Detroit city water

[greg y]

I live in Oakland County "Square Lake & Woodward area"  and I believe I'm on Detroit city water.

Anyone know anything about this water? I find my ph to be 7.6 to 7.8 range but what else is there to know that matters to fish keeping? Is this water considered hard or soft etc..
?

I ordered a hardness test kit but I read they can be a little difficult to use correctly and accurately

I found this online but I don't understand how it all relates:
this is for Clawson, but we should have the same water
Mg 8.33 mg/L
Ca 29.7 mg/L
Na 8.52 mg/L
S04 31.2 mg/L
Cl 9.50 mg/L
Total Hardness: 104 mg/L
Total Alkalinity: 76 mg/L
Carbonate Alkalinity: 0 mg/L
Bicarbonate Alkalinity: 76 mg/L
Non-Carbonate Hardness: 28 mg/L
pH in pH units: 7.76

[Ogre44]

This is from a different forum, but is what I was told when I looked onto our water (I'm in Clawson, by the way  )

 A GH (Total Hardness) of 104ppm (= mg/l) would be 5.8 or say 6 dGH. The Alkalinity or bicarbonate hardness (KH) of 76ppm would be 4.2, say 4 dKH.
This is ideal water for most soft water fish. The pH should naturally lower as the aquarium's biology becomes established.

So, what I learned is that when discussing the GH mgl/L is equal to ppm, and that number is then divided by 17.9 to get the dGH.

The good news is that a very large area around us gets it's water from Detroit, so any local fish should be used to it.

[greg y]

it's hard to believe our water is soft, I always think of my Sister's house out in the country as having soft water, you take a shower and the soap never feels like it comes off, but city water never feels that way.

[four_by_ken]

it's hard to believe our water is soft, I always think of my Sister's house out in the country as having soft water, you take a shower and the soap never feels like it comes off, but city water never feels that way.

That would be hard water not soft water .

[greg y]

well that would explain a lot then lol

[four_by_ken]

Naturally my house has hard water, perfect for Africans.

When I was running my water softener it made my water way too soft for them.

So, no more water softener.  Luckily we have very nice well water.

[Maize-N-Blue-D]

Naturally my house has hard water, perfect for Africans.

When I was running my water softener it made my water way too soft for them.

So, no more water softener.  Luckily we have very nice well water.

So how do you heat the pre-softened water when doing W/C's. Do you stage is first and heat the water and then pump it into the tanks?

[four_by_ken]

I just completely disconnect the water softener

[Maize-N-Blue-D]

Full time or only when you do W/C's ?

[four_by_ken]

All the time.

We have real good well water.

[Maize-N-Blue-D]

Nice - our water is hard as well, but when the softener goes out usually due to a power outage we can tell a couple of days later,  you can smell the hardness in the water when taking a shower and nothing suds up anymore.  So we have to leave the softener running all the time...  My ph is always good and the fish seem to be doing good as well...Lots of color....

[four_by_ken]

Our pH and hardness are just about perfect out of the tap.

With the softner running... I had a LOT of trouble.  To try to combat the softner, I was adding salt, and buffer, etc.  Was sending levels over the top and was loosing a lot of fish.

Without the softner... everyone is happy.  We are lucky to have nice water though.  No soap problems or hard water stains, etc.  Nothing.  Its great.