PH and Nitrate

[Tess]

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 

[Lennie]

I am very confused reading it. Could you please explain the questions you have more in detail? Would like to help if I can!

Besides all that, all of the fishes you mention require bare min of 6 but preferably at least 10 school size. The more of the same species the better. But I believe considering those fishes all share the same level of water column, mid swimmers, I would stick to good size of 2 schools ideally. In 200 liters, I believe you can easily stick to 2 big groups of schooling fish or one rly big group depending on your liking. Therefore, I highly advice to choose one or two of your schooling fish and to increase their school size slowly over time. 11 total fish out of 4 different fish that should be kept with many others from the same species does not sound like a good idea. You may want to decide one or two from the cardinals/embers/barbs. 

Handling this issue should be a good idea before considering to add any bottom dwellers 🙂

I personally would not keep my corys or bottom dwellers like them on a gravel. Round gravels would pose a less potential dmg than sharper ones for sure, but you can easily see how much they enjoy sifting the sand/small soft substrates. They spend most of their daily time doing either that or just sleeping. Being damaged by it is another question, but gravels don’t seem to be what they enjoy the most, that’s for sure. So I would not get and put them in a tank that they won’t enjoy as they won’t be able to perform their most basic action on a desired level ever. What bottom dweller you wanna keep is also kind of an important question here I guess?

I couldn’t understand the 50/50 part and lfs water difference part well. If you explain further, I may try to help

cheers,

 

[Tess]

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 

[Lennie]

Personally, I keep  fish like rummy noses, honey gourami, pygmy cories etc with my water parameters which is pretty hard, gh around 7, kh 20, ph 8.2. These fish naturally like more acidic and softer waters. But I have been having them successfully, 0 disease, 0 deaths, whatsoever. My cories started breeding recently. I got them tank bred and from my local lfs.

To my belief, the question is if you are keeping fish that has been raised in water parameters that are similar to yours, or if the fish you are keeping are wild caught or raised in very different water parameters to yours. Because, for example, if a rummy nose fry is raised in a hard water and high ph, it has never been in the wild life parameters during its whole life. I feel like, putting such fish into an acidic super soft water which meets wild life parameters would cause the actual damage at that point. Same goes for the opposite. If you try to keep a wild fish or a tank bred fish that has been raised into and used to live in water parameters which are soft and acidic, introducing it to your hard/high ph water later on is more likely to cause issues. Sensetive breeds like caridina shrimps would be an exception for this and better be kept at what they require I believe.

In this regard, I think it makes sense to pay attention to if they are tank bred and if so, if they have been raised in/being kept in similar to your water parameters. Also keeping the same parameter they are used to is a better option then playing around it a lot. Fish enjoy stable environment.

I have around 10 nitrates in my water. I used to mix my water changes half RO- half tap water to decrease the kh/ph a little. But for the last 4 months, I stopped it. It didnt really make much difference on my parameter readings no matter what, also it makes it a bit complex to try to balance the minerals and such with the RO water addition.

You may check this topic. I'm not super experienced about tap water nitrate readings. But all I can say is my tank is overstocked, and I see max 20ppm nitrate right before weekly water changes  thanks to keeping easy buy fast growing plants. Floating plants such as Elodea, duckweed, salvinia, hornwort, etc. help a lot with nitrates. Some people keep the roots of fast growing plants in the tank like pothos too.

Changing substrate in a 200L can be a lil harder compared to a smaller sized tank as it is generally adviced to seperate a good amount of old tank water before emptying the tank for the substrate change.

I've used JBL Aquabasis as soil in my tank, and topped it with clay based substrate for a good 6 cm, this way it does not leach also the dirt is made for the aquarium use anyway. I wouldnt use normal plant soil personally, especially after I've seen it killing all the roots of the aquatic plants in one of MD Fish Tanks' tank. It was really bad looking. I'm not experienced with active substrates.

Also, You dont need soil to grow plants. If you are gonna use sand, then yes, using a substrate on the bottom that will let plants to grow roots is a good idea, as sand kinda blocks it. But you can always use root tabs in inert substrate. You can check MD Fish Tank's setup videos, he has plenty!

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Lennie

[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 

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/15/2023 at 4:32 AM, Tess said:

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 

So there's two sides to this. 

Your tank is going to incrementally increase in GH/KH because of the water evaporating.  You top off with RO water to reduce that impact.  When you do your water changes you'd mix in a % of RO water to dilute that again from the tap.  You might end up with a 50-50, 60-40, or 70-30 ratio.  Look into something like Seachem Acid buffer as well. 

The other way to go is to find species tht do well in your water.  There will be some at most water parameters that are interesting. 

Hopefully that helps.

On 1/15/2023 at 4:32 AM, Tess said:

Nitrate out of tap sit around 40 so struggling to get it down.

Precondition your water if at all possible.  Get a big trashcan on wheels or a water holding container and fill the base with lava rock.  Add in your water with an airstone and let that "age" for at least a week before using it for water changes.  Lava rock acts as the biomedia, biological filtration, which will remove things like ammonia and nitrates in the tank.  You can try a deep sandbed for nitrates, but there's 1000 ways to do it and it's not very easy to get that resolved.  In your water conditioning bucket, add some pathos or other plants that use the air for CO2 and you'll get those nitrates out of there real fast.

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/15/2023 at 11:08 AM, Tess said:

I would recommend adding some microsword and moss to your tank.  Glue it to the wood and that will help increase that load to capture out those nitrates. 

Another option, @Mmiller2001 has a moss wall on his tank and you can see that in his journal, it's a really elegant way to go about that plant and will work well for your setup too (on one of your side panels, potentially)

The plants you have are very nice, but slow growing, which is just why you're having lingering high levels.  Some plants that grow a little faster is what you'd want to look into.

Edited January 15, 2023 by nabokovfan87