replace the tank water over time.

[williamvo]

Great info. So far, my discus is happy (i think) but when i do a water test, i notice that my water is little bit on the hard side. i use this water test kit that i got from walmart, so i don't know how well it is. But so far, i guess it's pretty accurate.

[vicky]

couldn't help bragging a little.. :twisted:

My tap water pH is 6.6 :P

[Inspiringfish]

That is cruel to brag about the 6.6. :cry:

That's wonderful.

The problem I found with Discus buffer is that most contain phosphates. Everyone says not to worry about phosphates,, I don't buy it. Not to mention the alge that occurs from it.

Can anyone confirm or deny, "don't worry about phosphates."