New to FW

My first tank was a 75 gal SW, finally doing well after 2 yrs of work.
I'm now looking to start a small (10 or 15 gal) FW tank at my office, after figuring out that I'm not there enough to maintain that small of a SW well enough.

I'm trying to figure out what to do for water - i've got a 75 gpd ro/di at home that i can truck water to the office from, or should i "condition" city water from the office? it seems like from reading that if i use ro/di i would have to remineralize it. how do you do that?

does anyone have a recommendation for a good fw book - i got the "dummies" one, but it's not as helpful as the sw one was.

thanks in advance!

doog

 

Some may dissagree with me,but I didn't start using ro water until 3 months after i got into saltwater,done freshwater for years with no problems from conditioned tap water.Some on here,with way more experience than me,still use tap water in there reefs.If i'm not mistaking, I think I read that oceanparadice tops off his reef with tap water with no problems.

 

i've got well water at home, so after several months of using tap for my reef, i finally switched to ro/di and then it took forever for the algae to go away.

i'm afraid of ending up with similar troubles with the new FW tank, so initially i figured i'd just use the ro/di for it too. I'm trying to figure out how difficult it is to remineralize ro/di to make it acceptable for a fw tank.

 

anyone out there?

is there a 3reef type site for fw tanks? i need help.

seems like most people just use tap for fw tanks.

 

You can use tap-water and condition it, but you might have a big algae problem. If you use ro/di water you wouldn't have that problem, but like you've heard you need minerals for the plants. You can buy a plant substrate I use eco-complete but flourite is another good brand, or can also add clay or peat to the substrate. You can also buy minerals in a liquid form at most petstores and dose or add a a tab that slowly realeases the minerals. Here are some products you could look for - Aquarium Plant Care: Health and Nutrition for Aquatic Plants
Btw, I recommend using Ro/Di(maybe even just Ro water) I use Ro water and have never had a problem.

 

i've had freshwater setups for years. i use tap water without any problems. if you are going to do a planted tank algae will eventually go away as the plants use up the nutrients. i have personally done this. i setup a 15gallon tank with a couple small fish and plants. i put the tank where i would get about 5 hrs sunlight. the first few weeks the tank was completely green(water, glass, rocks, sand). when the plants got bigger and started to spread the algae completely went away. the water is crystal clear now. i don't have a filter or even an air stone on the tank. it's like a mini ecosystem.

 

i picked up a fluval edge tank (see Aquarium Kits & Desktop Aquariums: Hagen Fluval Edge Aquarium Kit). i put in some white sand, a few rocks, filled it up with water, and added a few flakes of food and some conditioner and "cycle."
now to wait.

when can i put plants in? do i wait till cycle ends or do i put them in when ammonia begins to drop, or when?

thanks

-d

 

some pics of the fluval. i put in dwarf hairgrass - hope this will seed the tank...

 

very neat looking tank

 

I really like the tank, I think sand isn't the best substrate for plants, but it looks good so far.