WATER QUESTION

I have read that as dwarf chilids are water parameter sensitive that aquarist will used distilled water.

Whta is this . And could I do water changes with mineral shop bought water as you get in the 5 liter bottles in the likes of Lidl or Tesco. Instead of using tap waqter

I am aware this water have added minerals as such but could it be used for water changes ?

Reverse Osmosis water would be a better bet both quality wise and price.
Most lfs now have RO stations where you pay for the 25 liter container once obviously and a few Euro for a fill, I'm sure you know, but if not, RO contains H20, nothing else so an additive may be needed to replace missing minerals etc.

In work, we have Drinking water delivered to us and you always see, on the drip tray, a brown deposit, which means it isn't as clean as you may think.

Distilled water is very akin to RO Water in so far as it has gone from a liquid to steam via boiling, condensed in tubes and returned to a container minus any solids and contaminants.

Kev.

use tap waterman after its dechlorinated and at room temp. regular water changes for dwarf cichlids, yeah... if u can use ro water, even better....dont wate yer money on bottled water, which i reckon aint any better.

Here's a slightly off topic but interesting link to RO and Distilled Water.

Kev.

www.querycat.com/question/c9cd60a0bdeb74b62d2382f84fbdbce2

Thanks lads I will look into this . Do you add anything to your R/O water minerals/ vitamins on W/Cs ?

How much do they charge for the containers?
And how much do hey charge p/liter for R/O ?

RO water will leech minerals from your fish without some additions to the water first, also dont drink it yourself. It seems a bit extreme for keeping Dwarfs.

You can treat tap water to remove most heavy metals and chlorine ect instead of having expensive RO installed or having to trek to Turnpike road every time you need a water change.

I know many keeping Apistos and Dwarfs and breed them in tap water tanks without a problem.


Mark

Thanks guys , think I will stick with the treated tap water for now

RO is the BEST type of Water to use if you intend breeding some of the more difficult types of Dwarf Cichlids, especially Apistos, this gives you a point to start from.

RO Water is safe to drink.
RO units are cheap, ca 50 euro complete and are also cheap to run.

knol.google.com/k/reverse-osmosis-water-...inerals-your-health#


Kev.

RO water gives you best control of what goes into your tank. If you look at a bottle of water such as Ballygowan you will see what is in it. There are always different types of minerals including chlorine.
RO gives you the ability to get your water to whatever params you need. You get your RO water and then you add minerals/chemicals to get your water to exactly what you need. So alot of people will use it for breeding certain types of fish as certain types of fish require very low tds or maybe a high pH.
So are Kev has said RO is the best possible start point for breeding but it is also not required for most setups.

Mark. wrote:

RO water will leech minerals from your fish without some additions to the water first, also dont drink it yourself. It seems a bit extreme for keeping Dwarfs.
Mark

Why? There are Dwarf Cichlids that will breed in less than ideal circumstances for sure but if the poster is serious about this than RO water is the best possible medium to start with. The quality of the water effects everything from viability of the clutch, brood size, colours, life expectancy and and size of idividual fish. Definately worth the effort for most species and essential for some.

Jay

hi folks,
this dovetails nicely into a query I wanted to ask anyway:

I recently discovered (courtesy of some of the fine members of this forum!) that my softened water is not soft and in fact has just exchanged calcium ions for sodium ions.

I'm about to have to replace the entire filtration system on my well, so I'd like to do it right this time. due to the volumes involved for domestic use (washing machines, toilets etc etc.) it makes sense to keep the existing style water softener which can handle high volumes quite cheaply.

I was going to install a tap direct from the well, before any filtration takes place, for use for hardwater. The water contains a fair bit of manganese and iron, as well as calcium. Is this likely to be OK for hardwater species?

I was also considering adding an RO filter, and then mixing RO & untreated water to get soft and/or low pH water - assuming I can sort out the proportions through trial and error.

Does this sound viable or am I being too simplistic?

Many Thanks

Jim.

Viperbot wrote:

Mark. wrote:

RO water will leech minerals from your fish without some additions to the water first, also dont drink it yourself. It seems a bit extreme for keeping Dwarfs.
Mark

Why? There are Dwarf Cichlids that will breed in less than ideal circumstances for sure but if the poster is serious about this than RO water is the best possible medium to start with. The quality of the water effects everything from viability of the clutch, brood size, colours, life expectancy and and size of idividual fish. Definately worth the effort for most species and essential for some.

Jay

I had assumed from reading the original post that Dave was not going full steam serious with this and was looking to get started easily enough, I am sure anyuone settng up a serious setup will do the required research, I hope anyway, it has been done with tap water without disaster and yes supplimented RO would be better but not always the first\practical choice when getting into it, like dragging 25L drums around with no car, also I thought I would point out pure RO is not good as it has increased ability to absorb minerals needed that are not present in the RO water, it is also dangerous to drink RO constantly without taking suppliments aswell.


Mark

I had assumed from reading the original post that Dave was not going full steam serious with this and was looking to get started easily enough, I am sure anyuone settng up a serious setup will do the required research, I hope anyway, it has been done with tap water without disaster and yes supplimented RO would be better but not always the firstpractical choice when getting into it, like dragging 25L drums around with no car, also I thought I would point out pure RO is not good as it has increased ability to absorb minerals needed that are not present in the RO water, it is also dangerous to drink RO constantly without taking suppliments aswell.


Mark

Taken from Squidoo Web Page.



The Truth About Reverse Osmosis - Is it Safe to Drink the Water?

With all the scientific research that has been done over the years on reverse osmosis water, none has ever documented any negative health effects from water treated by this method. In fact RO technology was actually invented by the US military and our military personnel still use it currently for drinking water.

I work in a University and extensive research there into nutrition and hydration in Sports concur with the content of the article although are no way affiliated to it.


Myth #3 - Reverse Osmosis Removes Healthy Minerals from Water
Truth: Reverse Osmosis removes inorganic minerals which are UNHEALTHY.
RO systems do remove minerals from tap water. However, we humans get the vast majority of our minerals from the foods we eat, not from drinking water. For example, 1 glass of orange juice has the same amount of minerals as 30 gallons of tap water. Try drinking that for your morning breakfast!

Another thing they don't mention is the type of minerals found in water. Tap water contains only inorganic minerals which cannot be properly absorbed by our bodies. Human beings need organic minerals which are only available from living organisms like plants and vegetables and are easily absorbed by our systems. The inorganic minerals found in water has little to no benefits to people and in fact are actually detrimental to our health.

It is estimated that over a 60-year lifespan, a person drinking tap or mineral water will be ingesting about 200 to 300 pounds of rock that their body cannot use. (These are the so-called "healthy minerals" that RO detractors complain are being taken out of the water!) While most of these minerals will be eliminated, some will be stored in our tissues becoming toxic. The primary culprits are calcium salts and over time they can cause gallstones, kidney stones, bone & joint calcification, arthritis, and hardening and blocking our arteries.

"What the human body cannot utilize or excrete, it must store. Consequently, the inorganic salts (inorganic minerals) are stored and in time take their toll in the form of hardening of the arteries, stones within the kidneys, urethras, gall bladder, joints and an etiologic factor in enlargement of the adipose cell (fat cell). To be one hundred percent healthy, the human body must be free of inorganic minerals."
Paul C. Bragg, N.D., Ph.D.
World Renowned Nutritionist, Pioneer in America's Wellness movement

Paul promoted and drank mineral-free water all his life and died at age 81 from complications after a surfing accident!

Reverse osmosis water purification simply delivers the cleanest, purest drinking water on the market. In fact, reverse osmosis is the only purification system that can remove dangerous Pharmaceuticals & Drugs from our drinking water. According to AP news reports provided by this USA Today article & Fox News report - "Reverse Osmosis removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants".

RO can be produced in the Home and decanted into receptacles of any volume so neither Cars nor dragging are required.


Kev.

This is in contrast to other sources on water health that I am not going to copy to this post.
From a purely chemical pov it stated that pure HO2 has the ability to bind to minerals (not going to look for the actual process, its out there) rather than deliver them, and we do take a certain amount from water, if these are not present in RO should it then be important to take suppliments. We can post conflicting articles all day but chemistry is chemistry and I do believe in the fact that RO can abosrb minerals from the body fluids. RO has many uses but not as regular drinking water imo. Especially pregnant women!!

I think this is another thread anyway, Dave decided already he will use tap water, which was why I posted my first comment as I assumed that would be the preferred route when he weighed the options.

Mark

Goes to show you that opinions are just that, opinions , you say potato I say potahto.

Stands to reason that if RO Water absorbs minerals etc then the Intestines will return the favour by reabsorbing same into the Body, more than the necessary RDA of any minerals absorbed by RO from a NORMAL BALANCED DIET and the RO water as it passes same . I'm no expert and certainly don't intend to try to win a discussion on this topic.

Kev.

Chem-mystery....as JohnH said.????

There's no mystery so long as what we observe in closed thermodynamic systems is not directly related to the open thermodynamic system as controlled in a biologocal system that alters the rate of entropy change whereby a thermodynamically unfavourable direction can be favoured by providing another pathway for the rate of change of entropy to tend towards being zero....thus supporting an overall favourable change.

Now that answers the 'leaching' question fully and in simple terms.

Actually, it can all get a bit silly and unrealistic in the real world.

The bulk of this thread has really been about scientific essaying and quasi-scientific papers rather than about water.

ian

Holy Faecal matter! Now I'm reaching for my roget's thesaurus!!
Better still anyone got a Translator to help me Machete my way though what I just read?

Kev.

hm

thanks guys all very interesting . I think I will use trial and error and l let the fish dictate what they want . I will pair up the rams then do a month of water change with conditioned tap water and see if there are any spawning result and then do the same with
RO and let the fish decide the winner I will repost when I get results


Thanks for all the input and opinions

In essence I was a being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the point is that I was appalled to see a ‘scientific’ (not) link cited here that made out that RO water is totally safe to drink.
What rubbish, and totally irresponsible for the author of that web-publication to make such a statement without quantification and qualification.

Water is a toxicological hazard that under certain bioenergetic conditions and dose quantities can cause brain damage (for just one example).

How much is totally safe to drink?,
and where are the caveats about persons in certain conditions where that dose is much lower (eg infants, dehydrated persons, people with certain psychiatric disorders such as Primary polydipsia, or even in the case illness that unbalance gut electrolytes).?

I did not see the caveats about the safety of drinking RO water, and that makes such a publication rather irresponsible. Irrespective about the rarity of water intoxification and coma due to it (there is a difference between hazard, risk and danger....a hazard is a hazard however low the danger)

In toxicology, everything is a poison, nothing tangible is not a poison, it is the dose (under certain conditions) of that of the substance that is important.

Although the thread was about fish, sweeping references to human health were brought in...and that cannot be ignored (not by me anyway)

ian

Ok, let's take it from the top and please don't tell me that anyone here knows more than the compilers of this.

www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutdemineralized.pdf

As a caveat, I stated catagorically, I'm no Expert, in my own Field, Yes, but in Chemistry et al, no.
Unfortunately , most of the info included is not in Layman's terms but I'm sure we have some Eggheads that might be good enough to decipher for us.

Kev.

I'll give it a read tonight (over a nice curry perhaps).

But looking at that report in brief just now, it supports what I said above and I don't see anything that would go against my take on this.

But, some of us are qualified and experienced in psychiatric, biochemical and bioenergetics toxicology, as well as working on the effects of gut content on gut function. So there are things that we see that don't get into all reports.

ian

No one is either contradicting or trying to prove you wrong, we humans seem to have a habit of taking things either too personally or seriously, something we the Irish have a propensity for, not knowing you nor your origin I don't include you in this.

Kev.

it's called handbags, now put them down

Kev, do you happen to do some work on that well known sports drink? (Loughborough started off some work on that particular brand many years ago).....going by what you mentioned in passing in an earlier post on this.

Do you know of SGLT-1 (Sodium Glucose co-transporter) by the way.....very interesting protein, and one that would be topical here and to isotonic sports drinks (or anything we happen to eat for that matter).

Scientists love debating.....without it we wouldn't have science and never progress past being content to hit one brick off another.

Since I retired from full-time science back in the 90s, I tend to concentrate on science philosophy…..aka being a cranky old-man.

Alas, I still have my fish on which I can focus some other bits of science.

Now, my handbag, dar, is a nice designer one that I picked up in TkMax with a ripped pocket and frayed straps.
Oh well...handbags at ten paces...just like a modern football match I suppose.

ian