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Folks, I have been putting my tap water directly into the tank. It goes through a three-stage custom filter. It has sediment, chloramine & chlorine removal carbon and a KDF/GAC filter. I am wondering if any of you have done this kind of setup and have been successful over a long period of time. Thanks
30 years with just this Attachment 138768Attachment 138769
If your running other tanks with the system you have and they are doing good it will work for your discus.
If this method is working for you then that's great. Personally, if I used straight tap water I would begin regular testing just for peace of mind. I had 100% confidence in my water for 20 years until I suffered devastating losses last summer by only doing a 20% water change from tap when the water company did something still unknown and denied by them. Overnight, my ph literally went off the scale at well over 14, which is as high as my meter goes and the test kit wouldn't read. And that was being run through a carbon block filter...
That method you are doing will work fine, I did it that way for a lot of years but I would still use a water conditioner in each one of your tanks as you are doing water changes just to be safe just like Brian was mentioning.
dang, that was brutal! I don't think carbon would do anything to remedy pH. So sorry for the loss you had.
Is there a particular conditioner you recommend? I read some bad stuff about Amquel in this forum.Quote:
Originally Posted by Discus Fever
Yes this is the breaker. You never know when the water company adds something to the water to clean the pipes. This can be devastating to your tanks even with these filters. I always start water changes in community tanks with a 5g bucket of tank water to put the fish in if I see a problem.
It’s amazing what the water companies can get away with. Basically because nobody knows what’s going on with their water. Another member here has 40ppm nitrate in his water. He lives about 10 miles from me and should be on the same water
I use seachem prime for my water conditonerQuote:
Originally Posted by tinkon
I had the same problem about 20 years ago. Everybody was growing and spawning. Then the water company ripped up and replaced the water main in front of my house (and assessed me for street repaving). Something was then added to the water supply to seal the pipe and my pH went way up. After trying to filter out the problem, I went to straight R/O for my discus and angelfish tanks. Got a huge GE Merlin filter that could fill a 55-gallon drum in an hour. Did this for four years before gradually acclimating the fish back to tap water. Since then, I switched to conditioning tap water for 24 hours - no more R/O.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iminit
I bought the GE Merlin R/O system for $300 back in the day. The last time I checked, the exact same system now lists for $750.