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Re: conditioners



LeeH920226 at aol_com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 2/4/02 1:02:21 PM, ralpht at noln_com writes:
> 
> << Lee, Have you used conditioners with your RO? If so, any that you'd
> 
> recommend? >>
> 
> I have used the one that came with my Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Tapwater
> Purifier, (called ELECTRO-RIGHT 16OZ. AQ.PHARM) but only because I had it. I
> normally just use tapwater to blend with the RO water. Always with attention
> to chlorine content and also to not shocking the fish by changing the
> parameters too quickly.

Just to second Lee's answer, "RO Right" ia another product that purports to
restore to RO water all the essential minerals that are already in your tap
water. [It is better for conditioning the cash register at the LFS than is
tap water, too. <G>]

If you need RO, it is because your tap water has too-high tds. If your tap
water is legal, potable drinking water, it almost certainly can be used to
modify the RO to where you want the tds. Many folks find tds in the 100-150
range ideal, with about 2/3 of that as GH (4-6 points). If your tap water is
below 75 or above 300 tds, or if much of your tds is salinity and not
hardness, you may need to do some adjusting for a few species. Most killies
will do very well outside that range, as Charles has pointed out.

The danger with playing with modified tds is, as Lee says, the danger of
shocking your fish with a sudden change in osmotic conditions. pH-shock is
mythology*, but is often blamed when the osmosis (tds) conditions are
changed too fast.

Wright
____________________
*Scheel, in his _Atlas..._ claims a sudden change of 3 full points in pH has
no observable effect. That agrees with my experience and I routinely subject
fish to swings of two or more points with no ill effect IF...!

The big IF is that there are no ammonia, nitrites, etc. to poison the fish
by the sudden change in pH, and that tds matches. 

Stores that dump alkaline tap water into fish shipped in big bags (high
ammonium) swear that it was pH shock that caused all those deaths. Likewise,
soft local water dumped into hard FL fish-farm water blows out gills with
osmotic shock. Again, the clerk swears it was the pH difference (often the
only thing he knows how to measure).
-- 
Wright Huntley -- 650 843-1240 -- 866 Clara Dr. Palo Alto CA 94303 
                    http://www.sfbaka.net.

Nobody every recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than
those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always 
advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will.  Ludwig von Mises

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