Guppy Questions

[Mom of MnE]

thank you mucho

 

[XFiSh_CichildX]

The acidity/alkalinity is measured from 1-14. (pH)
1-6 alkaline
8-14 acidic
7 is said to be neutral.
So you need the water around 6.
You can buy testing kits to measure this.

1-6 acidic
8-14 alkaline

oops sorry didnt relise tht manny people corrected u

 

[Symo420]

If you use rain water this is usually acidic, if you have bore hole water or mains from ground water supply these tend to be alkaline.

I have been advised to never use rain water in my aquarium. I used to because it was full of mosquito larve, but it caused my guppy tank to go through a massive ammonia spike and killed of my cherry reds. It took about 3 weeks and 2 full courses of 'Stability'.

 

[KittyKat]

If you use rain water this is usually acidic, if you have bore hole water or mains from ground water supply these tend to be alkaline.

I have been advised to never use rain water in my aquarium. I used to because it was full of mosquito larve, but it caused my guppy tank to go through a massive ammonia spike and killed of my cherry reds. It took about 3 weeks and 2 full courses of 'Stability'.

Rain water should not cause that sort of problems, unless you picked up lots of dead mosquito larvae or something like that… but there shouldn't be any mosquito larvae in fresh rainwater anyway, so I assume you used water which had stood for a while? Apparently that can be problematic, although I would still imagine that the filter can only be killed off by something more serious than that. Maybe your pH dropped to 6.0 or below? Apparently that can stall the filter bacteria into not doing anything, and that can be a plausible occurrence with using rainwater.

At any rate, while it's not a good idea for livebearers, I did used to use it on a regular basis for SA set-ups (collecting it off a garage roof which did have lead on it) with good success.

 

[OldMan47]

Rain water contains no minerals so it is fine to top off for evaporation between water changes but should not be used for a water change. Water changes determine the mineral content of your water and in most cases the best bet is local tap water. Depending on where you live that will typically give you anywhere from 100 ppm to 600 ppm of total dissolved solids. Where I live it runs about 325 ppm which is just fine for the common livebearers.
My rain water never affects the pH of a tank because it has no minerals to drive the pH in any direction. It only measures about 6 ppm of dissolved solids which means that a blink of your eyes could move the pH around.