The Puffer Forum

Its a rainy sunday here in surrey ( england ) and i have just spent two and a half hours cleaning my mbu tank. Proper spring clean all pipes, rocks, glass, gravel and huge water change. He always looks so happy when he is super clean!!
Anyways i changed about 40 percent of my water and i have mentioned before how bad the water quality is where i live. I changed approx 20 gallon with r.o. water using kent r.o. right to put the nescessary mineral back, and for the rest of the water i have used an old aqua medic phasphate reactor ( which are rubbish!! ) and taken all the phosban out and rolled up a "polyfilter" and packed the rest with seachem phosphate remover and carbon ( which i totally recommend ). Anyways i have set this up using a pipe from my tap to the reactor to my bucket. Hopefully this should filter out some of the bad crap from my tap water. I know this will not be as good as r.o. water but cheaper and i figure if i do half / half my water quality should be pretty good. Can anyone see any problem with using the polyfilter and phosphate / carbon filter on my tap water, taking any mineral out of the water??? do i have to add anything to this or can i use as it is????

What exactly is in your tap water? Are you on a well? The phosban/carbon will help some, but if the water has nitrates it is unlikely to do anything.

I'm not too sure that a once rinse through will remove the nasties on your tapwater, my thoughts on these products ar that they rely on the constant turnover of the filter to slowly remove the stuff in the tank. Do you still use Prime?

yeah i did just in case, i was thinking about the passing it through once thing to, i may have to build something so i can filter it through the reactor for a while before adding it to my tank. using r.o. right is gonna cost me a fortune!!! Not that i mind that but if i could do the reactor thing it would be much easier i may have to buy cannister filter and use one of them to do it instead