So I've been keeping an aquarium for my fish and snail friends a little over a year now, and I only recently learned about the importance of monitoring the Total Dissolved Solids in the water. According to this article, too low or too high TDS in the water can negatively effect a betta's health, including making it difficult for them to breathe through their gills, regulate the salt content in their bodies, effect their growth and their fin health, and more. Now they vary in the same article as to what your goal number should be (the title says 150-300 but elsewhere in the article it says 150-500), so I figure if I'm at least under 500, but preferably under 300, that's the goal.
Total Dissolved Solids are all the things that are, as you might guess, dissolved into the aquarium water, which includes minerals, nitrates, anything. When you add liquid fertilizer, that increases the TDS. Decaying plants and poop and uneaten food adds to the TDS. Mineral supplements (I do have some crushed coral in there for the snails' shells since my pH was dipping under 7 at one point) adds to the TDS.
So first I tested the water straight from the tap by itself to know what I was working with:
257 all by itself! This explains why my GH and KH in the aquarium are high and why I get mineral stains on my dishes. I have lots of minerals in my tap water. Okay, let's see if the water that's gone through my Pur filter is any lower:
Slightly lower. So even if I exclusively use my filtered water, I'm still starting with a base TDS of 200. I am not gonna ever hit that 150 number unless I'm using distilled water. But that's okay, 200 is still good (and so is 257). So let's see what the tank was, when it was due for a water change:
Woah!!! 961, that's way too high! It had been about a week and a half since I had done a water change. After doing one water change, where 1/3 of the fresh water I added in was from the Pur filter (it takes a long time to fill, so I only filled the bucket from it once), it came down to 405. So I figured I would need to increase my water changes to once a week, rather than averaging a week and a half in-between them. A week later, I did a second water change, and I forgot about using the Pur water, so it was all from the tap, and:
387 - at least I'm in the safe zone. I think if I keep using the Pur filter water for at least one bucket each water change, I might be able to nudge it closer to 300.
So I am super glad I learned about TDS and got a meter for xmas (thank you Santa Snail!). I had no idea my numbers were so high. Hopefully making the water changes more frequent and using some filtered water helps Laeg to stay healthy and happy. :) I don't know if it's detrimental to snails or not to have a high TDS, but I think Sanglainn would appreciate clean water too. :)
If you keep an aquarium, you might want to get a TDS meter, too! It was about $14US on Amazon. Have a great day and thanks for reading! :)