Houston Tap Water for Shrimp Colonies - CRS and/or RCS

[JenP]

Has anyone had success with using straight Houston tap water for CRS and/or RCS? I've got a little colony of cherries about 2 months old at this point. At some point I started using mineralized RO water after hearing horror stories from someone who used Houston tap water and one day it went weird and all fish died. But, I'm starting to wonder if this is too much work. I have a 10 gal on tap with a betta and about a bunch mystery & ramshorn snails, and it's doing great with much snail breeding and carrying on and nice looking shells.

Have folks found success raising cherries using Houston tap from inside 610? (dunno if that matters). What about more sensitive shrimp like CRS?

Thx!

[Andy409]

Has anyone had success with using straight Houston tap water for CRS and/or RCS? I've got a little colony of cherries about 2 months old at this point. At some point I started using mineralized RO water after hearing horror stories from someone who used Houston tap water and one day it went weird and all fish died. But, I'm starting to wonder if this is too much work. I have a 10 gal on tap with a betta and about a bunch mystery & ramshorn snails, and it's doing great with much snail breeding and carrying on and nice looking shells.

Have folks found success raising cherries using Houston tap from inside 610? (dunno if that matters). What about more sensitive shrimp like CRS?

Thx!

Would like to know this as well of anybody has experience and data to share!

[JenP]

I wrote this original post, and since then have had great success with just using the Houston tap water. I haven't done much with CRS, but have successfully bred hundreds of cherries at this point. I had some early deaths and thought it might be the water, so I started using RO water and remineralizing. I finally stopped because it was so. much. work. I switched back to tap water. The only time I am wary of the Houston tap water is during and immediately following a water line disruption like the one we had back in (March? can't remember) or more localized ones. I've noticed the chlorine smell gets stronger at those times, so I just wait a few days to change the water.

I'm definitely curious about the more sensitive shrimp though, I have my eye on some blue bolts....

[ThatShrimpGuy]

I'm actually interested in this too. I just picked up some API test kits and I'm monitoring my water because, well, it's not like I got a lot to do these days. 😂

My tap has a GH of 8 AND a KH of... we'll call it 6.5. My 5.5 gallon has a GH of 11 !!! KH is 7.

I've seen 2 failed molts in that tank the past 2 weeks. I'm pretty sure it's due to GH creep. When I was topping off for evaporation I was using tap water (rookie mistake). I don't have an RO system, so going forward I'll top off with DI water from the grocery store. Otherwise, tap seems fine for neos. I don't even think a GH of 11 is necessarily bad for neos, it's more that it has been increasing and not stable.

Not sure about caridinas. I'm interested in orange eyed blue tigers. It's been said they like slightly acidic water, which is the polar opposite of Houston water (chemistry pun). If you use a buffering soil the water will eat thru the buffering capacity within months instead of the 2 years most claim.

Maybe use RO for the caridinas and tap for your neos? Or find a more efficient method for using the RO so it's not such a pain. My plan was to grab a small RO system prior to picking up any caridina.

[Andy409]

Okay, I also went and picked up different API tests and my tap water results are as follows: (Spring Branch Area: 77055):

TDS: 195, pH: 8, ammonia: 1, nitrite: 0, nitrate: 0, gH: 8, kH: 6.

Good to see that gH and kH is consistent with your results as well. Overall tap parameters looks like it will work for neos, but wish the pH was a little lower. I'll be keeping it with dozen neon tetras and tap water might be too hard for them (been using RO so far, 7.4 pH).

[Soyosubie]

Would like to know this as well of anybody has experience and data to share!

I had a huge sakura colony.i switch to RO water. I slowly saw the colony get smaller and smaller over time. I would use salty shrimp to re-mineralize but it didn't make a difference. A few months ago I gave up on RO and switched back to tap water conditioned with a few drops of prime. I must have about 20 berried ladies.

[Tetranerd]

I’ve used Spring tap water for years for cherry and Neocaridina and have TDS teadings up into the 750’s with no bad effect on the Cherry colony. As long as there is an excess of biofilm and plants for them to forage on.
I have lost a few caridina shrimp in tap water (300+ TDS) and R/O mix together to try to drop TDS. So I started to use R/O with Salty Shrimp GH+ and have had better luck.

My 2 cents - If you raise your Neos in R/O water and then sell them to the public or fish stores, the shrimp will need to be introduced to higher TDS as most folks who don’t want to hassles of the soft water shrimp will only want tap water shrimp. 🦞