[Wayne Dwops]

Hi again. Sick of my beginnerness yet?

I finally got a TDS meter and it's really high at 333ppm. I need to get it down to under 200 for cherry shrimp right?

So to do that I need to use distilled water, but how do I lower the TDS without lowering the hardness and removing essential minerals?

 

[Forumsnow]

Doing the same right now. I am using distilled water to drop my gh/kh. I will continue to do water changes with pure water until I get to my desired gh and then will start to remineralize with shirakura ca+ to keep the gh up while I continue to drop the kh. Hope this makes sense, have been doing this over many water changes so I can keep oebt. I have gone from gh12 kh10 down to kh 5 gh 7 and I just checked the tds it was like 170 something.

 

[Wayne Dwops]

That's what I was worried about, since if I need a mineral supplement it's going to take a while to get here (LFS just closed down) and I need to start lowering TDS now since it is wayyy high. But if it is okay to start doing water changes and then use the supplement after TDS is ideal (will the supplement raise TDS again though? I will need to research) then it will be okay to start doing small changes now

 

[Bananariot]

Water change with distilled water or a distill tap mix.

Cherry shrimp are tanks and can go past that tbh

 

[GeToChKn]

333 isn't that high for cherry. Not ideal, but certainly nothing to freak out over. It all depends on what makes up that 333ppm. Is your tap water 290ppm, then 333 isn't that bad. If your tap is 100ppm and your nitrates are 120ppm, then it's different. You need to know your gh/kh, nitrates, etc to figure out how "bad" your TDS is.

 

[Rob in Puyallup]

I wouldn't remineralize water that's already in a tank with inhabitants. Should remineralize to the wanted gh and kh then add to the tank.

A little goes a long way and sudden changes could be fatal to critters.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S III using Tapatalk 2

 

[Wayne Dwops]

i just checked my tap water and it says TDS is only 28ppm. I'm going to let the water sit and try again though.

gh is 8, kh is 4. nitrates are about 30ppm. I will just look into doing a distilled/tap mix

 

[ThatGuyWithTheFish]

It's not high. Don't worry too much about TDS, worry more about pH, GH, KH, and toxins. GH and nitrates are pushing it just the slightest, but it probably would only matter if you're having a problem.

 

[Lkittredge]

That is some awesome water coming out of your tap. My TDS is closer to 200 than 28.

 

[Newman]

your cherry tank is fine. I used to breed them in my tap water. liquid rock with 600-700TDS. at that point some will have trouble molting but they will still always reproduce, all the babies will survive and grow and you don't experience big problems. at your TDS yours will be just fine.

 

[Wayne Dwops]

Thanks everyone I will continue to use tap water for now.

 

[GDP]

Yeah dont get hung up on TDS readings until you have a baseline for 'normal'. You have awsome tap water btw, almost RO quality lol. If you want to know what your target TDS reading will be you need to take a cup or gallon of water and add enough GH additives to reach desired GH. I use mosura mineral plus. And if needed add KH solution to raise KH.

Being your water is 28 TDS out the tap is likely missing needed minerals and KH. Its good in a way because you can control your perameters as described above. But anyway after this is done take a TDS reading of that water. You now know what your tank water should be like. Though you will want to allow for a variance of say +/- 50 to account for other stuff in your tank.

I would aim for 6 GH and 2KH.