So I have a 40Breeder I want to setup as a planted tank. My problem is my tap water sucks very badly. What would be some options to filling up the tank and maintaining some decent water quality for the plants? Seems like it would be pretty expensive without using tap water.
Well...how exactly does your tap water suck? If it's giant blocks of calcium carbonate dripping out of the sink, you can easily set up a hardwater planted tank, or filter with peat moss. If it's steel corroding acid, you can buffer up with crushed coral, and go for a peat swamp look.
We use a poland springs water cooler here for the whole house. The tap water smells like water from a public pool you can smell whatever kind of water treatment chemicals or something they are using in the water.
Can you ask your public water supplier for more details? You can specifically ask exactly what they add, like fluorine, chlorine, copper, and other stuff. The following is just a bit about what I remember, you need to ask what exactly gets dumped in your water.
From what I remember, that strong pool smell is caused by chlorine. And by the way you describe it, you have a lot of it. Sounds like they nuked the water supply to kill off some bacteria. Easily fixed. Grab a strong airpump, and put the water you have into a bucket or two. Aerate strongly for 24 hours. If you want, heat it up to whatever temperature you want (preferably something along the lines of 78 F, or whatever you want the temp to be). Also, grab a BIG bottle of Prime, or other dechlorinator.
I live in Willingboro, NJ 08046 the water does have that bleach smell. I just know that can't be healthy for the plants at all we don't drink it which is why we have the Poland Spring water cooler.
40 Gallon Breeder shown.
So they basically bleach the water. Ok, no big deal. Just hit it with Prime...a lot of Prime. That should get rid of the hypochlorite. Alternatively, you could run it through a charcoal filter, which will adsorb the fluorine and sodium hypochlorite. This will just leave the Ca(OH)2, which...to be honest could be much worse. Just test the water afterwards to see the GH, KH, and pH are.
Charcoal won't get rid of fluoride. Only reverse osmosis will do that! Doesn't hurt fish or plants anyway. Prime will remove chlorine and chloramines. Test the water for pH, GH and KH.
The fish you get at the local pet stores are adaptable and will do fine in most public water supplies. All you have to do is use a commercial treatment that removes the chemicals the water department puts into the tap to make the water safe to drink, like chlorine and chloramine. Seachems's "Safe" is likely the best product on the market.
Just set up the tank and put in some floating plants like Hornwort or Anacharis and let the tank run for a few days. Add a few hardy fish like Danios or Platys and run the nitrogen cycling process. If you're not familiar with this, then research it prior to adding the fish.
I'm in Jersey too....been using tap water for my tanks for awhile. While the water is hard, and ph @ 7.8, never had issues. Just use Prime and nothing else.
I'd just stick with tap water, treated with prime to remove the chlorine. The level of fluoride in the water is below what will cause problems, though it will help prevent tooth decay. The tap water you have is heavily chlorinated, but nothing more; it's just water...
Most plants and fish can adapt fairly easily to new water conditions. If you want to keep something with specific water quality requirements and you want to use tap water, you'll need to buy a test kit to find out what is actually coming out of the tap. If you want to use your bottled water instead, you'll need to buy a test kit to find out what's actually coming out of the bottle - there's no reason to assume it's any cleaner or healthier than the tap (FDA requires far less testing than the EPA for bottled vs tap water.) Other options include buying RO or distilled water from a grocery store/fish store or buying your own RO filter.
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