# Unavoidable water softener.. Water alternatives?



## Euiciz (Jul 27, 2016)

Hi there,

I live in an area with very hard water, and so all houses around here have water softeners. The plumbing in my house was a bit DIY from the previous owner, so it's unclear whether my outdoor and/or kitchen taps bypass the softener. I currently have 4 glasses of water sitting on my counter from different taps, and will test them all for PH, GH and KH tomorrow to try and determine that. My guess is that they are all softened.

With that in mind, I'm considering setting up a cichlid tank and don't like the idea of using softened water with high solid content already and adding buffers on top of that. Has anyone tried it? I'm also sure the softener is using sodium and not potassium salt, and it would be near impossible to chip all the old salt out to replace with potassium - it's an old softener with a lot of salt residue that never dissolves.

So, are there any reasonably prices alternatives?
I've considered finding an unsoftened DIY carwash kind of place and filling 5g jugs of water, but that would mean A LOT of jugs for a tank of any decent size.

Help!


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

Install a tap before the water softener.


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

just hire a plumber and have them add a garden hose tap before the water softener. It probably wont even be that expensive to do. After doing all the plumbing on my latest tank's sump setup i practically feel like a plumber myself LOL.

do you really wanna be hauling 5g buckets around? I know I wouldn't....i don't know how i'd live without my python!

Also, python uses garden hose fittings too. So, it doesn't even matter where your softener is, get a 100ft garden hose, attach a 50ft python to it, now you got 150ft. Or a 100ft garden hose and a 100ft python, you should be able to cover almost any house at that length. You'd only need that rig for filling. If you were draining, use the softened water from the sink or whatever. no reason to add all that extra hose loss for the siphoning/draining part.


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## Euiciz (Jul 27, 2016)

Thanks, I have a call in with a water service technician this week! Just not sure where the pipes all go, the only one I see coming to the softener from the ceiling is a plastic tube, so not sure where another tap could go. I'll leave it to the professionals!

And call me a newbie - never used a python before for my nano tanks, but what do you mean use softener water to drain? Wouldn't I just create suction and drain tank water into the sink?


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

The python can use the water pressure to create a vacuum. Kinda like those water driven sump pumps...same idea...you use a fine jet of water to create a pump essentially. You need that to dump into a sink so a hose off the tap would make a big mess without a drain. However for the vacuum mode you arent putting any water in the tank so you could use a sink on the softened water for that. It isnt truly required if you just use a pure gravity siphon but i prefer it because the suction power is way better than the siphon alone

If your house is cpvc plumbing like mine then they can just cut in a T somewhere along the pipe.


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## BuckeyeTez (May 10, 2016)

I must have ****ty water pressure because I usually vac with my gravity into a 5g bucket or two to get most of the waste out as if I use my Python it just sits in the middle of the tube and doesn't leave the tank. Rather annoying but it's only a bucket or two so I can't complain too much.


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

yeah in my house, it depends on the sink. i get like no pressure out of my kitchen sink, but the bathroom 10ft from it has amazing pressure.

Upstairs, I use the master bathroom's tub, and that thing is AMAZING, it puts out so much water pressure and I never have to worry about overflowing cause it's going into a big bath tub, haha. not all bath tub faucets have screw-off aerators though....this one is more of a jacuzzi style thing so it's more like a sink faucet just bigger. my other bathroom's combo shower/tub things doesn't have anything like that so I can't really use the python on that tub, and the sink in there would overflow bad too so I now just bought 100ft of tubing in bulk and ended up making a 70ft python hose that can reach both tanks upstairs from the "good" bath tub, lol.


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## Mcdaphnia (Dec 16, 2003)

At our old house we had a well and city water, and a rain barrel. I had no problems using the softened well water with my African rift lake and Central American cichlids. Even angelfish and discus were happy in it, but it did affect their eggs, making them resistant to fertilization the same way unsoftened hard water would. No such effect on the hard water fish. Some live plants did not do well with the sodium, but many cichlid resistant plants like Java moss, Java fern, and bolbitis did not care. If you choose to switch to a different salt, do not worry about the undissolved salt in the softener. It is probably a type of rock that contaminated the salt. The chief mineral contaminant in mined salt is a light gray rock in thin layers that gives a candy cane effect to the walls of the salt mine tunnels. It's been a long time since I worked in a real salt mine, but I did. The new salt will add potassium instead of sodium to the water, and algae and live plants will remove some of it, possibly leaving the water with very low hardness and pH. If you do change the type of salt, you may have to adjust the amount of salt used, or the frequency of recharging to get the same water qualities you are used to.


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## Euiciz (Jul 27, 2016)

Ok, so tested 4 taps with API strips: Outside hose, kitchen, bathroom and basement sink. All came back the same, all seem softened, do these results seem normal:

Nitrate: 20-40ppm
Nitrite: 0
pH: somewhere between 8 and 9... seems high..
KH: 240 (high as it will go)
GH: 0

Do these readings make sense to you for water from a water softener using sodium salt?

Found the bypass so I'm going to try and un-jam it and run the water that way and see...

Clem


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## Euiciz (Jul 27, 2016)

PS: Let the water rest for 24h, and KH is in ppm


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

On the softener, there are two pipe. One going in and it should have a cutoff valve so that in case of trouble the water can be turned off to the softener. DIY throws a kink in that at times. There should also be a pipe coming out of the softener to whatever pipes are giving soft water. So if you have spotted a plastic pipe, decide if it is going in or coming out. Easiest way might be to cut the plastic pipe going into the softener, add a tee and then either provide pipe to where you want the water or add a tap to use a hose. 
There is another way that you might get raw water but it takes a bit more doing and understanding. There is likely to be a bypass of sorts on the top of the softener. Depends on the brand, who instead, etc. Perhaps a large knob to turn? 
If you have a bypass, you might choose to bypass while doing water changes. Depending on a number of things, this may be as simple as moving the knob to bypass, running enough water to clear the pipe from the softener to the spot you get water and then returning the bypass to the working position. It is also quite possible that you could get by without draining the water from the pipes. It is not totally out of the question to use the bit of softened water left standing in the pipes while doing most of the water change with the raw, untreated water. 
The tiny amount of salt left will not bother most cichlids as we do often use salt to treat them. They may not like soft water on a constant basis, though. 
A bit of looking from a trained eye may get you a simple solution.


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

On reading more carefully, I see you located the bypass. You also mention a basement which may open up a new thought. Can you see pipes in the basement so that you can locate where the line comes into the house and tap into that before the softener. I love open, unfinished basements for ease of plumbing changes. 
A plastic barrel in the basement where you can treat the water and then pump it up to the tank can be a real game changer for water changes!


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## Euiciz (Jul 27, 2016)

Hi, thanks for the input!

Yeah, it's actually a partially finished basement, so the pipes all come from the ceiling and I can't trace them past just above the softener or water heater. Unfortunately there's not way to trace their source or destinations without tearing into the ceiling. Sigh. And unfortunately no valves to be seen.

Thankfully I did find the bypass on the softener, but seems to be jammed so have to find my rubber mallet. I figure if I let the water run a minute or two on bypass from the tap nearest to the softerner, I should have cleared the softened water out. Unfortunately it will be cold, can't use the hot or it'll get hard water into my water heater and that can create some issues. I'll just have to let the water sit and get up to room temp before changes somehow... Gah!

Thanks!


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## Mcdaphnia (Dec 16, 2003)

Shut off the valve to the water softener. See if any faucets or outside hoses still run. Don't mess with that bypass valve. You may well need a new water softener from the description of its resin condition, but it will become a necessity really fast if you break something.


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## Euiciz (Jul 27, 2016)

Hey, I'll try that, though not sure there is an actual valve that would allow me to do that.

What do you mean description of its resin condition?


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## Deeda (Oct 12, 2012)

Water softeners or conditioners have a resin bed in the unit and over time the resin can become fouled or lose its effectiveness but this can vary from household to household and by unit type. I'm not saying your softener is bad or needs service and I don't know how 'old' your unit actually is from your description.

Can you post a pic of your softener or at least a brand/model if it still has a label on it? Sometimes seeing the unit can help diagnose if it even has a bypass valve or how old it is.

As far as the salt buildup, I'm assuming it is inside the walls of the storage container which may be a separate unit from the actual softener, correct? We have a softener also and I usually just rinse the inside of the barrel with a bit of tap water when adding another bag or two of salt to keep the crust down.


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## Mcdaphnia (Dec 16, 2003)

You described undissolved salt in the resin. Resin does not last forever. Hi


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## Melanddave6571 (Jul 5, 2016)

My husband uses our kitchen sink to fill his tank (water Softener) and I use the outside garden horse (no softener).

Melissa


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## Kool0808 (Aug 11, 2016)

I would try using rock and substrate that buffers the water naturally. You should have high pH for your Cichlids, so that is good. I don't need to buffer my water at all since I live in Lancaster County PA and our city water is very hard and the pH runs high, (about 8.0,), as well. In any case i use African Lace Rock and Cichlid mix Crushed Coral for gravel. Either way, you aren't too far off and as we all know Cichlids are hella hardy fish. Am I right, guys?. Whose with me?


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## Melanddave6571 (Jul 5, 2016)

Does it really make that much of a difference? We use two water sources,,,,,one is the kitchen sink for community tank and outside for my AC tank.

Kitchen is on soft water which is a PH of 7.6 pretty average and most fish do well. Mine are 8.2.

Question......what happens when winter comes here to the Socal high desert and the outside water is freezing cold. Many morning the hoses are frozen? Plus since our Mbuna are bred in these area's and kept in tanks here (Petsmart PH was 7.6) so I would think I will have to slowly acclimate my fish as winter gets near.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

pH=7.6 is not terrible. My LFS adds Malawi cichlid salt to customize the water for the Africans. I have never purchased Africans from someone who keeps them less than pH=7.6...usually 7.8 or higher.

Can they acclimate? Yes. But from my perspective, why not give them as close to ideal water conditions as you are able...within reason.


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