The Puffer Forum

Hello. I'm filling my tank with reverses osmosis water. I bought a jar of Seachem's Equilibrium water conditioner to remineralize and buffer the new tank water, and for water changes. The directions on the bottle say to use 1 tablespoon per 20 gallons of water. I would like to know what are the ideal levels of Calcium, Chelated Iron, GH, and KH, for dwarf puffers and live plants, so I can test my water before adding plants.

Why RO?

Unless you have super exotic plants why would you use RO?

The other way to dose is using dry ferts from a hydroponic center. I got mine and mixed them in used water bottles and wrote the dosage on the bottle itself, but I have never used RO (and hope not to).

To get the actual #s you can use EI (estimative indexing):
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/foru ... guide.html

There is also a little program out there that will do the calculations for you based on your pre-dose measurements. I found that to be pretty handy. It is called "chuck's planted aquarium calculator)

Between what I read about ideal plant water, and ideal dwarf puffer water (found in the puffer library), I think this is my aim for ideal water:

GH 4dH (70ppm)
Adjusted with Seachem's Equilibrium product.

KH 4dH (70ppm)
One teaspoon (about 6 grams) of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) (NaHCO3) per 50 liters of water.

PH 6.9
I have a peat carpet under my sand, and I have a lot of driftwood, so my PH will probably be low. The sodium bicarbonate is supposed to raise PH. It's hard to say what the resulting PH will be without adjustment.

Is this about right? I don't know a lot about water chemistry, or stabilizing water, so I don't know if the above formula is complete.

ashes wrote:I don't know a lot about water chemistry, or stabilizing water, so I don't know if the above formula is complete.

That is that is the perfect reason not to play with it when there are fish involved. If it were only plants, sure but for the most part it is unnecessary. AFAIK, you are supposed to add tap water to RO anyway to help balance it you. The water usually isn't completely stripped of everything. RO is the base and you add tap to supliment it until you get the readings you are looking for.

BTW... with EI you have to be consistent with 50% water changes weekly.

Dwarf puffers don't need "ideal" mineral content unless you're trying to breed them. Actually, 99% of fish are that way. My DP lives in water with a pH of 8.2 and a GH of 15-20ish (not sure about the kH around here). She seems pretty happy to me.

I have had very good success with community tanks, and now I'm trying to go further with a species tank for DP's. I have an 80 gallon tank, and establishing the tank with plants indigenous to DP's. I want to create an ideal environment for these animals, except to keep the temperature at 76F to prevent them from spawning. I know they can live in hard alkaline water, but it's not ideal. I plan to keep only plants in the tank for a few months to establish the micro organisms and learn to stabilize good water chemistry, so changes in the water chemistry during this time won't harm any animals.

They don't just live in hard water; they thrive! Don't worry about that. But if you want to go all-out on a biotope, go right ahead.

There are fish which require special water conditions for breeding - certain rainforest fish cannot breed successfully in water with too much calcium &/or magnesium ion (i.e., GH). Most fish do not care.

IMO & IME, it is a fallacy to think that fish do better in their wild water conditions in captivity. In reality, fish do better in captivity is the cleanest and most consistent water conditions we can provide them. Upkeep far, far outweighs water profile other than for those few fish whose egg membranes cannot handle Ca++/Mg++ ions.

Soft, acid water (i.e., low GH and KH) is extremely hard to manage long-tern in captivity. It requires extra processing and costs, and generally require substantially more partials that most tap water in order to maintain stable tank conditions. IME it is worth it only for and during actual spawning of those rainforest fish which cannot tolerate the GH ions.

For planted tanks, per Tom Barr there are only at most a half dozen or so plants which absolutely require soft, acid water, and few of those are commerce in the hobby routinely. Unless you are a specialist in such, to me you are wasting time and money if your water is at all suitable for the the fish that you want to keep, and your fish will most likely do better in your tap water. if you do not have to do special pre-preparation of your water, you will do partials more often and far more easily. Clean water, frequently replaced, is far, far better than "ideal" or "wild-profile during flood season" water which is costly and time and money-consuming to generate so tends to be done less often. Plus, in the wild, water profile fluctuates widely seasonally for most fish - are you planning on matching that? Cleanliness is not just next to godliness, it trumps it almost every time. If you want to keep your fish healthier for multiples of their wild lifespan, minimum or no water modification and maximum partials are the well-proven way to operate. Breeders tend to do very high percentage water changes daily 100 -200% daily are common for breeding fish. Do remember that even that is less than they have they have in the wild during breeding season. How many, if any, hobbyists manage even 10% of those levels?

The healthiest captive fish are kept clean, unstressed, on a variety of foods suitable to them in relatively spacious tanks. It is not complex or esoteric. But most folks in the hobby simply reuse to recognize those simple principles. They prefer moderately dirty tanks, little food variety, inappropriate stocking , and huge variety of quick-fixes and ineffective treatments requiring unwarranted expenditures.

OFF soap box, return to regular programming.

Cleanliness is not just next to godliness, it trumps it almost every time.

My new sig???

RTR wrote:OFF soap box, return to regular programming.

I thought soapbox was your regular programming!

LGP: Ouch!

PP: Don't change your sig line - I count on it being visible regularly. You post more than I do, so it is most visible from you.