How to make my water right

[ShakyShane]

I got into fish tanks about a month ago, I did a lot of reading, water treatments and my fish are not doing that well. I setup a 20 gallon tank and got 1 snail 10 mollies and 1 bristlenose pleco. The water had an ammonia spike. I live 1 hour away from any pet stores and I don’t have transportation. I was able to save 4 by giving them to my mom. The snail and pleco is in another tank as well. I used tetra aqua safe and seachem new tank stability. My water is a little soft. My beta is doing so wonderful in his 5 gallon with his crystal clear water and his heater. I’m thinking about sticking with snails and betas and plecos for now. I have 10 platies in a 10 gallon tank that do really well.

 

[Byron]

Main thing here is data. You have fish that will be better in soft water, but other fish like the mollies absolutely must have harder water. So before acquiring any more fish, sorting out the parameters of your tap water is required. GH refers to general or total hardness, this is the level of dissolved calcium and magnesium in the water. The pH is connected, we don't need to get technical but we do need to know the number. The KH is carbonate hardness or Alkalinity, and all three parameters are connected. What are these numbers for your tap water? You should be able to find this data on the website of your water authority. Once we have the numbers, we can better predict how the parameters will interact, and which fish are suited.

Cycling is the other issue here...did you cycle the tank before adding fish, and if yes, how? Stability may or may not help, I have heard both sides and experienced both.

 

[ShakyShane]

Main thing here is data. You have fish that will be better in soft water, but other fish like the mollies absolutely must have harder water. So before acquiring any more fish, sorting out the parameters of your tap water is required. GH refers to general or total hardness, this is the level of dissolved calcium and magnesium in the water. The pH is connected, we don't need to get technical but we do need to know the number. The KH is carbonate hardness or Alkalinity, and all three parameters are connected. What are these numbers for your tap water? You should be able to find this data on the website of your water authority. Once we have the numbers, we can better predict how the parameters will interact, and which fish are suited.

Cycling is the other issue here...did you cycle the tank before adding fish, and if yes, how? Stability may or may not help, I have heard both sides and experienced both.

Ah yes I was able to find out what it was last year, it says the ph was 7.7 and the ppm was 85.12 hope I read the chart right I have tetra test strips and it says my water is in the soft range. Also I have noticed that the water in my 20 gallon has clears up and 2 remaining golden panda mollies are swimming happily. The 4 I put in my moms tank seem to be great as well. I appreciate you responding. I feel terrible about this like I was failing my fish.

 

[Colin_T]

If the GH is 85ppm it is too soft for mollies and most other common livebearers (swordtails, platies, guppies).

If you want to keep these types of fish, you need to add some mineral salts to increase the GH. African Rift Lake water conditioner is suitable and you could use it at half strength to raise the GH, KH and pH.

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If you ever get an ammonia or nitrite reading, do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day until the levels are 0ppm. Same deal if you get nitrate above 20ppm, do a 75% water change and gravel clean every day until the level is below 20ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Try to keep ammonia and nitrite at 0ppm at all times.

Try to keep nitrates as close to 0ppm as possible and under 20ppm at all times.