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Reaeve

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Hi! I'm nervous about starting this new adventure. I'm just scared I'll mess up and kill my future little friends. Probably bc when I had fish as a kid/teen i knew nothing of cycling and testing waters. I have a 37 gal top fin kit. That came with a 200 watt heater, 40 power filter, and other accessories. I'm wanting to do a community tank with neon tetras, possibly guppies and mollies, dwarf gourami, and dwarf frogs. Researching different fish temperaments and requirements. Do this all sound comparable? If there are any ciclids that would be safe with the other small fish and frogs I'd like them a lot. I love ciclids I'm afraid they'd harass or kill my little fish. Also, I'm interested in live plants but I have the opposite of a green thumb and kill all plants inside and outside my home I try to grow. I've been thinking maybe a java moss wall but I can find out how to do it. I'll have to research more. This is my ideas and concerns about my my new tank. Any advice or additional ideas would be awesome.
Thx
Also, I haven't set up to cycle yet. I'm waiting on my tank stand to be delivered.
 
Hi Reaeve,

The first thing to do is find out how hard your tap water is. Your water supplier's website should have that somewhere; we need both the number and the unit (they could use any one of half a dozen different units). Your list of fish contains soft water fish (neons) and hard water fish (guppies & mollies) so one or other will not be happy.



As for frogs, they are better kept alone. They often starve to death in tanks with fish as they are almost blind and find their food by smell, and by the time they find where you put it, the fish have eaten it all. I once had two frogs in the same tank as my betta, and never again. It was a nightmare trying to feed them. I made a frog feeding station out of a terracotta plant pot but the betta still managed to get at the food.
 
Hi Reaeve,

The first thing to do is find out how hard your tap water is. Your water supplier's website should have that somewhere; we need both the number and the unit (they could use any one of half a dozen different units). Your list of fish contains soft water fish (neons) and hard water fish (guppies & mollies) so one or other will not be happy.



As for frogs, they are better kept alone. They often starve to death in tanks with fish as they are almost blind and find their food by smell, and by the time they find where you put it, the fish have eaten it all. I once had two frogs in the same tank as my betta, and never again. It was a nightmare trying to feed them. I made a frog feeding station out of a terracotta plant pot but the betta still managed to get at the food.
Is it possible to feed frogs with long feeding tongs? Hmmm I'll have to look and see if I want hard water or soft water fish. I know my water is hard but I'll have to look up the measurement and units.
 
Would I look at just the mesurment of calcium and magnesium. Or carbonate or other minerals? It has a list of minerals unit is mg/l.
Calcium is 55.4 mg/l
magnesium is 30.3 mg/l
Carbonate is 263 mg/

I think my water is very hard but I'm unsure. I know we have a lot of mineral build up we have to clean and I have to use filtered water in all my appliances.
 
It's not the amount of the actual minerals, but the term 'hardness'. It took me a while to get my head round this concept, but my son (who used to work for a water testing company) explained that hardness is the amount of divalent metal ions and in reality this means calcium, magnesium and trace amounts of other metals. But they add all these metals together and give a hardness number as if it was all calcium, or all calcium carbonate, or occasionally all calcium oxide. This is why we can't look at the amount of each individual metal, we need the figure for 'hardness' or 'general hardness'. And as for carbonate, what we call KH does include trace amounts of other buffers as well, and because of the method they use to measure it, water companies use the term alkalinity instead of KH.



It is possible to feed frogs by long tweezers, but it is very fiddly. Despite what a lot of sites say, they should not be fed exclusively on bloodworm, but on specialist frog food. I used ZooMed frog and tadpole food, which was very small pellets which would be just about impossible to feed with tweezers; it was hard enough to put in the tank with a turkey baster.
If you really do want frogs, please consider a second tank just for them, they'd be much happier there.
 
If i have hard water and want to keep tetras would pillow softeners work?
 
If i have hard water and want to keep tetras would pillow softeners work?

Probably not. I have never used these (or had to, fortunately, as I have zero GH in my water) but in all the threads we have had on softening water they have not to my knowledge been mentioned/recommended. I suppose it might depend on the initial hardness (the harder the water, the more of these and the less they will achieve) and the cost. I would expect water changes to be an issue, as you might need to somehow prepare water in advance before adding it to the tank. Maybe someone who has used these can advise us.

Generally, the safest and easiest way to soften hard water is to dilute it with "pure" water. RO (reverse osmosis), distilled and rainwater (if otherwise safe to collect) can be used. The reduction in GH/KH is relative to the volume percentage; so using half source water and half pure water would reduce the GH/KH by half, and so forth. The pH would tend to lower proportionally, again depending upon the GH/KH and pH to start with.

Essjay explained the numbers we/you need, and once we have those we might find things different. [And I agree with all essjay has posted to date, on the frog not being advisable with fish.]
 
Probably not. I have never used these (or had to, fortunately, as I have zero GH in my water) but in all the threads we have had on softening water they have not to my knowledge been mentioned/recommended. I suppose it might depend on the initial hardness (the harder the water, the more of these and the less they will achieve) and the cost. I would expect water changes to be an issue, as you might need to somehow prepare water in advance before adding it to the tank. Maybe someone who has used these can advise us.

Generally, the safest and easiest way to soften hard water is to dilute it with "pure" water. RO (reverse osmosis), distilled and rainwater (if otherwise safe to collect) can be used. The reduction in GH/KH is relative to the volume percentage; so using half source water and half pure water would reduce the GH/KH by half, and so forth. The pH would tend to lower proportionally, again depending upon the GH/KH and pH to start with.

Essjay explained the numbers we/you need, and once we have those we might find things different. [And I agree with all essjay has posted to date, on the frog not being advisable with fish.]
Thank you. The mixing of pure water would probably be easiest and safest. I just need to figure my actual numbers.
 
Would a kh and gh water test kit tell me my hardness?
 
Would a kh and gh water test kit tell me my hardness?

Yes, but I usually like to explore other options before suggesting you spend money for a kit you may only use the once. If you can post a link to your water authority website, one of us could take a look and see what we can sort out. Another alternative is a reliable fish store, many will usually do water tests. If you go this way, make sure you get the number and the unit of measurement they use (there are many, but we can convert if we know the unit).
 
I could take it to the fish shop. We just have petsmart here. I would post the water department link but I'm a weirdo and don't like internet folk knowing where I live. Lmao
 
I could take it to the fish shop. We just have petsmart here. I would post the water department link but I'm a weirdo and don't like internet folk knowing where I live. Lmao

not sure if Petsmart does water tests,

and even if they did, I wouldn't trust anybody working there to actually do them properly,

all the mouth breathers there know how to do is bag fish
 
not sure if Petsmart does water tests,

and even if they did, I wouldn't trust anybody working there to actually do them properly,

all the mouth breathers there know how to do is bag fish
Right! I order a kit. It was only $7.
 

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