What would you call this pH?

[jwcarlson]

I am so terrible at reading these things.  Also have master test kit I will do and see if that's enlightening. 

We have fantastically hard water here if that helps frame the question at all. 

[DaveO]

Neutral. 7.0

[jwcarlson]

[MyFish]

The blue is high!  Do an immediate water change.I have. O ideas what the other color signifies.   Is that a phbtead as well?

[jwcarlson]

On 1/19/2022 at 7:44 AM, MyFish said:

The blue is high!  Do an immediate water change.I have. O ideas what the other color signifies.   Is that a phbtead as well?

The blue is the "normal range" pH test and the browner one is the "high range" pH test.  What do you mean it's high?  I mean, it is... it's off range for that test.

Both are testing the same water.  To me it looks like 8.0, right?

There's no fish in this tank, it's just tap water that's been circulating in my new 75.  The water in my other tank has Fluval Stratum and it's at 6.x.

[MyFish]

It’s hard sometimes to see colors from pictures.  You may be okay then….

What ph are you aiming for?  What type of fish do you plan on caring for?  

[sairving]

Your PH is 8.2. The ph of my tap water is exactly the same. I don't chase ph, gh,or kh anymore. 

Edited January 19, 2022 by sairving

[jwcarlson]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:03 AM, MyFish said:

It’s hard sometimes to see colors from pictures.  You may be okay then….

What ph are you aiming for?  What type of fish do you plan on caring for?  

Long term, discus.  But it's not like their on order or in quarantine.  Have wanted to keep them and kept running into this wall (our tap water is VERY hard.  I never much cared about water parameters other than ammonia/nitrite/nitrate when I was fishkeeping more heavily years ago (mostly oscars, livebearers, and african cichlids).  Kept hitting this "wall" because I have always been really nervous about our tap water here with hardness and pH.  

That's a different discussion (the discus), thanks for your help everyone!  Just wanted a sanity check.  

On 1/19/2022 at 8:04 AM, sairving said:

Your PH is 8.2. The ph of my tap water is exactly the same. I don't chase ph, gh,or kh anymore. 

Yep, not chasing anything, but maybe slowly coming to the realization that discus aren't going to work for me without a lot of dinking around with water.

[sairving]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:18 AM, jwcarlson said:

Yep, not chasing anything, but maybe slowly coming to the realization that discus aren't going to work for me without a lot of dinking around with water.

Yeah, that sounds like work, especially trying to match parameters at water change time.  I've messed around with fluval peat granules.  They really do work, but I find they have to be changed frequently. 

I would love to have a blackwater tank but that won't happen. I'd also love to have some wild betta varieties but the water too hard. I don't want to spend that much money on a fish and it doesn't thrive in my water parameters.

[MyFish]

Discus are cool very hard to keep.  They need clean water and 6.5ph

i bought an RO buddy for making my own water off chewy.com. It makes 0TDS at 6.5ph

 

its about 75$ For the 3 stage.  I use the 4 stage.  You may want to look into something like that for a reverse osmosis. Hooks up to a regular standard faucet I hook mine up to my laundry sink and have a 20 gallon Rubbermaid garbage can which I used to collect the water

If you are going to use reverse osmosis you will have to put aquarium salt in the water as it strips the water of all minerals. I use API aquarium salt.

still cycling my tank though.  I bought some girth art and had a. Mail and some worms come with it!!!!  So now I’m scared to introduce any fish till Make my water free of parasites.  May buy a 5 gallon tank just For quarantine purposes

Edited January 19, 2022 by MyFish

[KaitieG]

I have the exact same colors for my Ph as well, and I call it 8.0-8.2.  I really haven't had trouble keeping what I want to keep in my water, but I haven't done discus.  I did recently sell fish to a longtime hobbyist who said he used to keep fish in 350 gh/ 8.0 ph water about 25 years ago and just kept them like any other fish with weekly water changes and tap water.  He got them from a local LFS that also kept them in hard water while they were there.  Breeding may have been different then, but I have heard of hard-water strains (from Germay I think).  I don't know how you source those though.  
 

I struggled a little with angelfish until I found an old local hobbyist who breeds in water that's like mine too.  I have no idea how he does it since everyone else says they struggle with hatching rates/fertility in that water, but he has some great fish.  Maybe you can luck out on a source for discus that would be hard-water adapted.  Good luck!

[jwcarlson]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:40 AM, KaitieG said:

I have the exact same colors for my Ph as well, and I call it 8.0-8.2.  I really haven't had trouble keeping what I want to keep in my water, but I haven't done discus.  I did recently sell fish to a longtime hobbyist who said he used to keep fish in 350 gh/ 8.0 ph water about 25 years ago and just kept them like any other fish with weekly water changes and tap water.  He got them from a local LFS that also kept them in hard water while they were there.  Breeding may have been different then, but I have heard of hard-water strains (from Germay I think).  I don't know how you source those though.  
 

I struggled a little with angelfish until I found an old local hobbyist who breeds in water that's like mine too.  I have no idea how he does it since everyone else says they struggle with hatching rates/fertility in that water, but he has some great fish.  Maybe you can luck out on a source for discus that would be hard-water adapted.  Good luck!

You can get them from Discus Hans (Stendker Discus imported to the US).  But even Stendker says that above 8 pH, they're not well and at 8.5, they die. 

I've been nerding out trying to come up with a way.  It's going to require RO and I think I've been slowly coming to that conclusion.  I don't mind that... I don't think... I can set something up easily enough and have the storage capacity.  I've been kicking around putting one in just for our drinking water, actually.  I have absolutely zero desire to even attempt doing any of the other ways of lowering pH.  But I think doing RO is reasonable and would be stable once I figure out "the mix".  Meaning 30 gallons of RO to 5 gallons of tap (to make sure there's minerals).

 

Lots of thinking to do and still very much in the planning stage.  Originally I was thinking 4-6 weeks before I would be ready for discus, but I just keep digging.  No rush, I've been wanting to keep them for 15-20 years... what's another six months? 🙂

 

[KaitieG]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:49 AM, jwcarlson said:

You can get them from Discus Hans (Stendker Discus imported to the US).  But even Stendker says that above 8 pH, they're not well and at 8.5, they die. 

I've been nerding out trying to come up with a way.  It's going to require RO and I think I've been slowly coming to that conclusion.  I don't mind that... I don't think... I can set something up easily enough and have the storage capacity.  I've been kicking around putting one in just for our drinking water, actually.  I have absolutely zero desire to even attempt doing any of the other ways of lowering pH.  But I think doing RO is reasonable and would be stable once I figure out "the mix".  Meaning 30 gallons of RO to 5 gallons of tap (to make sure there's minerals).

 

Lots of thinking to do and still very much in the planning stage.  Originally I was thinking 4-6 weeks before I would be ready for discus, but I just keep digging.  No rush, I've been wanting to keep them for 15-20 years... what's another six months? 🙂

 

 RO does seem to be the best way to set yourself up for success. I know our LFS kept them in a 80/20 RO mix before they closed.  I've also wanted to keep them, but they are NOT the right fish for my lifestage with young kids.  Maybe if I ever get to retire I could have fun creating just the right setup and maintaining it.  I'd love to see what you end up doing!

[Patrick_G]

I’ve never had to use RO or kept Discus but I think you’re on the right track. It’ll be more work than just doing water changes with a python, but still less than mixing water for a reef. If I was in your place and had the budget I think I’d go for a sump plus a reservoir for pre mixed water. To that I’d add an overflow bulkhead or overflow box with siphon to facilitate easy water changes. 

[jwcarlson]

On 1/19/2022 at 8:58 AM, KaitieG said:

 RO does seem to be the best way to set yourself up for success. I know our LFS kept them in a 80/20 RO mix before they closed.  I've also wanted to keep them, but they are NOT the right fish for my lifestage with young kids.  Maybe if I ever get to retire I could have fun creating just the right setup and maintaining it.  I'd love to see what you end up doing!

I'm trying to suss out what advice is "idealism" and what is hearsay... the fact that discus have been "kept" in probably just about any water is probably true.  I'm trying to discern the sweet spot and how big it is.  I'm usually pretty good at doing that.  It's a lot easier being successful if you start pretty close to dead center of that sweet spot instead of sitting right on the fringe where maybe it's not the pH that kills your discus, but it's a bacterial infection that would normally have been benign @ ~7 pH, but thrives at 8 (totally made up example, but I know acidity typically helps limit bacterial growth).  When you're on the edge it's easy to get pushed off and have no idea what actually caused the issue.

I also keep about 40 honey bee colonies and graft/raise all of my own queen bees.  So I understand nuance and trial/error.  

On 1/19/2022 at 9:10 AM, Patrick_G said:

I’ve never had to use RO or kept Discus but I think you’re on the right track. It’ll be more work than just doing water changes with a python, but still less than mixing water for a reef. If I was in your place and had the budget I think I’d go for a sump plus a reservoir for pre mixed water. To that I’d add an overflow bulkhead or overflow box with siphon to facilitate easy water changes. 

I was originally thinking about a sump, but I don't think that's in the cards where the tank is at (living room).  I have thought about moving it to the basement, but our basement is just and unfinished cement room and I do not care to spend much time down there.  No one would see the fish unless purposefully going to do so and that defeats the whole purpose, really.  If I were breeding them or something that would be a different case.  

Regarding water changes, the draining of water will be no big deal... laundry sink and I'm going to plumb my python so that it's more or less permanently installed and all I have to do is screw in my gravel vac 'pig tail' and open a valve, start the siphon, and go.  Filling will be more complicated as I'll have to pump the RO water out of storage (big garbage can) in the basement and up into the tank.  I think that I can probably plumb most of that part in so just go downstairs, start the pump, and do some valve line-up changes and pump the water back in.  In my head it's all relatively uncomplicated.  Once I start thinking it through more I might find that it's a big pain.

 

We have a home water softener (which is just an ion exchanging resin that replaces minerals with sodium).  I'm not sure if that would be better water to run through the RO or if I should just do the regular tap water.  Our tap water is something like 600 ppm and the 'softened water' is more like 1100 ppm.  My understanding is that it takes roughly 2 sodium ions to replace each one removed, so that checks out if that's in fact true.  

[Patrick_G]

If you can manage 40 beehives a Discus tank should be easy 😀

[jwcarlson]

On 1/19/2022 at 9:46 AM, Patrick_G said:

If you can manage 40 beehives a Discus tank should be easy 😀

You know, I keep telling myself that.  The thing is... bees really take care of themselves in most all of the most important ways.  Discus do the same (in nature).  Now if I brought a colony of bees into, say, a large building and was going to get them to grow and thrive like that, I think they'd be very difficult to keep.  

Maybe once I get discus I'll realize it wasn't quite such a big deal after all.  😄

[Gannon]

it looks right smack in the middle! I'm very jealous. The water that comes out of my tap has a ph of 9.5 so I have to go through the insane process of using RODI. A life of easy and fast water changes is not one to be taken for granted.