Hi all,

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, sorry if it's not.

At the weekend I bought a beautiful pair of Apisto agassizzi. I know that they prefer soft water and had a talk with the lfs guy (it's a good lfs, they know their stuff) about this as our water in this area is naturally quite hard. He said that it shouldn;t be a problem as long as I acclimatized them over a long period. I took them home and introduced them to the tank after 4 hours acclimatizing. They were about on saturday evening but then I didn;t see the male at all all day Sunday (I work away from home mon-fri).

I'm just getting a bit concerned. I've had problems keeping rams before and I can only presume this is due to the hardness of water (my water parameters are fine). Is it likely that he's just been hiding away until he gets used to the tank? OR could the hard water be more of a problem for them than I had anticipated?

Any helpful advice welcome.

Thanks

Rams are amongst the worst for doing badly in hard water. agassizii tends not to do well in hard water, cacatuoides is the species that generally does ok in hard water. Your agassizii will be hiding until he gets used to the tank, as all cichlids do, but I think from personal experience he will have problems with hard water.

It's either worrying or joyful when Apistos start hiding - they're breeding or they're not happy It's fairly unlikely that the hard water will be what's causing the Aggies to hide. Do you have any other fishes in the tank? In my experience, dither fish [not target fish, but "companions"] are practically a requirement.

I'm fairly sure that you could keep Aggies successfully in hard water.. but they'll never really thrive, and I'm fairly doubtful that they'd ever breed in hard water.

What are the pH/hardness parameters of your tank?

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've seen the pair out and about a few times since I last posted. I think they've taken to living in a fake tree thing I have in there.

I'm not bothered about breeding them - I just want to make sure they'll be ok in my water long term. The guy at the fish shop did suggest maybe using some rain water in my water changes to soften the water a bit. But he warned this may make the water parameters a bit more unstable. Is this a good idea do you think? is it worth it?

Thanks

no bad idea to use rain water IMO, it is unstable and you never know what contaminants are in it.

what exactly are your parameters for pH and hardness, without knowing what you're dealing with we can't really offer much constructive advice.

I really don't know, I'll have to test it but work away from home so won't be able to do so and put the results up until sat I'm afraid! sorry. I just know that I live in a particularly hard water area.

I was a bit dubious about rain water too - wasn't sure if I'd be contaminating my tank with something! Is there any other way of softening the water?

Water run through a reverse osmosis machine is ideal for this purpose. RO water [should] have lower pH than your tap water and significantly lower hardness [in fact it should be zero hardness]. You can use this ratio'd in with tap water when doing water changes to gradually lower the hardness and pH of your aquarium.

You can purchase excellent reverse osmosis machines from RO-Man and pick a solid 75 gallon per day effort for around 75 UK pounds.

This post has been edited by duncs: May 29 2008, 02:45 PM