Water Chemicals Important?

For 40 years of breeding fish (35 species) and not being concerned with water chemicals and the likes, you new generation aquarists have convinced me that "water chemicals" must be considered in ichtiology...

So, only because it was a bargain buy at R1 on “Bidorbuy" I got myself a pH test kit.

I was surprised to find all of my tanks at a constant of pH 7.1 and only one tank (drip-off water from the aircon with driftwood floating in the water at pH 6.8.... Is water make-up all that important???....

(BTW... from the same source, I've now also ordered a kit to test the rest of my water qualities)... I (actually) do not care what the results are... If I wanna breed something... I just put up a tank and breed 'em.

 

Oh how i wish i had that ability .... I struggle my ass of at the best of times

 

This would only really be important when you are trying to breed something difficult like wild discus, altums and so on, they require very specific water conditions before they will even consider breeding, will also influence hatch rate and the growing out of these more sensitive fish. So when you want to breed some of these species it gets complicated quickly.

 

I have started my tank one month ago, I used borehole water and had a problem with first , amoniak (overfeeding) and had to do a 60% water change. Then I found my Nitrate went above 50ppm...anther big water change, since then I got a spoon(wife's idea) to measure food. My water is now in for 2 weeks, ph at 7.1 and Nitrate < 25ppm (orange)