Can water be too hard for guppies and cherry shrimp?

[Brandener]

Hello everyone,

I’m getting some new guppies and cherry shrimp in. The tank I’m planning on putting them in is a 29g which has been up and running for over 2 years and seems to be cycled. I tested the water today, PH was 8.2 ,no ammonia or nitrite, and 10ppm nitrate with a GH of over 215.8ppm and a KH of 196.9ppm. I tested the KH and GH straight out of the tap and had the same readings. Is this too much hardness and too high of a ph in the water that would be harmful to the guppies and cherry shrimp???

[BriannesFishFam]

I found in my experience and opinions from friends, that the harder the water the better breeding

[Guppysnail]

My tap is liquid rock gh never below 250-300 lol. Even my water softener barely dents it. My ph 7.6-7.8 my neo shrimp and guppies thrive. My understanding guppies thrive up to 8.4-8.5?  I know I spiked once and my guppies loved it.  Not sure what shrimp can tolerate but I know slowly they can adjust to a lot. Depending on source water they were raised in. 

[tonyjuliano]

On 6/24/2021 at 3:55 PM, Guppysnail said:

My tap is liquid rock gh never below 250-300 lol. Even my water softener barely dents it. My ph 7.6-7.8 my neo shrimp and guppies thrive. My understanding guppies thrive up to 8.4-8.5?  I know I spiked once and my guppies loved it.  Not sure what shrimp can tolerate but I know slowly they can adjust to a lot. Depending on source water they were raised in. 

This has also been my experience.

[KaitieG]

Same--8.2 PH, GH over 300 Kh around 200, guppies and other livebearers do great. Neocardina shrimp from a local source have done well.  The ones I ordered in didn't.

[Ben_RF]

I have not had issues with guppies in hardware, however I have had issues with the first and sometimes second generation of cherry shrimp in hard water.  After that they are golden.

[BF McUmber]

My cherry shrimp live in about 258ppm and seem to do just fine. My snails were doing weird things and I put a wonder shell in there to see if it would help, it dissolved in less than a week. My hardness went up to about 340ppm and about a week later I had 2/10 cherrys die. I was looking online to find out why the sudden cause of death of two. I was  finding that if the calcium is too high the shrimp's shell is strong and they cant break it to molt.  I also found LRB aquatics where he referenced that he was not doing water changes, but only topping off with hard water and the shrimp were having a hard time molting. 

once I did two large water changes to get my parameters back to normal and have not lost another shrimp yet. I have seen lots of molts and I even have babies on the way. 

[GardenStateGoldfish]

Water can be to hard for shrimp, but I do not think it can be to hard for guppies. If the water is to hard, cherry shrimp can fail to molt ultimately eventually dying. 

 

[Chiclid addict]

Not guppy’s but I’ve been keeping my discus in 280+ for years with no effects