# Soft water w/ high PH



## tvs3699 (Aug 29, 2008)

Okay, I need all the help I can get! I have well water at my home & am trying to make sure I am doing the right thing here. Turns out my well water is extremely soft water but the PH is 8.5+ & the alkalinity is through the roof. What do I need to do to get the water stable for fish? I was planning on africans because of the high PH but I didn't know if the soft water would be a problem. I'm open to any fish that would thrive with the water I've got to work with. I've got a 100 gallon tank & here are all of the levels I'm working with:
PH - 8.5+
GH - 3 (50 ppm) 
KH - 24 (428 ppm)
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0
Amonia - 0

Thanks in advance for any help!


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## steelers fan (Jun 26, 2009)

you could just add some epsom salt to raise your GH.
1 tablespoon per 5 gallons and then test after 24 hours. i suggest testing in a bucket or something so you will know how much this raises your hardness before you try adjusting the tank levels


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## Questor (May 1, 2005)

I have almost the same readings as yourself, though my PH is 8.0 ...and I'm also on well water. I spent considerable time playing around with salt and epsom salts (in a bucket) to find the right dosages and now routinely add them to my tank. The additions do not raise my PH, but they do increase the GH and KH to nicer levels for my africans (their colors became much more vibrant and they just looked healther/happier. Easy to do and cheap. :thumb:


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## Steve St.Laurent (Oct 2, 2008)

I have close to the same parameters too - Ph 8.3, kh 20, gh 1. I use seachem's Cichlid salts at a rate of 1 tbsp per 5 gal to raise my Gh. The good news is that with your Kh high and the high Ph to begin with you shouldn't have any trouble maintaining a stable ph.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

Just making sure... but you guys have all made sure you aren't passing your water through a water softener for your house, right?

It's just rare to find ground water with a high pH and KH but a low GH (and doubly so for Ontario, Canada) unless you have a water softener running on your tap water.

If your ground water is genuinely that soft (GH) then you really only need epsom salt to add some magnesium into the water. I wouldn't worry about getting it to more than about 3 to 5ppm as the fish get their Calcium and magnesium from their food anyway. The KH is the only thing you need to worry about. :thumb:


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## timbruun (Oct 13, 2009)

Is there a problem if it runs through a softener?


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

timbruun said:


> Is there a problem if it runs through a softener?


 all the GH is replaced by sodium/salt... cichlids are quite salt tolerant, so with regular water changes there should not be a problem, but any salt intolerant cichlids or other fish can be stressed by the high salt levels.

Hope that helps.


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## bassounds (Jan 27, 2003)

Indeed, the lower GH is not nearly as important as the KH. However, Africans, especially Tanganyika cichlids, seem to do well with a higher GH. Adding some calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, and sodium chloride should bring up the GH with little effect on the KH. You can get these salts at the drugstore, or use something like "Cichlid Lake Salt" made by Seachem. Good [email protected]
!


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

There seems to be a lot of confusion on what the salt in softeners does. It does not go into the water you drink. It is an ion exchange and the salt is flushed down the drain as part of the regen process. Old wives tale that tells you it is in the water. Softened water has the salt content of one slice of white bread. Only people with extreme health problems need to worry about the salt content. The downside of running your tank water through the softener is you are processing water that you then need to reprocess what you have removed. As a matter of simplicity and economics it would be better to use the raw water rather than doing and then undoing.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

PfunMo said:


> There seems to be a lot of confusion on what the salt in softeners does. It does not go into the water you drink. It is an ion exchange and the salt is flushed down the drain as part of the regen process. Old wives tale that tells you it is in the water.


 that is what I had thought and what I had passed along until one day I was asked to prove it... much to my chagrin, I found out that sodium ions do get added to the water and usually swipe a chlorine anion from the treated source water to make Salt.

I grabbed a TDS meter and tested my own house... source water before the water softener, GH of 16 and a TDS of 380ppm. After the water softener, GH of 0 and a TDS of 403ppm

I never bothered to measure the salt content prior to, and after simply out of not caring as the cichlids I own are all pretty salt tolerant. So you might be correct... the increase in TDS might not have been all NaCl... Your call if you think it's still an old wive's tale.


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

I worked for a while maintaining softeners. It was part of the conversation with many customers who knew the old tale. They put in forty pounds of salt and it is gone so it must be in the water. Doctors tell patients they should not drink the water. Groundskeepers do not use it on the golf course. It seems right to these folks that the salt in the water is a killer. Point to remember is that doctors, though quite intelligent , study medicine, rather than water softeners. Groundskeepers are involved in the grounds and not so much in the profit margin. My instructions were that we did not need to do medicine nor grass maintenance. We had all the work we needed without the legal fights involved. I know the salt is used to rinse the media in the resin tank. The next timer cycle is a rinse cycle which sends water through the resin and down the drain. Technically there is still salt there after rinsing, much as there is still soap on dishes after rinsing. The point is that the salt almost all goes down the drain unless one happens to get a drink at 2AM while the softener is recharging the resin. If one is to worry about the salt in the softened water, he should think about the salt on our skin on a hot sweaty day. I go with all the government and court rulings that say there is not enough there to worry about. If water softeners were killing people (or fish) , lawyers would be lined up for miles.


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