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Sludge spill in county water supply
Hello all,
A couple of months ago, a local coal mine in my county in eastern KY had a
sludge pond that failed and dumped a couple of millions of gallons of
sludge in our water supply. The water plant had to run an above ground
emergency water line to a nearby small stream ( the river was contaminated
with the toxic water) that was not effected. However, the supply is not
nearly sufficient from the stream to keep up with the needs and pressure
drops often, causing the lime, which is added by the water plant to somehow
protect the main pipes and is held in the pipes by the high pressure, to
leach into the system. Also Gh has gone from around 6dh to 13dh. I have a
heavily planted tank with two rams that breed often and I like to do a
weekly water change of 20-25% in my 54 gallon. In order to keep the water
soft for the rams and my twelve cardinals< I have began mixing store bought
distilled water with my tap water in a 50:50 ratio. I have had this tank
running for about 8 months and things were going great until lately. My bank
of riccia rocks and carpet of glossostigmata have begun to take on a
yellowish tint, and my Hemianthus micranthemoides is losing its brilliant
bright green and turning dark. Everything else ( Anubias, Hygro, bacopa,
Java fern and moss, cryptocornes, aponogetum, Ludwigia, hydrocotyle, and
sword) look fine but their growth has slowed considerably. Tank is a 54
gallon bow front corner tank by All-glass. Lighting is with a 175 watt 5500K
MH (should I use a higher K,6500 or maybe 10000 k ?) Co2 injection, 4 -5
inch fluorite substrate with laterirte in bottom 2 inches. pH 6.8. nitrate,
phosphate, always undetectable. Temp 77-79. I use to test for iron but the
kits I used (red sea, aquarium landscapes and Hagen) didn't seem to pick any
up and early on last summer I used to add iron. I stopped because the
additive wasn't stable and became the more toxic form. I also stopped adding
potassium. The only thing I do use from time to time are the trace elements
by seachem. Sorry about the length of the message. Is my problem in the tap
water or since I am diluting it with distilled am I slowly robing the plants
of nutrients? and if so should I be adding some fertilizer like Tropica
master grow? And should I add iron even with the fluorite laterlite
substrate? Or am I completely wrong and there is some other problem. I read
that sometimes phosphate should be added but I thought nitrate and phosphate
was not a good thing because of algae growth. Again I apologize for the
length but I wanted to give as much info as possible. Thank you
Michael