I've been in the hobby for at least a year and I've had a horrible experience with my tap water. The water is incredibly hard, over 300 ppm. I spent quite a bit of time early on chasing ph. I've had probably 30-40 guppies die off over the course of 6 months and just chalked them up to weak genetics until I brought in a some cory cats and a few common plecos to grown out for our turtle pond. None of the plecos survived (bought one at a time) and I lost a few corys. After that I stopped blaming the guppies and started blaming my water. Something had to be wrong with the water. It's not the fish, can't be after this many right? Now some of this could have been from the tank not being cycled but were talking months into it and I just can't help but think water hardness as I regularly find sediment in our shower heads and sink faucets.
Fast forward to now days. I have what almost even I would consider to many tanks and hundreds of guppy fry from the pair of "indestructible" guppies. I keep 3 different type of pleco, a couple bichir, cherry shrimp, neons, cherry barbs, multiple species of cory, angels, goldeneye dwarf cichlid and I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I setup my rodi unit 6 weeks ago and have been experimenting with creating my own water. I tried just cutting it but the hardness and ph just shoot through the roof when I add it to the tank. So I bought the seachem buffers and equilibrium. I've made about 100 gallons using this stuff in batches of 20gal at a time without any accuracy. The directions of how to use these are either just that confusing or they just aren't there. I read them over and over and watch all the videos available. I still cannot understand how this is supposed to work.
If anyone has any advice on how to use these products I would greatly appreciate a recipe for how they make their water. 5g,10g, 20g however you make it. I plan to buy a 55gal drum once I figure this out so any help is greatly appreciated!
