Long Monday

[altivo]

But what Monday isn't long?

More threats of thunderstorms in the forecast, but it remained dry as a bone all day and so far tonight.

Gary added fish to one of our aquaria on Friday, and one of them was dead this morning. He called the pet shop and they said they would replace or credit it but he had to bring back the corpse and a water sample.

So we did that tonight, and they did give him a credit for the fish but tested the water and said it was "off the scale in the low pH direction." So they sold him test strips and buffering powder.

I'm dubious. Our tap water goes through a water softener and ends up loaded with sodium carbonate, which should be plenty of buffering against acidity. He replaces a third of the water every month with distilled water which tests absolutely neutral. We tested the tank when we got home, using the new test strips (I did have some but they were getting old) and it came out to a pH around 6.7 or so, which is low but certainly not "off the scale." All other factors were within acceptable ranges.

Anyway, he can get his replacement fish on Friday when he goes to rehearsal quite near the shop. And I think we'll look for another dealer for the future.

Comments

[baphnedia]

You have a saline tank, iirc?

[altivo]

No, ours are all fresh water. I've done salt years ago, but it's so costly and tricky that I leave it to others. We have a 30, a 20, and a little 2.5 gal tank.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

As Murakozi commented over on the LJ side, I'd say the distilled water is a big part of the problem. De-ionized is even worse.

Your best bet, if you have well water that is unsuitable for fish, is to buy 5 gal jugs of drinking water. It's usually just well-treated surface water from a municipality with maybe a little extra filtering and minimal chlorine residual.

[altivo]

Heh. If Murakozi commented on the subject over on LJ it must not have been in reply to my post, since I haven't posted anything new there for a year.

But anyway, we've used the distilled water regimen for years. I add a freshwater mineral supplement at intervals, so it's not really that big an issue. Particularly in winter, we have a high evaporation rate due to low humidity, and adding any water with dissolved minerals or other chemicals leads to concentration of those elements over time, which is also not good. Using distilled water for part of the overall mix is a compromise.

Deionized water would mess things up. That I can see. But surface water in this area is acidic as a result of both air pollution and the billions of oak leaves. Well water is alkaline and hard due to limestone deposits.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

It was just the feed from here that goes over there that he posted on. He commented that the pH test strips tend to be less accurate than the test kits with liquid reagents.

I would think that topping-off the tank with distilled water would be fine if the loss was due to evaporation, but if Gary is removing and replacing water with distilled, it's probably not so good without the supplements. The thing about drinking water like Culligan or Deep Rock or whatever you have out there is that whatever the source, the company usually treats the water such that it's pH neutral but still has a good mineral balance so it tastes good. It's probably substantially cheaper than distilled, too. I'd be curious to know where the "too much mineral" threshold would be with drinking water, even allowing it to concentrate by replacing a third of it every month with more drinking water.

[altivo]

Oh, I see. OK, I went and answered him there. I don't normally see comments made on the feed and I'm not sure why LJ allows them. I think DW does that too with feeds from LJ.

As far as the difference between buying "drinking" water and "distilled" water here, the price is the same. The difference I've been assuming is that I know with some certainty what is actually in distilled water, where bottled drinking water can vary considerably in content.

The level of salt and calcium concentrations that affect the health of the fish varies widely by the species of fish. Some are hypersensitive to even a little, others were evolved in hard water environments and can be damaged by the lack of heavy concentrations of dissolved minerals.

Catfish in general seem pretty sensitive, as are shark family members, while many of the live bearing fish such as guppies or swordtails are pretty tough. Zebra danios, in my experience, are hard to kill even if you try. Platies stop reproducing if the water is out of balance, but guppies don't even slow down.