How Do I Soften The Water In Order To Breed Fish?

[totally tropical]

Firstly, apologies for my ignorance!

There are a number of fish that I would like to breed, following successful attempts at breeding species in hard water i.e. Malawis (which I no longer own), but to do so they require soft water and my tap water is naturally hard.

How do I soften the water? I heard peat will soften the water, but do I just place it in my filter trays - won't this cloud the water?

I have an overhead trickle filter system worked by a powerhead - 4 separate trays which include carbon foam (black), white foam and carbon.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jacko32]

yes peat and bog wood
put the peat inside a ladys tights that stops the clouding you can also get blackwater extract

what fish do you want to breed ?

 

[totally tropical]

Am looking at Apistogrammas, Cardinal Tetras possibly.

Would not rule anything out - just love breeding fish!

I have a 300 litre tank that is low stocked, has numerous caves, sandy substrate and is well planted.

Do you have any suggestions? The easier the better.

 

[BigC]

I use Rainwater and RO
ATB
C

 

[nmonks]

No, no, no don't do this! Softening water using peat is not going to work. If you have hard tap water, say 15-20 degrees dH, you won't be able to use enough peat to make a difference. You need either rainwater or an RO filter. Both approaches work well, though rainwater has risks and RO filtration is very expensive and wasteful.

Once you've softened the water, you also need to understand how to steady pH, and how to provide the low level of hardness needed for the fish to stay healthy (they cannot be kept in pure rainwater or RO water in most cases). Until you understand the relationship between pH and carbonate hardness, don't even think about messing about with water chemistry!

If you have hard water, start by breeding hard water fish. Livebearers, shell-dwelling cichlids, desert gobies and Persian killifish are some examples of small, attractive and interesting hard water fish that are easy to breed. If you must do Apistogramma, go with A. cacatuoides, a species that breeds fairly easily in moderately hard, neutral water, e.g., a 50/50 mix of tap water and rainwater (or RO water). Forget about cardinal tetras; they're very difficult to breed.

Cheers, Neale

How do I soften the water? I heard peat will soften the water, but do I just place it in my filter trays - won't this cloud the water?

 

[OldMan47]

As Neale said, the only effective way to soften water for breeding is to use water of much lower mineral content, such as RO water or rain water. In my own case, my tap water runs well over 225 ppm of total dissolved solids. My RO produces water at about 20 ppm of TDS and rain water, after the initial flush of the gutter system, runs about 10 ppm TDS. If I was running an RO / DI system, I would expect to see water in the 5 ppm or less range coming from it. To truly have low TDS water using a hard water source means using one of these low TDS sources as a major component of your tank water. If you have plenty of storage capacity for the lower TDS water, you could indeed set up a tank for breeding fish that require a low TDS. I have found it much more rewarding to try to match my tank residents to the water than the other way around.