Water changes, done the wrong way

[WhistlingBadger44 26]

I test pretty regularly when I first set up a tank. After a year or so, I usually don't see the need anymore unless something is going wrong.

 

[Back in the fold4 1]

Me too . Very fortunate to live where the water is very good . I manipulate it with R/O for some fish but I haven’t mastered the trick of changing pH . My water stays at its historic 7.8 and always reverts to that no matter what I do . That’s why tetra’s are difficult fish for me .
@WhistlingBadger You cracked me up describing yourself as The King of Making Easy Things Complicated . I totally get that !

 

[bgarthe48 65]

Interesting…..
My mixing of well water and RO still has the 7.8 pH as well. But…..the key for me and my 8 Tetra tanks is getting the mixture ratio so that the GH and KH are between 2-5. Thus, the pH doesn’t seem to be a detrimental factor for me and I don’t even try to mess with it. Imho, the GH is the key……it’s certainly what I focus on.

 

[WhistlingBadger44 26]

I agree (tentatively--I haven't done the science; this is just my intuition) that hardness, especially GH, is much more important than pH. But I could be wrong. I suspect that with true blackwater fish, pH matters a lot. I don't like keeping fish that don't match my tap water. It's too much work and there are too many ways to mess it up.

But most fish seem to be at least somewhat adaptable, at least for short periods of time. Hard-water Australian and Burmese fish have to deal with huge influxes of soft water during the rainy seasons, but these are temporary. I'm sure some of those oxbow-dwelling tetras have to endure hard(er) water during the dry seasons. They survive.

 

[GaryE8 6]

I go by the egg test. I received Apistogramma njisseni a few times, directly from the wild, from a pH in the low 5 range. I could easily breed them at a pH of 6.8, IF the hardness was low. With a higher hardness (above 80ppm), forget it. Nothing happened. At a GH of 40 ppm, they wasted no time even with a pH way above the natural range.

This repeated itself with less extreme examples, like some of the very softwater African Pelvicachromis and Nanochromis, and a number of softwater Apistogramma and other small South Americans.

Then I noticed it happening with many Aphyosemion killifish. As I learned to breed tetras - it was the same story. The pH, as long as it was not much above 7, didn't seem to matter. But water hardness was central.

None of this would matter to the Father Fish system. It doesn't even look at such challenges as interesting.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford47 162]

None of this would matter to the Father Fish system. It doesn't even look at such challenges as interesting

It doesn't matter because according to FF the water will adapt to the fishes needs.

Who needs a laugh?

Here ya go... "Water is alive and it modifies itself to meet the needs of it's inhabitants" I guess that means if my tap water is pH 8.2 and GH of 16 out of the tap, when I put discus in the tank the water magically becomes 5.5 pH and 2 GH. Now guess which YouTube fraud spewed this nonsense.

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