Hello,
I am currently keeping and breeding a variety of neocardinia species, snails, crawfish, and Cory catfish (across different tanks).
All being very hardy, they have been lucky to survive my TDS negligence, as I’ve only recently gotten a TDS pen.
I live in Chicago where the water is pretty hard and a TDS read of my high quality tap filter’s water output is around 160 (before I let it dechlorinate- not sure I’d this makes a difference). Additionally, I obviously have to mineralize this to get to the right KH/GH levels. I’ve got current levels between 250-300+.
I would like to raise Caridina species but first need to dramatically lower TDS.
I’ve bought a lot of R/O water by the gallon; such a waste of money and plastic. I sell the shrimp, but worry that if I buy R/O water for every water change, it will turn into a money pit.
I also bought a canister filter since vacuuming the gravel was always laborious and disastrous, in part thinking with certain filter medium I could reduce TDS. I’m not sure that was accurate. Does anybody know if I can use the canister to filter out dissolved solids somehow?
Has anybody heard of any cheap DIY/marketed inline filter that I could add to the canister to help? (like the one my furnace humidifier uses, lol)
I could also get an R/O buddy filter, but that’s expensive and I’m not sure how often I’d have to pay for replacement filters with my local TDS levels.
Curious to heat anyone’s thoughts?