- Messages
- 88
- Location
- Boston, MA
Hi guys,
I just moved. In my last apartment, my tap water was very hard and basic. When I arrived at my new apartment, I took the lazy route, only testing my tap water for pH and not hardness. When I saw the pale blue, I thought, greeeeat more hard water. Then I did a large water change on my tank.
Weeeell, let's just say the fish acted a little funny. No one died, but it was clear that something a little strange was going on. The next day I checked my tank's pH and it was pretty low (for this tank) - around 6.6. Confusion ensued.
To make a long story short, I checked the GH and kH for the tap and found them both to be very low - around 2 degrees GH. The strange part is that the pH of the tap is quite high. Can anyone explain this? As an experiment, I left a pitcher of tap water over night to see if the pH dropped - nope, still high this morning. So then I added a single drop of "pH down" to the pitcher, to see if that caused a sustained drop in pH. We'll see what that did this afternoon.
Ironic as it may seem, my RO Unit arrived in the mail this week as well (doh!). So...just as I'm starting to figure out how to use the thing, now it turns out I have soft tap water!!!!
At any rate, I'm new to this stuff. Any advice or stories out there to help me along? As neat as the RO Unit is, let's face it: it's a pain to set up and use. If my tap water is going to soft, shouldn't I just use that?
Incidentally, I'm in the Quincy, Massachusetts area (10 miles south of Boston)...so if anyone's from that area, please advise.
Thanks,
Jason
I just moved. In my last apartment, my tap water was very hard and basic. When I arrived at my new apartment, I took the lazy route, only testing my tap water for pH and not hardness. When I saw the pale blue, I thought, greeeeat more hard water. Then I did a large water change on my tank.
Weeeell, let's just say the fish acted a little funny. No one died, but it was clear that something a little strange was going on. The next day I checked my tank's pH and it was pretty low (for this tank) - around 6.6. Confusion ensued.
To make a long story short, I checked the GH and kH for the tap and found them both to be very low - around 2 degrees GH. The strange part is that the pH of the tap is quite high. Can anyone explain this? As an experiment, I left a pitcher of tap water over night to see if the pH dropped - nope, still high this morning. So then I added a single drop of "pH down" to the pitcher, to see if that caused a sustained drop in pH. We'll see what that did this afternoon.
Ironic as it may seem, my RO Unit arrived in the mail this week as well (doh!). So...just as I'm starting to figure out how to use the thing, now it turns out I have soft tap water!!!!
At any rate, I'm new to this stuff. Any advice or stories out there to help me along? As neat as the RO Unit is, let's face it: it's a pain to set up and use. If my tap water is going to soft, shouldn't I just use that?
Incidentally, I'm in the Quincy, Massachusetts area (10 miles south of Boston)...so if anyone's from that area, please advise.
Thanks,
Jason