New Tank HELP Cockatoo Or Agassizii With API Softener Pillow??

[Murazaki]

Hello Guys,

since my 50g has hard water about 13dGH (local tap water)...and its kinda full anyway
so i been thinking to started a new smaller tank setup around 10g to start with and see if thats working out, i know 10g is not much but instead of starting another 4ft set up i want to give it a try first on an 10g..as i had bad experience with GBR dropping like fly´s in harder water.

API Pillow removes more/faster PPM on smaller tanks anyway in an 10g its -140ppm and an 5g -240ppm in 48hours
this time i want to focus on softer water set up as i want to go for Apistos Cockatoo or Agassizii. Apistos need soft ware to be happy?`right?

i have a few questions, please feel free to give me your advise.

1) Api softener pillow does the job at all? to keep apistos happy and maybe even breeding ?
how soft do apistos need the water. any danger in having it too soft maybe?

2) as i want soft water and under 7 pH for apisto
the plan is to use aged water from my 50g to start up the new tank, then get the hardness down with the API pillow...
will the PH drop under 7 anyway`? when GH drops
or do i need to buy ph down too?

3) Apistogramma question, which one is hardier and also maybe easier to breed?

Please let me know Thanks

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
No, you can't use an ion exchange water softener, they just exchange the calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) ions for sodium (Na) ions. Unfortunately actually removing ions from water isn't easy, as a basic rule anything that you add to the water will raise the TDS, and what you really need a source of water with many fewer dissolved salts like RO or rain water.

Apistogramma cacatuoides will breed in harder water if everything else is in place. Have a look at Bob Wiltshire's web site <http://dwarfcichlid.com/Aquarium_care.php> it offers excellent advice.

cheers Darrel

 

[Mike Wise]

Darrel is right. Using these devises only increase the electrical conductivity of the water. It replaces each Ca or Mg ion with 2 Na ions.

 

[gerald]

A hardness value of 13 dGH is about 230 mg/L (expressed as CaCO3 equivalent, but really it's a mix of ions). Using ion-exchange to lower the hardness, each Calcium (atomic weight = 40) and each Magnesium (atomic weight = 24) is replaced with two Sodium (atomic weight = 23 x2 = 46). We dont know how much of your hardness is from Ca and how much is Mg, but let's just guess that it's roughly half of each. In that case, one liter of your tap water contains roughly 50 mg of Ca and 30 mg of Mg (plus 150 mg CO3 = 230). If you lower the hardness from 13 dGH down to 1 dGH (92%) with ion exchange, it would remove 46 mg of Ca and 28 mg of Mg, and would add about 106 mg/L of sodium. That's the same amount of sodium as one teaspoon of NaCl salt into 6 US gallons or 23 liters of water. That's probably not enough sodium to adversely affect any fish, even blackwater species.

QUESTION for the chemists here: Does the ion-exchange resin used for aquarium water softening store up chloride during recharging and release it into the softened water, or does it only store and release cations? (sodium, calcium, magnesium). I've also heard of resins that you can recharge in HCl rather than NaCl, to avoid adding sodium. Anybody have info on those, and whether they're useful & safe for aquariums?

 

[Simon Morgan]

I have no idea what is in the API pillow but the phrase "Softener" implies exchanging Calcium for Sodium. To reduce TDS you need "mixed-bed" resin which exchanges Calcium for hydrogen and carbonates for hydroxide in equal amounts therefore forming water. You can recharge them but you have to separate the different resins first, then use nasty chemicals.
In practise it's easier to replace the cartridge once exhausted.
You could use a DI resin pod to prepare water but for the cost of replacing the pods an RO starts to make sense pretty quickly.

 

[regani]

I am not sure which type of resin is used in which commercial brand. As you point out, there are mixed bed resins around that exchange both anions and cations, but my guess would be that a specific water softener is likely to be a pure cation exchange resin as that gives you the greatest effect by weight and the anion exchange will have no effect on hardness per se.
With regards to conductivity/TDS the effect will be similar as the most abundant ions (apart from chloride itself) will be carbonate and sulfate; both are divalent ions that will be exchanged for two atoms of chloride.
The manufacturer may tell you if they use mixed bed resins or not.

You can use the hydrogen- loaded form of the resins, I have done that in one of my tanks without any negative effect on the fish. I would only use those in fairly soft water, though, as they will have a strong effect on pH, you may end up dropping your pH quite a bit depending on your water.
If you want to get resins in their hydrogen form, you may need to have a closer look at the specs. There are a larger variety of those around with many intended for industrial/chemical applications, not necessarily for water treatment. These may leach undesired other stuff into the water over time.
The sodium form of the water treatment reins can be converted to the hydrogen forms by treating with strong acid (such as HCl) but again it is worth checking what exact type of resin you have as some may start to degrade under the strongly acidic conditions if they were only designed to exchange sodium.
I'll have look later and check which resin I have used. It worked but it is not really a very economical way of treating your water.

 

[Mike Wise]

My guess is that the API softener pillow hasn't changed since they were introduced 30+ years ago. These were single resin exchangers that could be recharged using a salt solution. Many experienced apisto breeders are finding that increased conductivity causes reduced success with hatch rates more than does higher than normal pH. I wonder if using such a softener to treat the water and then treating the water with sphagnum peat would remove enough Na+ ions to lower the conductivity and the hardness??

 

[regani]

I haven't tried it, but my suspicion is that the sphagnum won't do too much to reduce sodium content. The humid acids and related compounds that are responsible for the water softening properties of the sphagnum moss are chelators, i.e. chemical structures with several 'arms' that grab ions out of the water. This works best with ions that have multiple charges, such as calcium, magnesium etc. The interaction with singly charged ions such as sodium is much weaker.
It might be worth a try, But would be tricky to reliably measure the concentration of sodium in the water, though. You could try to make up a solution of salt in distilled/deionized water, treat it with sphagnum moss and measure conductivity before and after. But the soluble organic material in the sphagnum will have an effect as well, which makes interpretation of the measurements a bit more difficult.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I haven't tried it, but my suspicion is that the sphagnum won't do too much to reduce sodium content.

I think that is almost certainly the answer.

The humid acids and related compounds that are responsible for the water softening properties of the sphagnum moss are chelators, i.e. chemical structures with several 'arms' that grab ions out of the water. This works best with ions that have multiple charges, such as calcium, magnesium etc. The interaction with singly charged ions such as sodium is much weaker.

I think sodium (Na+) is the least strongly bound cation? but the effect of sphagnum isn't purely as a chelator, the intact hyaline cells have CEC and exchange other cations for H+ ions (protons). Because sphagnum moss grows in rain-fed (ombrotrophic) mires it has a very low base percent saturation, and all the initial exchange sites are filled with protons.

Regani will know the answer to this hopefully, but I think that H+ ions are more strongly bound than sodium ions? if that is right you will only get very limited exchange for Na+ ions and only when Na+ ions are in high concentrations in the tank water?

cheers Darrel

 

[regani]

Hi all,

Regani will know the answer to this hopefully, but I think that H+ ions are more strongly bound than sodium ions? if that is right you will only get very limited exchange for Na+ ions and only when Na+ ions are in high concentrations in the tank water?

That depends a bit on the exact nature of the acidic group in the molecule. The concentration of the ions has an effect, but the main influence here is pH. At higher pH the protons are more easily released and the sodiums more likely to be 'bound', but when the pH gets lower this order is reversed. So the sphagnum will take up more sodium at higher pH, the pH will drop as a consequence and the uptake of sodium will be limited.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

At higher pH the protons are more easily released and the sodiums more likely to be 'bound', but when the pH gets lower this order is reversed. So the sphagnum will take up more sodium at higher pH, the pH will drop as a consequence and the uptake of sodium will be limited

I thought you'd know the answer.

I think that means that it would be very difficult to get rid of the sodium ions, other than by exchanging them for calcium or magnesium ions, or removing all ions with RO, which is back to where we started.

cheers Darrel