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Tap Water PH, PPM. What do i do?

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Tap Water PH, PPM. What do i do?

S.WestFarmer Jun 7, 2019 91 Replies 22,667 Views
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S.WestFarmer

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#61
Aqua Man said:
Yeah Canada 4 plants. That includes clones, mother's, veg and flower. Once I cut it down then it's not counted
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ah right on. I have my medical card and personal production license here in New Mexico. I'm allowed 4 flowering (mature) plants and an additional 12 plants in veg. Idk how you could keep 12 plants in veg and only flower 4 at a time. Still trying to figure all that out. Maybe i could start 4 at a time like 1 month spaced out? we shall see i suppose.
 
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S.WestFarmer

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#62
Aqua Man said:
My local water report. Plus I have a test kit I can use but I don't use for testing cal or mag.
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ah, does your water report give you more info than the one they handed me? or did i miss that? aha. WHered you come up on that kit? looks expensive
 
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Aqua Man

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#63
S.WestFarmer said:
ah, does your water report give you more info than the one they handed me? or did i miss that? aha. WHered you come up on that kit? looks expensive
Click to expand...
I grew aquatic plants and bred fish of all sorts for many many years. Water testing is very important in doing so. It was about $100. Not needed for hydro but I do use the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate test to verify how well my denitrifying bacteria are performing and that they are present. I do this because I run a live system and beneficial bacteria help keep my root systems healthy and eliminate ammonia.
 
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Aqua Man

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#64
Just google your city name and add water quality report. It will show you min. max. and average ppms of almost all the elements of your local water and most take into account testing at the tap. It will always have a ph over 7 to keep the water from being acidic and eroding pipes. Most common buffer used to do so will be caco3 (calcium bicarbonate) which is usable by plants. What you want to look out for is how much is sodium, not good for plants in high levels. This is what builds up in our hydro systems because we don't use organic nutes but rather salt based. So water changes are important. Good rule of thumb is one you add back the amount of water equal to your res, change the water. So if you have a 5 gal pail and it contains 4 gal of water once you have added back 4 gals of water that the plant drank, change the entire volume of the res.

I do it differently because I try to preserve my bacteria colony but a sterile system that is ideal
 
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PlumberSoCal

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#65
Aqua Man said:
I grew aquatic plants and bred fish of all sorts for many many years. Water testing is very important in doing so. It was about $100. Not needed for hydro but I do use the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate test to verify how well my denitrifying bacteria are performing and that they are present. I do this because I run a live system and beneficial bacteria help keep my root systems healthy and eliminate ammonia.
Click to expand...
Okay, what fish? I did angels for 5 years and developed a black fish with a turquoise face. Started with a black and a gold. Bettas were also a fav and I had shelves in my hall full of males in 2 liter bottles. Killies were also a lot of fun and beautiful fish. I've kept fish most of my life. Today I have two feeder goldfish in a 20 gal half wine barrel with a solar pump floating on top. They're eating several hundred mosquito larva a day. Changing 25% of their water 2-3 times a week and using the dirty water for plants. Magical stuff.
 
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Aqua Man

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#66
PlumberSoCal said:
Okay, what fish? I did angels for 5 years and developed a black fish with a turquoise face. Started with a black and a gold. Bettas were also a fav and I had shelves in my hall full of males in 2 liter bottles. Killies were also a lot of fun and beautiful fish. I've kept fish most of my life. Today I have two feeder goldfish in a 20 gal half wine barrel with a solar pump floating on top. They're eating several hundred mosquito larva a day. Changing 25% of their water 2-3 times a week and using the dirty water for plants. Magical stuff.
Click to expand...
Hundreds of cichlid including many varieties of discus. My favorite was cuckoo catfish they are a parasite breeder that use mouthbrooders to reproduce. They swoop in and distract the mouth brooders when they are fertilizing thier egss and. Eat them and drop thier own. The mouthbrooders get confused and pick up the catfish eggs then raise them like their own. Really cool to see. I did substrate spawners like jewels and all sorts. At one point over 20 tanks with my biggest being 180gal.

I also did Amano shrimp and was one of the few to succeed in captive breeding. I did a write up of the whole process on a forum if you like I could give you the link.

Ah so you are well aware of cycling and using denitrifying bacteria. That will help you if you apply the same kind of principles. I use an external canister filter on my res for that exact purpose and water change 25-50% a week for that purpose
 
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PlumberSoCal

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#67
Aqua Man said:
Hundreds of cichlid including many varieties of discus. My favorite was cuckoo catfish they are a parasite breeder that use mouthbrooders to reproduce. They swoop in and distract the mouth brooders when they are fertilizing thier egss and. Eat them and drop thier own. The mouthbrooders get confused and pick up the catfish eggs then raise them like their own. Really cool to see. I did substrate spawners like jewels and all sorts. At one point over 20 tanks with my biggest being 180gal.

I also did Amano shrimp and was one of the few to succeed in captive breeding. I did a write up of the whole process on a forum if you like I could give you the link.

Ah so you are well aware of cycling and using denitrifying bacteria. That will help you if you apply the same kind of principles. I use an external canister filter on my res for that exact purpose and water change 25-50% a week for that purpose
Click to expand...
Yes, of course. Would love to read it. I had a 180 full of chiclids. Back in the early 90's I co-founded COAST Aquarium Society with 3 others. Served as prez for 3 years. We did several shows per year. Won a ton of awards. Too much work to continue. If i ever do it again it would be with tilapia for food production but I don't have a pond (yet). I've got 3 bath tubs I'm thinking of putting White Cloud tetras in as that's one of the few species that can tolerate our heat and use their water for plants and maybe grow some aquatic plants in the winter.
 
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Aqua Man

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#68
The funny part was this was my first attempt at breeding or keeping shrimp lol.

Ok had to edit my profile to remove personal infor... Here it is:
 
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PlumberSoCal

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#69
Aqua Man said:
The funny part was this was my first attempt at breeding or keeping shrimp lol.

Ok had to edit my profile to remove personal infor... Here it is:
Click to expand...
Love It! I tried salt a few times but keeping the top clean of salt build up was a pain. I had many friends want to give me discus to breed and while I did have an RO unit I prefered using tap. I had a hose on a faucet pump and could do my water changes in under an hour. I had build my fish room in my garage. Had almost a 1000 gallons of tank space and two 55 gal drums for treated water. Made a few bucks on those angels and shipped bettas all over the world but for the amount of work it wasn't worth it.
 
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Aqua Man

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#70
PlumberSoCal said:
Love It! I tried salt a few times but keeping the top clean of salt build up was a pain. I had many friends want to give me discus to breed and while I did have an RO unit I prefered using tap. I had a hose on a faucet pump and could do my water changes in under an hour. I had build my fish room in my garage. Had almost a 1000 gallons of tank space and two 55 gal drums for treated water. Made a few bucks on those angels and shipped bettas all over the world but for the amount of work it wasn't worth it.
Click to expand...
Yeah i sold to local pet stores and through the local aquarium club. Yes i am/was a fish nerd. made probably 4-500 a month after expenses on it but quite a bit of work even though as a hobby it doesn't feel like it. An selling aquatic plants is just not profitable in my findings but i loved the challenge.
 
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cemchris

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#71
S.WestFarmer said:
what do you mean youre dumping two to five gallons are being wasted? Whats a hiboy? My PH right now is fluctuating like crazy.
Ph goes up, ppm goes down. is that bueno or no bueno?
Click to expand...


For every gallon of water an RO filter pumps it dumps 2-5 gallons of "waste" water down the drain. The amount of water that goes to waste depends on how efficient your RO filter is and there for cost of the unit. Looking them up (been years since Ive used RO) you can get as low as 1:1 now for the cheaper units which is decent. It still means for every 40 gals of water out of the RO filter at min you will dump 40 gals down the drain.



It's actually called a Tall Boy not Hiboy (unit from brand Hydrologic). It is a filter to remove the chlorine while leaving the minerals. It's good if you have decent water to begin with and want to use bennies or go organic. Something like your case at 590 it wouldn't be.


As far as your PPM and PH going wacky are you in DWC? If so yes that matters.
 
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cemchris

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#72
Aqua Man said:
With about 150ppm I can almost say for certain 80-100ppm will be caco3. He needs that to buffer his ph. If he went RO he would have to buy some cal mag to reconstitute it.

I use tap but like you say it's important to do water changes about once a week depending on how much you have to add back each day to prevent salt and nutrient buildup and imbalance.
Click to expand...


Yeah the other thing is Sulfur and Iron. 2 Things I had to deal with at a spot when it was on well. A cool 1100 ppm out of the tap. Thx farmers. Im blessed since my current tap is 71 ppm year round.

Anything over about 120 to 140 I would be on RO unless the sodium was really low.
 
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PlumberSoCal

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#73
cemchris said:
For every gallon of water an RO filter pumps it dumps 2-5 gallons of "waste" water down the drain. The amount of water that goes to waste depends on how efficient your RO filter is and there for cost of the unit. Looking them up (been years since Ive used RO) you can get as low as 1:1 now for the cheaper units which is decent. It still means for every 40 gals of water out of the RO filter at min you will dump 40 gals down the drain.

View attachment 875265

It's actually called a Tall Boy not Hiboy (unit from brand Hydrologic). It is a filter to remove the chlorine while leaving the minerals. It's good if you have decent water to begin with and want to use bennies or go organic. Something like your case at 590 it wouldn't be.


As far as your PPM and PH going wacky are you in DWC? If so yes that matters.
Click to expand...
Yup. I've owned them in the past and install several dozen a year. Big waste of water but you can set up the waste water to drain outside into a flower bed or garden or even save in a bucket (you'll really get an idea of how mush waste there is) and use it elsewhere. My wife dumps cooking water in the flower bed next to the back door and waters her kitchen window plants with it.

She's doing something right. I have nothing to do with growing these. She has several colors but this is my fav. Sure wish I could get her to grow a few plants for me.
 
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Aqua Man

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#74
cemchris said:
Yeah the other thing is Sulfur and Iron. 2 Things I had to deal with at a spot when it was on well. A cool 1100 ppm out of the tap. Thx farmers. Im blessed since my current tap is 71 ppm year round.

Anything over about 120 to 140 I would be on RO unless the sodium was really low.
Click to expand...
Yeah i haven't had issue with up to 200ppm but like you say it's the makeup of that ppm that is the concern. I find you can easily use RO in ratio with tap to bring it into ideal levels instead of just using purely RO but nothing wrong with using 100% RO and it's a little more fool oroof. When I used to use RO it was in large quantities so I found mixing to be of much more importance due to cost/waste. On the water bill, replacement filters etc.
 
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cemchris

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#75
PlumberSoCal said:
Yup. I've owned them in the past and install several dozen a year. Big waste of water but you can set up the waste water to drain outside into a flower bed or garden or even save in a bucket (you'll really get an idea of how mush waste there is) and use it elsewhere. My wife dumps cooking water in the flower bed next to the back door and waters her kitchen window plants with it.View attachment 875269

She's doing something right. I have nothing to do with growing these. She has several colors but this is my fav. Sure wish I could get her to grow a few plants for me.
Click to expand...


Did I just see an Orchid flex? :)
 
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Jimster

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#76
Aqua Man said:
Yeah i sold to local pet stores and through the local aquarium club. Yes i am/was a fish nerd. made probably 4-500 a month after expenses on it but quite a bit of work even though as a hobby it doesn't feel like it. An selling aquatic plants is just not profitable in my findings but i loved the challenge.
Click to expand...
My girlfriend at the time had a 70 gallon or so aquarium...maybe 170...it was huge. I liked cichlids and bought her a few, which promptly interbred and before long, I had a zillion cichlids of all types. My buddy, who also raised fish, said that one of the crosses was pretty rare and ended up buying them all. Back in 86!
 
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PlumberSoCal

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#77
Aqua Man said:
Yeah i sold to local pet stores and through the local aquarium club. Yes i am/was a fish nerd. made probably 4-500 a month after expenses on it but quite a bit of work even though as a hobby it doesn't feel like it. An selling aquatic plants is just not profitable in my findings but i loved the challenge.
Click to expand...
What killed me was no time off, no vacations. As you well know fry need daily care and you can't leave them alone so couldn't even run away for a weekend. Not to mention hatching brine shrimp and caring for all the live food. It was a great experience but we all need a break. I guess that's why I haven't kept any in the last decade. My two goldfish will be fine even if we were to take off for a week or more and if not, oh well.
 
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Aqua Man

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#78
Jimster said:
My girlfriend at the time had a 70 gallon or so aquarium...maybe 170...it was huge. I liked cichlids and bought her a few, which promptly interbred and before long, I had a zillion cichlids of all types. My buddy, who also raised fish, said that one of the crosses was pretty rare and ended up buying them all. Back in 86!
Click to expand...
Nice I tried to prevent cross breeding and cichlids are notoriously known for it. That's why I has so many thanks. I would get my credit for breeding then sell and move on to another for some of my tanks. The more popular ones I kept for sale.
 
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Aqua Man

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#79
PlumberSoCal said:
What killed me was no time off, no vacations. As you well know fry need daily care and you can't leave them alone so couldn't even run away for a weekend. Not to mention hatching brine shrimp and caring for all the live food. It was a great experience but we all need a break. I guess that's why I haven't kept any in the last decade. My two goldfish will be fine even if we were to take off for a week or more and if not, oh well.
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I raised most of my fry on micro worms. Always had cultures going and for sale. Eazy peasy.

Yeah lots of time and effort
 
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PlumberSoCal

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#80
Aqua Man said:
I raised most of my fry on micro worms. Always had cultures going and for sale. Eazy peasy.

Yeah lots of time and effort
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I used a mashed potato and yeast mix for micro worms. I also had vinegar worms and fruit flies, mainly for the killies. Brine shrimp was the Angelfish fry staple. I would collect the shrimp in a net then soak it in a vitamin solution then feed. I could get those angels to quarter size in two months and ready for sale. Even made my own shrimp hatcheries out of two liter bottles and tank filters from sponges and 1/2" pvc pipe and had a blower to run all the tanks. Sure glad I'm cured of ever wanting to that again!
 
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Replies 91
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