What will distilled water do to my axolotls

[iplaythebassoon]

I am away from home and have asked my mother to house sit my animals while I am away. She put distilled water in my aquarium even though I asked her to add spring water. She put two gallons into a 20 gallon tank. So only 10% is distilled. Am I going to arrive home to two dead axies? A crashed aquarium? Freaking out right now.

 

[millerj76]

Some people use distilled water for household aquariums because it lacks the chemicals found in tap water supplies. It is important to supplement distilled water when using it for fishkeeping; it is too pure to sustain proper chemistry to support an aquarium ecosystem.[5 Hi just found this little snipet on wikipedia, i imagine you might be ok if it is only 10 percent, is the tank filtered, if so i would imagine that the filter will still have lots of benificial bacteria to handle the 10 percent. the article above says to supplement the distilled water , i think this would be the case if you were using it regularly, but maybe if its just the once then hopefully you will be ok

 

[Jennewt]

It will be fine, no worries. Were those 2 gallons a water change (i.e., she removed 2 gallons) or was this replacement for water evaporated? Distilled water is recommended for replacing evaporated water, since evaporation leaves all the minerals behind. A partial change with distilled water will probably not reduce the mineral content to any significant degree.