Thanks for all of the replies.
- Filter does agitate the water surface plus I have an air stone for lots of bubbles that the fish love.
- pH is around 7.8
- Using a test strip our water is "Hard"
Turkey basters have more than two usesI only learned that the other day too, from seeing @Ch4rlie mention it somewhere! I already used a syringe to pull water for a sample just 'cos it's easier to get the water to the white line that way, but began taking the sample from lower down in the tank since then, I used to take samples from the surface too. API should include a syringe and a note about that in the instructions I reckon.
I cannot imagine what other use you could be alluding toTurkey basters have more than two uses
I cannot imagine what other use you could be alluding to
It's almost creepy how perfect the moults are sometimes, isn't it? You can see every little leg and line in the shell. Pretty cool.For basting turkeys of course.....
But seriously yeah, turkey baster is a terrific tool for fishkeeping, taking water sample from deeper into water column, sucking up debris from substrate, really good for sucking up leftover uneaten algae wafers and sucking shrimp moult shells that eerily is really detailed and look exactly like a dead shrimp!
I don't have a turkey baster, thinking I should pick one up now.
So the water is ‘hard’, right, perhaps if you look at your water providers website and look up water hardness or water quality report or something like that and see if you can get more approximate numbers.
Normally one finds these with different units such has dH, dkH, mg/l, degrees Clark, degrees German and ppm.
Not a problem at all though, you have hard water species fish in platies and mollies so they’re perfectly fine in hard water.
Hard or soft water won’t really affect the cycle anyway as long as ph is not over 8.5 or below 6.5.