Tess

See all my pony cories died and I loved them ! I do get fish die off after a while fir no apparent reason but suspect at some point I had a bit of old tank syndrome . Had upped my maintenance loads but nitrate out of tap is high at 40 . All floating plants snuff it due to filter flow ha ha even duckweed !! I wouldn’t be using literal mud from garden it would be proper aqua stuff but read some of them leech ammonia into the water and tamper with PH so quite wary of exactly how much and how quickly dies this happen as no info on the packs !! Why would I need to keep the old water ? If I kept old filter wet and added more bacteria can I not do a new cycle ? Maybe I need to do tests to see what mix works ? This water would be no mineral added to it plus tap do need to find the right mix of each so I know what to do on a water change

Soo the inhabitants I have technically apart from the endler female don’t like my ph levels or hardness levels . They are what’s left of my stock and know there’s not enough of each but before I buy more I would like to sort the water out more but feel overwhelmed of how to do that hence first post . Water hard add RO ? Yep fine but how much ? What am I dilution g the tank by etc ? Water has high nitrates from tap again add RO to lower . Add new substrate so might as well add a soil in there as want way more plants - these raise ph and leech ammonia. If I swing my tank too much I may kill fish ? So unless I strip down the tank and put other fish in and start again with a balanced tank to know what proportion of RO to tap makes PH and nitrates OK I can’t see another route . Can then drip acclimatise the other fish and put back . However local shop then sells at my old tank levels so effectively would have to drip every time I bought something new

Hi I have good old English hard water PH is 8 out if tap Hard Water and KH was 9 drops . Nitrate out of tap sit around 40 so struggling to get it down. I have a 200 litre tank with a low bio load at the moment . It has some ember tetras some small cherry barbs one female endler and two cardinals -11 in total . I got told to use if 50/50 and that will fix it but looking more into it that’s not the case . I want to sort it out but cannot see how swooping eachvwater change 50/50 with tank water will give you what I need to find out what makes it the correct parameters as I will never actually know what mix made it ! Also thought of stripping back as have gravel and changing to sand as want bottom feeders some say five round gravel fine others say a big nope ! I know the guppy likes the higher PH so would rehome her . Also my local fish store say they use the same water so if I sort the tank and then buy fish am I then likely to shock them going to a 7.6 ph ? Seems very complex