Rio Orinoco Biotope (H. Osteocarus, P. Simulans)

[CassCats10]

A very cool find — especially if it is a truly pure batch of *Hoplisoma osteocarus*, because such random “catches” in LFS are sometimes the only way to get them. The biotope idea with Orinoco/Meta looks logical, and you have chosen a good combination of species — *Paracheirodon simulans* fits in very naturally there. The main thing now is stable water and minimal stress, then such a system can look almost like a piece of a wild river in an aquarium.

As far as most reported worldwide, H. osteocarus is only available as a rare bycatch, so finding a full group is the equivalent of winning a lottery ticket.

I am going to be lowering the pH in a more controlled manner, to around 6.5 range. I picked up some Seachem Discus Buffer since I already use Seachem Neutral Regulator and that product is meant to be used with Regulator. It'll allow the tank to keep a stable pH more similar to their natural environment.

 

[CassCats10]

The pothos is the only plant thriving haha

 

[anewbie]

I don't understand these regulators you are using. If i'm not mistaken the native conditions are tds below 30 and ph below 6. Shouldn't you just be using ro water and let the things drop ?

I don't do 'biotop' but this aquarium has green neon tetra (p. simulans) and ec around 25 with ph below 5.5:

A few random pictures from the past week or so

2nd spawn:

www.fishforums.net

While it is biotop incorrect it seems like the conditions you would be trying to create ?

 

[CassCats10]

I don't understand these regulators you are using. If i'm not mistaken the native conditions are tds below 30 and ph below 6. Shouldn't you just be using ro water and let the things drop ?

I don't do 'biotop' but this aquarium has green neon tetra (p. simulans) and ec around 25 with ph below 5.5:

A few random pictures from the past week or so

2nd spawn:

www.fishforums.net

While it is biotop incorrect it seems like the conditions you would be trying to create ?

I do not have the luxury of space to have prepped water ready to go for water changes to use pure RO and mix it.

Therefore, I do a half tap half distilled mix but still have to contend with my wonky tap water, so to keep things stable, I use the Regulators.

It's been my experience that, especially the little fish, can be sensitive to shocks in sudden fluctuations that come with my unstable tap water pH. So as a safeguard, I use the Regulators. This tank I use the Discus Buffer on top of the Neutral Regulator since it is designed to be used with it in order to keep a stable pH but lower than 7 depending on the amount you use.


If I had the space, I'd go full RO and remineralize it to where it needed to be, but even then I'd still need products such as these to regulate the parameters of my choice.

 

[anewbie]

Why remineralize ? I don't put any mineral in my ro water. Also you say the ph change from your tap shock your fish. Are you measuring kh/gh - i doubt it is ph that is impacting the fishes as much as hardness change or perhaps mineral change. regulators won't really help unless you know how your tap water has changed.

 

[CassCats10]

Why remineralize ? I don't put any mineral in my ro water. Also you say the ph change from your tap shock your fish. Are you measuring kh/gh - i doubt it is ph that is impacting the fishes as much as hardness change or perhaps mineral change. regulators won't really help unless you know how your tap water has changed.

As I told you in my other thread, Ive tested pH, GH, and KH of my tap. It used to be stable and I didn't have to do anything to my tapwater. And in an ideal setup I wouldn't have to, but it was fine until it was not.

I did a water change like normal and boom suddenly all my nano fish in the first tank I changed started dropping like flies. Immediately tested both tank water and tap water to troubleshoot what was going on, as is the first step you do when things happen. What used to be s steady pH of 7.8 dropped to 6.4 because that week they did construction to replace all of my street's water system.

I had to be sure it was the tap water and not something in the tank. I sat a glass of water out for 7 days, tested at the beginning and at the end of the 7 days and the pH changed from 6.4 at the start fresh from the tap and rose to 8 by the 7th day. There was nothing added to the tap water in the sample glass. GH and KH were the same. The pH differed.

I looked into solutions. RODI system would have been the ideal solution, but as I have over 350 gallons of water to change with all of my tanks total, I do not have the space to have the water pre-made ready to go for water changes for all of my tanks. And not all of my fish are fish requiring straight RO. I would need to remineralize for most of them. Fish that are NOT from super acidic regions still require minerals in their water or else they can suffer deficiencies.


Not all tanks are a blanket solution where you can just say "hey you don't need that because I don't understand it". They're all different. This is my solution to my problem and since my tap water got messed up years back, this solution has been what has been working for me. I've not had fish lost to water change since I found a way to keep the pH stable.

 

[anewbie]

As I told you in my other thread, Ive tested pH, GH, and KH of my tap. It used to be stable and I didn't have to do anything to my tapwater. And in an ideal setup I wouldn't have to, but it was fine until it was not.

I did a water change like normal and boom suddenly all my nano fish in the first tank I changed started dropping like flies. Immediately tested both tank water and tap water to troubleshoot what was going on, as is the first step you do when things happen. What used to be s steady pH of 7.8 dropped to 6.4 because that week they did construction to replace all of my street's water system.

I had to be sure it was the tap water and not something in the tank. I sat a glass of water out for 7 days, tested at the beginning and at the end of the 7 days and the pH changed from 6.4 at the start fresh from the tap and rose to 8 by the 7th day. There was nothing added to the tap water in the sample glass. GH and KH were the same. The pH differed.

I looked into solutions. RODI system would have been the ideal solution, but as I have over 350 gallons of water to change with all of my tanks total, I do not have the space to have the water pre-made ready to go for water changes for all of my tanks. And not all of my fish are fish requiring straight RO. I would need to remineralize for most of them. Fish that are NOT from super acidic regions still require minerals in their water or else they can suffer deficiencies.


Not all tanks are a blanket solution where you can just say "hey you don't need that because I don't understand it". They're all different. This is my solution to my problem and since my tap water got messed up years back, this solution has been what has been working for me. I've not had fish lost to water change since I found a way to keep the pH stable.

Ok your water company adds a chemical to raise the ph to protect pipes. Anyway - i'm just telling you my experience. When i use pure ro water with softwater fishes i do not remineralize or add any sort of additive or minerals and the plants and fishes do fine including green neon tetra.

 

[GaryE]

@Newbie - there are many ways to keep fish and we all work within the constraints of space and resources. Pure RO or rainwater works for you, and fits your resources. You seem to be missing @CassCats clear explanation of why she doesn't follow that route. You'd be worse with me and my use of dechlorinated moderately soft tap for fish like that.

The techniques and set ups of softwater aquarists can be daunting for new aquarists, but between experienced managers of tank water, I think we get to a zone where we see the differences in approaches and why they exist, and leave it at that. A highly skilled aquarist states she doesn't have the space for an RO set up. That's clear to me even with a quick read of that part of the thread (discussions of water aren't my thing as I work with and adapt to what I have).

Anyway - i'm just telling you my experience.

Got it. We're all exchanging information on our experiences and approaches.Hopefully, we're thinking about where and why they differ, and how they can work differently.

 

[anewbie]

@Newbie - there are many ways to keep fish and we all work within the constraints of space and resources. Pure RO or rainwater works for you, and fits your resources. You seem to be missing @CassCats clear explanation of why she doesn't follow that route. You'd be worse with me and my use of dechlorinated moderately soft tap for fish like that.

The techniques and set ups of softwater aquarists can be daunting for new aquarists, but between experienced managers of tank water, I think we get to a zone where we see the differences in approaches and why they exist, and leave it at that. A highly skilled aquarist states she doesn't have the space for an RO set up. That's clear to me even with a quick read of that part of the thread (discussions of water aren't my thing as I work with and adapt to what I have).

Two things @GaryE; first it is more or less why the fishes died to be begin. OP assumes it was ph shock though in my experience I've never seen it. I've seen cases of osmosis shock has killed fishes but that is mostly due to water parameters changing (I do not consider ph a parameter and I believe strongly - though perhaps incorrectly - that most of the literature was extremely wrong to even mention ph making it a prevalent parameter that has little value). It is possible that extreme ph swing can impact the bacteria but 8 to 6.8 is not so likely to have that impact so I suspect that the OP presumption of why the fishes died is incorrect - she saw the fishes died and she measured a swing in ph and then drew that conclusion but there was almost certainly other factors involved that were perhaps missed - some might even require a detail analysis of the fish or water that no one in their right mind would have done given the time, cost and cumbersom nature.

The op has developed a somewhat complicated and relatively expensive procedure on perhaps a false presumption and that is what i am questioning. Maybe the op is correct but my experience suggest otherwise.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford34 150]

(I do not consider ph a parameter and I believe strongly - though perhaps incorrectly - that most of the literature was extremely wrong to even mention ph making it a prevalent parameter that has little value).

I respectfully disagree. Since pH is a logarithmic scale a pH of 6 is 10x more acidic than a pH of 7. And 6 is 100x more acidic than pH of 8. That's a huge difference. On the other hand a KH of 3 and KH of 6 are pretty similar since 1 degree of KH only adds 17.85 ppm of carbonate per degree. So a KH of 3 has a total of 53.55 ppm carbonate and a KH of 10 has 178.50 ppm of carbonate.
That said do we need to hit exact numbers? No, I don't think so. Just keep it within the tolerable limits and like everything in life, avoid extremes.

 

[CassCats10]

Im trying my luck with Amazon frogbit again. Got an in vitro cup from the lfs and thus far its doing better than past attempts with frogbit lol figured I'd try it in a more acidic tank to see how it did instead.

Need more leaf litter. Autumn is just kicking in here, so shall collect some before snow covers everything

 

[TwoTankAmin29]

Cass-

When I did the altums and used RO/DI water I batched, I used units from here https://store.afwfilters.com/portable-ro-systems/ I used the first two units on the linked page. I would stow the unit between uses. The three lines into/out of the unit are color coded making the whole thing very easy to use.

I started with the 3 stage and then replaced it with the 4 stage. They are small units and very easy to use. They can come with an input connection using garden hose connectors, My utility sink has a faucet that can accept that connector. I use portable unit as I am space constrained. What I did was to save up a bunch of 1 gallon jugs with lids. I only used the RO/DI water in a 55 gal with the Altums and now and then to help simulate the rainy/dry seasons for plecos.

I would batch water about once a month. I had the output going into a 20 gal Rubbermaid garbage can:

From there I pumped it into the 1 gal. jugs and stored these. This worked well for me because the RO/DI unit was in our second building and the Altum tank was in the main house. This made it easy to carry in the water I needed for the Altums. I also had a 2-way continuous monitor on the Altum tank. When it was time to make the changing water I had another garbage can I set up next to the tank and I mixed my tap and RO/Di in that. To get the new water at the params I wanted, I moved the two probes from the meter into the mixing can by the tank. This made it very easy to manage things.

I would also take the portable unit with me when I would sell at weekend fish events because I learned that a lot of hotel water was too hard and/or had a too high of a pH. I could bring the first 20 gallons of RO/DI with me but then I needed to make more during my stay. To let me use the hotel faucet I have all the Python adapters. Python uses garden hose connectors.

 

[CassCats10]

Cass-

When I did the altums and used RO/DI water I batched, I used units from here https://store.afwfilters.com/portable-ro-systems/ I used the first two units on the linked page. I would stow the unit between uses. The three lines into/out of the unit are color coded making the whole thing very easy to use.

I started with the 3 stage and then replaced it with the 4 stage. They are small units and very easy to use. They can come with an input connection using garden hose connectors, My utility sink has a faucet that can accept that connector. I use portable unit as I am space constrained. What I did was to save up a bunch of 1 gallon jugs with lids. I only used the RO/DI water in a 55 gal with the Altums and now and then to help simulate the rainy/dry seasons for plecos.

I would batch water about once a month. I had the output going into a 20 gal Rubbermaid garbage can:
View attachment 387151
From there I pumped it into the 1 gal. jugs and stored these. This worked well for me because the RO/DI unit was in our second building and the Altum tank was in the main house. This made it easy to carry in the water I needed for the Altums. I also had a 2-way continuous monitor on the Altum tank. When it was time to make the changing water I had another garbage can I set up next to the tank and I mixed my tap and RO/Di in that. To get the new water at the params I wanted, I moved the two probes from the meter into the mixing can by the tank. This made it very easy to manage things.

I would also take the portable unit with me when I would sell at weekend fish events because I learned that a lot of hotel water was too hard and/or had a too high of a pH. I could bring the first 20 gallons of RO/DI with me but then I needed to make more during my stay. To let me use the hotel faucet I have all the Python adapters. Python uses garden hose connectors.

Problem is space for the stored water rather than the system itself but when we move we should have space for stored water so itll be much easier to work with a proper system
I can't even keep stuff in the backyard because it's a shared yard and neighbours dump my stuff a lot. Sigh. I've tried farming floating plants outside during the summer just for them to throw them out

Ill keep this post saved in my mind for when that is a reality.