Hi Everyone
I am so very glad that I found this website/forum!
Long story short lol Because I had some abdominal surgery about a month ago, I was unable to add the needed water softener salt to my softener. I have a well that has high levels of iron to which I use salt with iron remover. Well, because I was unable to lift the bags of salt, the softener ran out, unbeknownst to me until I topped off my 55 gallon tank. The tank houses a large red devil and a couple of Jack's. The water is now a rust color and looks just awful. I don't want to empty the tank and start over...that would just shock the heck out of the fish and to get that positive bacteria back UGH! I know some people use water softener salt IN their tanks but I wasn't sure if the iron removing kind could be or if it would work, but I don't want to harm my fish. Any thoughts on how to handle this would be really appreciated.
Really need some help here
. I am assuming you have the softener working now and have good tap water. If so I would do a number of large water changes to remove/dilute the iron. As long as the substrate stays wet you should keep the cycle so you can probably do something around a 50% water change and repeat them frequently until the iron is no longer visible.
