houdini56
11-15-2013, 05:15 PM
I'm currently running a fishless cycle on a 40g tank (my first aquarium in many moons) in our new home with a deep well. We have hard water and have a couple of filters (for iron and some softening) on the system.
Cycling has been going along as expected. The last few days I thought maybe my ammonia had dropped to 0 but the API Freshwater test kit chart is sometimes hard for me to distinguish close numbers on....so this morning I thought, well, I'll check my tap water as a zero sample against my tank sample and that will help.
I was pretty shocked to find at least 4 ppm of ammonia in my tap water. We tested it at the well before it enters the filters and get the same reading.
After a brief run at Google it appears this level of ammonia in a well is uncommon. It also appears that there's not much we can do to remove it short of putting a (salt) softener on it which we have already decided we won't do.
So now I have to make a decision about my new tank. My thinking--which may well be in error--is that if I need to do a 25% water change every week that's 10 gallons of water I will have to buy. I'm not even sure what type of water to buy, distilled, spring, ?? I've already bought a nice Python changer and was looking forward to an "easier" way of cleaning a fish tank than what I did the last time I had a tank 20 years ago.
Feeling disappointed and frustrated. More will be reviewed, but would appreciate hearing others experiences or thoughts with tap water they can't use directly in their tanks while I mull this over. The good news is that I found this out before the tank was occupied with fish.
Cycling has been going along as expected. The last few days I thought maybe my ammonia had dropped to 0 but the API Freshwater test kit chart is sometimes hard for me to distinguish close numbers on....so this morning I thought, well, I'll check my tap water as a zero sample against my tank sample and that will help.
I was pretty shocked to find at least 4 ppm of ammonia in my tap water. We tested it at the well before it enters the filters and get the same reading.
After a brief run at Google it appears this level of ammonia in a well is uncommon. It also appears that there's not much we can do to remove it short of putting a (salt) softener on it which we have already decided we won't do.
So now I have to make a decision about my new tank. My thinking--which may well be in error--is that if I need to do a 25% water change every week that's 10 gallons of water I will have to buy. I'm not even sure what type of water to buy, distilled, spring, ?? I've already bought a nice Python changer and was looking forward to an "easier" way of cleaning a fish tank than what I did the last time I had a tank 20 years ago.
Feeling disappointed and frustrated. More will be reviewed, but would appreciate hearing others experiences or thoughts with tap water they can't use directly in their tanks while I mull this over. The good news is that I found this out before the tank was occupied with fish.