If you are trying to breed a species and are not having the desired success you should try changing something. Try daily water changes with cooler water straight from the tap, there are many good water conditioners that lock up metals & such through chelation. I wouldn't worry about birds & turtles, nor your pipes, as municipally supplied water is of better quality than bottled water due to the federal regulations differing between the two.
My source is Lake Michigan, birds, turtles, old pipes, pcb and mercury are just a few of the things in my source water before being purified by the water department. I hose it directly into the tank, with the exception of young fry due to having difficulty controlling temperature at the low flow rate required for fry.
Next would be to get rid of the gravel in the breeding tank. This may well be the source of your finrot and other bacterial problems, substrate holds a lot of debris. For certain species that do require a substrate most breeders go with as thin a layer as possible due to this. Swords and guppys are not one of these species. Clay pots are your friend for plants on a breeding setup, while I don't do plants breeders I know that do use plants mainly use this method. None of my breeding tanks have substrate, or live plants.
There are plenty of tricks for inducing spawning, this article covers some or the more widely used methods. One that I have used, rather than adding anything to the water to increase hardness, is to remove the top, use eggcrate to prevent jumpers, and keep a fan running on the surface to increase evaporation. In a week about half the water has evaporated in a tank with a large surface to volume ratio, slowly increasing the hardness. Adding cooler water & live food simulates the rainy season, often inducing spawning. If you can time this for when a low pressure front rolls through all the better.
To me the requirement for salt in your setup is compensating for another issue. Resolve this issue and your bacterial problems will disappear. While I don't have the wild swords that OM47 mentioned, I do have albinos & neon oranges, which do just fine on plain tap, no salt, hosed directly into the tank.
If none of these seem to work there is a trick for treating your breeding stock with potassium permanganate. While never having had to resort to this I have read up on it, and heard of some great successes breeding directly after treatment. This method removes bacteria through oxidation, these harmful bacteria will often cause some of the problems you described. It is a harsh treatment, and needs to be done with careful preparation, and generally is used as a last resort due to this.
My source is Lake Michigan, birds, turtles, old pipes, pcb and mercury are just a few of the things in my source water before being purified by the water department. I hose it directly into the tank, with the exception of young fry due to having difficulty controlling temperature at the low flow rate required for fry.
Next would be to get rid of the gravel in the breeding tank. This may well be the source of your finrot and other bacterial problems, substrate holds a lot of debris. For certain species that do require a substrate most breeders go with as thin a layer as possible due to this. Swords and guppys are not one of these species. Clay pots are your friend for plants on a breeding setup, while I don't do plants breeders I know that do use plants mainly use this method. None of my breeding tanks have substrate, or live plants.
There are plenty of tricks for inducing spawning, this article covers some or the more widely used methods. One that I have used, rather than adding anything to the water to increase hardness, is to remove the top, use eggcrate to prevent jumpers, and keep a fan running on the surface to increase evaporation. In a week about half the water has evaporated in a tank with a large surface to volume ratio, slowly increasing the hardness. Adding cooler water & live food simulates the rainy season, often inducing spawning. If you can time this for when a low pressure front rolls through all the better.
To me the requirement for salt in your setup is compensating for another issue. Resolve this issue and your bacterial problems will disappear. While I don't have the wild swords that OM47 mentioned, I do have albinos & neon oranges, which do just fine on plain tap, no salt, hosed directly into the tank.
If none of these seem to work there is a trick for treating your breeding stock with potassium permanganate. While never having had to resort to this I have read up on it, and heard of some great successes breeding directly after treatment. This method removes bacteria through oxidation, these harmful bacteria will often cause some of the problems you described. It is a harsh treatment, and needs to be done with careful preparation, and generally is used as a last resort due to this.
