# How diry is dirty tap water?



## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Have a tank in which have not changed water in 2 years. Just top offs with RO. Meaning the TDS will gradually climb up. It was 460 two weeks ago.

Checked tap water (I'm in McKinney). 470. A year ago it was 240.

Remember that TDS only finds inorganic compounds. I feed the fish in my tank heavily. Who knows what organic waste I have in that tank - BBA is the only thing that grows in it. Hate to think what else, besides high salts content, is in the tap water. Pesticides and medicine come to mind.

Just a note for everybody to remember. Clean is not what clean was 30 years ago.


----------



## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Look who's back!

About nice tap water, come to the Netherlands! You can change 90% daily, no need to dechlorinate (no chlorine or chloramine is used), super clean!

I've done a twice daily 90% tapwater routine for two weeks straight, except for the stress the fish loved it!


----------



## CrownMan (Sep 12, 2005)

My tap water registers 190 with my TDS meter. I was 170 last year. My water report from Arlington Utilities show 30ppm Calcium and this year now shows 5ppm Magnesium. Previous years had no Magnesium or they weren't testing for it.

On my CO2 tanks, PPM runs about 270 after water change and 360-400 before water change. I use EI on all CO2 tanks.

My non CO2 tanks range from 220 to 450 but fish and shrimp loads are high in some and low in others. I do feed regularly.


----------



## Tugg (Jul 28, 2013)

Niko,

I've got the same water source as you. The DOC was confirmed as pretty high a few years ago. BriDroid sent a sample to JeffyFunk a while back and the water was pretty gross. When I setup my RO unit, the sediment filter QUICKLY stained to a rich yellow/orange too.


----------



## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

Yes, my RO sediment filter turned rusty red within a month.

What I'm saying here is that tap water is a big unknown. Nothing too complicated, just common sense how to deal with it.


----------



## Virc003 (Aug 18, 2011)

I replaced the stem for a shower head recently in a house built in the 1950's. The old piping had a nonstandard fitting thus why I changed the stem instead of just the showerhead. When I unscrewed the old one, I found enough salt precipitates to fill a salt shaker. Obviously this build up took more than half a century but I imagine the same is happening in everyone's plumbing here, even the city's. 

My point is that what is being messured may not have intentionally been put into the water, rather it could have slowly built up over the years to a point where it needs to be monitored now.


----------



## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

The water company adds chemicals to the water as a response to pretty much everything - dry spells, floods, anticipation of the weather changes... The water can be just fine for months and then one sunny day you do a water change and the tank starts to act up.

Many years ago for whatever reason I was changing water without adding any kind of dechlorinator. 30% water change a week for months was ok, don't ask me how. Until the day when within 5 minutes all the fish died.

A discus breeder told me that he used to track the changes (don't know how and what he was tracking) and it was pretty much fluctuation every few days. According to him part of the problem is that the ad-hoc treatments maybe by just dumping a roughly estimated amount of chemicals in the water - not very precise. But he did say that after every heavy rainfall they do add extra chemicals, guaranteed.

For a long time now I use only RO. I have a big activated carbon filter that I have not used in at least 3 years now. It works perfectly for ADG in Houston but here it is useless. I am not sure I will ever use it again.

My tank that had TDS of 460 is 121 today. Calcium went down from 171 ppm (!!!) to 45 ppm. GH from 14.3 to 3.5. Nice, ah?.... Thanks to many water changes using RO. At least 180 gallons ... and for every 1 part of RO water I made a discarded 3 parts water. Do the math. Love this hobby, it's all about loving Nature, right...


----------

