Water parameters

[Oldspartan]

Linda and i "work" pretty hard to match our water parameters at least close to what our research indicates as ideal. So far because our stock are relatively simple beginner fish it has not been that difficult. However in the future we will be tackling what I think will be more demanding fish.

A couple of weeks ago we were perusing Dan's Fish and noticed what follows on every listing we looked at"
"Our pH measures around 8.3 with a KH and GH a bit over 300ppm. That being said, we want to caution folks with different water parameters from thinking that they need to change their water for our fish. We have many customers in the Pacific Northwest, Upstate New York, and other areas that have very soft water. Our fish do just fine in their water without any parameter matching. What is most important is that the water our fish are put in upon arrival have steady parameters, not that your water parameters match ours."

I am now somewhat confused because Dan's seems to be very well regarded.

 

[MaloK]

Soft water fishes will adapt to a wide range of soft water parameters, same for the hard water fishes with hard water.

But forget long term keeping in adverse conditions, that has been dead pan proven.

The only part I agree, is being able to maintain steady parameters once acclimated.

 

[Oldspartan]

BUT -- What about hardwater fish in soft and soft in hard.

I am just thinking the advice is more sales oriented than it is good. I tried to talk to the guy at the not so LFS and (to his credit I guess) he was squeamish about discussing the issue.

 

[gwand]

The consensus I absorbed from the majority view point on this site is that a mismatch of GH and fish species will shorten the life of the fish. How much it will shorten lifespan is anyone’s guess. I assume there are some studies out there that have looked at it for a few species of fish. However, does it generalize to most fish that we would be interested in?

 

[gwand]

The consensus I absorbed from the majority view point on this site is that a mismatch of GH and fish species will shorten the life of the fish. How much it will shorten lifespan is anyone’s guess. I assume there are some studies out there that have looked at it for a few species of fish. However, does it generalize to most fish that we would be interested in?

Addendum. I have heard from several qualified sources that a GH mismatch Will not only shorten the lifespan, but can mute colors of the fish.

 

[MaloK]

BUT -- What about hardwater fish in soft and soft in hard.

Just an intuitive, without any science involved consideration of the problem leads me to think.

Soft water critters in hard water will have a tendency to build up minerals in their body.

Hard water critters in soft water will have a tendency to lose minerals from their body.

How long it takes, be my guess... But that was like 3th grade biology at the time I when trough this.

 

[Oldspartan]

Just an intuitive, without any science involved consideration of the problem leads me to think.

Soft water critters in hard water will have a tendency to build up minerals in their body.

Hard water critters in soft water will have a tendency to lose minerals from their body.

How long it takes, be my guess... But that was like 3th grade biology at the time I when trough this.

This matches what I have read.

 

[MaloK]

To just stretch a bit on the clever "phrasing" of the claim:

"Our pH measures around 8.3 with a KH and GH a bit over 300ppm"

What does that even mean....

A General Hardness of 200 ppm and Alkalinity of 100. Or the opposite.

With a PH over 8 I assume a mid range to semi-high GH with a good load of Carbonates. at least 70 ppm.

They are trying to keep the water as middle ground as possible for a variety of staging fishes...

So theoretically if you stage another chemistry change on top of theirs...

It's been a lot of changes in a few months for fish in movement.

But all that rambling... Test water in the bags, to evaluate the shock the fish will have...

I got rasboras from very soft water that did very well in harder water after.

Once quarantined and cleared out. Water parameters are a joy to play with.

 

[Essjay]

Our pH measures around 8.3 with a KH and GH a bit over 300ppm.

I interpret that to mean the pH is around 8.3 and GH and KH are both slightly over 300 ppm. In other words very hard water.



The late Byron often referred to autopsies on cardinal tetras kept in hard water which showed calcium deposits in their kidneys. The examinations were done on just one soft water species but it is likely that the issue will affect others.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

The first thing to consider, IMO, is that fish are not in need of any single number parameter. They need to be withing a specific range. Moreover, different species can handle wider or narrower ranges and are also abnle to handle davriety pf parameter changes differently.

Much of what we read on forums and pick up on social media is simply wrong. But there os so much information that is becoames colse to impossible to figure out the good from the bad on many cases.

I can tell you for a fact that I have wather another do this and having seen that I have repoeated it. This involves the tank parameters for wild Altum angels. These fish come from water whoth a about 4 or even a tad lower. Their water is also very soft. I made a few hour drive to buy some Altums from a gent who imported them. Hise basement fish room was filled with soft water low pH tanks. He has a day job as well. He explained to me that his wife did a lot of his water changes but that she was not willing to do anything involveing managing water parameters.

As he showed me around the fish room he had a poirtable digital rester for pH , GH and temp. He would drop the probes into a tank and chenck the readings. Some of the tanks tended to have there pH move up between wtaer changes and we hit one tanl where the pH was 1.1 too high. He had a small bottle of muriatic acid and he proceed to add some directly to the tank. As we stood the for the next few minutes talking and watching the fish I saw the pH reading drop by 1.1 in under 5 minutes. The fish never even reacted. He said he does this all the time with no issues.

Fast forward. I now have an Altum tank and RO/DI unit, catappa leaves, alder cones and Rooibos tea I add to the tank regularly, I also have a container of muriatic acid as my tank also tended to have the pH and TDS drift upwards between weekly water changes. So on several occassions I have dropped the pH by 1 full point in a matter of minites with no ill effect. I also regualrly use changing water with TDS 25-40 ppm lower than what is in the tank (I change 20 gals in a 55).

So much for all those posts etc, I have read that changing the pH by more than .1 0r .2 will harm fish. It depends on the species and the direction of the change, This is even more important for TDS/hardness. One area we tend not to think much about is osmotic regulation. Here is a brief piece on that for the curious. OSMOREGULATION

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Some fish can adapt from hard water water. Here is a paper which did the research using zebra danios. They were successful in getting the fish to adapt yo the change. They did all the sort of testing needed to show what exactly changed in the fish to allow it to adapt. However, the most important part of this study, IMO, is how long the process took which was 2 weeks. In the first week the gradually lowered hardness. Then they kept the fish in that lowered hardness for another week.

Craig, P.M., Wood, C.M. and McClelland, G.B., 2007. Gill membrane remodeling with soft-water acclimation in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Physiological genomics, 30(1), pp.53-60.

My feeling from reading the above paper was it was very species specific. But here are the basic details" the Underlining is added by me

Animals.​

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) were purchased from a local pet supply store (PetsMart, Canada) and housed in two 40-liter aquaria in dechlorinated Hamilton tap water, which is considered moderately hard (Na+ 927 ± 16 μM, Ca2+ 946 ± 11 μM, Mg2+ 422 ± 17 μM, Cu2+ 2.1 ± 0.7 μg/l, pH 8.3), maintained at 28°C (hard water). The fish were allowed 1 wk to acclimate to the new tanks before experimentation. Tanks were aerated and filtered with Aqua Clear 150 aquarium filters (Hagen, Montreal, Canada). Fish were fed daily with a commercial tropical fish food (Topfin, Phoenix, AZ) and maintained on a 12-h light, 12-h dark photoperiod regime. All procedures used were approved by the McMaster University Animal Research Ethics Board and conform to the principles of the Canadian Council for Animal Care.

Experimental design.​

Over a period of 7 days, hard water was progressively removed and replaced with ion-poor reverse-osmosis water (∼15–20% daily, over a period of 15 minutes), until ion levels in the water were reduced to 115 ± 3 μM Na+, 51 ± 1 μM Ca2+, 26 ± 1 μM Mg2+, 1.8 ± 0.5 μg/l Cu2+; pH 6.8.

There is a lot of technical information which I, and most of the members here, would not understand, but the plain English stuff is easy to see.

For me the key takeaway from the paper is how long it takes actually to do acclimation. The idea that we can take an hour to do drip acclimation in a bag or bucket is insignificant when the scientific community thinks of real acclimation as taking a week or two. This is one of the reasons why I always plop and drop new fish. I have not acclimated anything in over 20 years with the exception of wild Altum angels. I took 6 months to move them from pH 4.0 and TDS below about 10 ppm to pH 6.0 and TDS ppm in the 50s.

 

[OldFishKeeper]

Some fish can adapt from hard water water. Here is a paper which did the research using zebra danios. They were successful in getting the fish to adapt yo the change. They did all the sort of testing needed to show what exactly changed in the fish to allow it to adapt. However, the most important part of this study, IMO, is how long the process took which was 2 weeks. In the first week the gradually lowered hardness. Then they kept the fish in that lowered hardness for another week.

Craig, P.M., Wood, C.M. and McClelland, G.B., 2007. Gill membrane remodeling with soft-water acclimation in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Physiological genomics, 30(1), pp.53-60.

My feeling from reading the above paper was it was very species specific. But here are the basic details" the Underlining is added by me

Animals.​

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) were purchased from a local pet supply store (PetsMart, Canada) and housed in two 40-liter aquaria in dechlorinated Hamilton tap water, which is considered moderately hard (Na+ 927 ± 16 μM, Ca2+ 946 ± 11 μM, Mg2+ 422 ± 17 μM, Cu2+ 2.1 ± 0.7 μg/l, pH 8.3), maintained at 28°C (hard water). The fish were allowed 1 wk to acclimate to the new tanks before experimentation. Tanks were aerated and filtered with Aqua Clear 150 aquarium filters (Hagen, Montreal, Canada). Fish were fed daily with a commercial tropical fish food (Topfin, Phoenix, AZ) and maintained on a 12-h light, 12-h dark photoperiod regime. All procedures used were approved by the McMaster University Animal Research Ethics Board and conform to the principles of the Canadian Council for Animal Care.

Experimental design.​

Over a period of 7 days, hard water was progressively removed and replaced with ion-poor reverse-osmosis water (∼15–20% daily, over a period of 15 minutes), until ion levels in the water were reduced to 115 ± 3 μM Na+, 51 ± 1 μM Ca2+, 26 ± 1 μM Mg2+, 1.8 ± 0.5 μg/l Cu2+; pH 6.8.

There is a lot of technical information which I, and most of the members here, would not understand, but the plain English stuff is easy to see.

For me the key takeaway from the paper is how long it takes actually to do acclimation. The idea that we can take an hour to do drip acclimation in a bag or bucket is insignificant when the scientific community thinks of real acclimation as taking a week or two. This is one of the reasons why I always plop and drop new fish. I have not acclimated anything in over 20 years with the exception of wild Altum angels. I took 6 months to move them from pH 4.0 and TDS below about 10 ppm to pH 6.0 and TDS ppm in the 50s.

A few years back, I ordered five, wild, Columbian Angels and acclimatized them with the drip method. Columbian Angels were said to be more hardy and more docile, than true Wild Altums. They were raised in a 75 G, well planted tank, with a CO2 controlled 6.5 PH.

They not only survived but, as they matured, turned into the most vicious creatures, attacking each other and disrupting the entire tank.

Fortunately for them, this was at a time when a LFS rehomed fish and I couldn't wait to give them away.

 

[anewbie]

Some soft water fishes will die fairly quickly (24 hours) if put in hard(er) water mostly due to bateria issues some will suffer damage over long period. I know at least one person told they won't buy from dan because he keeps the fishes in the wrong type of water (note that we mostly deal with wc blackwater fishes - what i'm saying is not as relevant to domestic). I had trouble with a shipper who kept b. wavarni in blackwtaer bu tthen tried to ship them in tap water parameters and they couldn't handle the 24 hours shipping period (this was a store that had been business for years but why the freak he was putting them in tap just before shipping)...

Anyway i've seen a lot of wc species of apistogramma that are true blackwater fishes die because the inexperience owner thinks he needs to remineralize his ro water or otherwise keep them in 'hard' water. Oh well time to feed the fishes.

 

[Oldspartan]

Bottom line ... We will keep doing it the way we are doing it. Not perfect but better than a one size fits all I think.

 

[seangee]

For a long time I kept soft water fish (specifically cardinal tetras which I still keep) in very hard water. I thought that they had adapted because they always seemed healthy. However their average lifespan was 18-24 months, and as far as I knew they were just dying of old age.
Since I have been using RO water the average lifespan is around 6 years, and yes my fish are much brighter in appearance.
I certainly don't miss the annual visits to the LFS to replenish my tank