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Water quality is a complex issue. Even chemists have difficulty dealing with it. So, in order to keep it simple, we’ll just avoid all of the junk you’ll be hit with later by the knowledgeable people that’ll try to “help” you in the future. It’s really not important to know how to make gasoline, only that it’s required to run your car from day to day. When I last ran a fish store I thought it important to use what we sold. My choice? Prime by SeaChem, as directed on the label. It worked for me every time I used it. It smelled… something really awful. I’m not asking you to drink it. You’re making fish water. It worked. Now you know a simple solution. You can skip the rest of this OR read it and see the justification for something supremely better. Choose.

***Disclaimer--- I tried to make this short. It’s too complex to be short. Sorry.

Water and water quality is a huge issue today worldwide. I did a Yahoo search for “bottled water sales” and got 2,290,000 items in 0.16 seconds. The same search at Google produced 4,600,000 in 0.24 seconds. Most of the information is not current. The theme seems to be that sales are up. Duh. Americans drink more bottled water than any other country despite the fact that our water from the faucet is of better quality than anywhere else. One of the other themes is that the people that produce our water at the tap seem to prefer bottled water to the water they produce, they buy bottled water to drink at work. Another is that huge quantities of oil are used to produce the plastic we use to hold all this water. It’s a point of contention that some people take water from the faucet, place it in bottles, and charge us multiple times what we pay for using the same water in our showers, baths, toilets and even on our lawns. Gee, imagine that. It also seems that the FDA has no control over water that’s bottled and sold within the same state. Now I’m really depressed. If you’re surprised or suffer from disbelief do the search yourself. I’m using AT&T U-verse. If you’ve got high speed cable or better you’ll probably find even more. All that info can’t squeeze through my wires that quickly.

Okay, back to aquarium water. Aquarium gurus agree- the better your water the more successful you’ll be keeping tropical fish. Unfortunately your water quality fluctuates depending on rainfall, time of day, day of the week, how far you’re located from the treatment plant, how energetic the guy at the plant with the shovel feels, and your mother’s eye color. Okay, I made up the eye color thing. The rest is valid though. So, what steps do we take to the best solution?

In order to use water from your faucet you need to know how good it is. If there were a tropical fish store right down the street you could take a sample of your water to them for testing. Most wouldn’t charge a thing. They’d need to know it was untreated tapwater. While you’re there ask what they use. Ask what customers living in your immediate area use. If they say they only dechlorinate ask which product they use and the directions they follow. These directions may be different than the label. Have someone SHOW you the product they use. Hold the bottle in your hands and write the name down on their business card. About your tapwater, they’re going to tell you the pH, the nitrites and the nitrates, and also the ammonia level. The levels should be around 7.0 and all zeroes. If it’s not, and you live in Texas, you could call the Texas Water Control Board. We actually have a board that monitors water. There may be a water control board where you live too.

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