The Puffer Forum

I will soon be setting up a tank for a couple F8's. I have hard water and straight from the tap my pH measures 8.2. I know pH can fluctuate in a tank so should I still use Aragonite (sp?) as my substrate? I currently have an API master test kit. It does not measure kH, so do I need to purchase this test? What should my kH reading be at? Lastly, I haven't called yet, but I believe that where I am getting my F8 from keeps them in FW. Would it be okay to cycle my tank as FW and other a course of a few weeks raise the sg in the tank with the fish? I hope to be able to quickly cycle my tank with some old filter media and substate from an established tank...I don't want to kill my bacteria by having too high of salt content at first this is why I ask if it's okay to cycle as FW then slowly raise the SG.

Yes, you can cycle your tank as FW and then slowly raise the salinity by less than or equal to .002sg per week.

It's best to cycle the tank using the fishless method described in the Library article. Puffers, especially, are too sensitive for the cycling process, and you can seriously compromise their health by putting them in a not-yet-fully-cycled tank.

Other folks will be able to answer your kH and substrate questions better than me. In the meantime, if you haven't already, read through the F8 profile in the PufferPedia.

Thanks! I've read it...I always do alot of research on everything I do. I always do fishless cycling. I just hope I can speed it up with some "gunk" from my other tanks...lol!!! I hate to wait but I know just how important it is

Anybody???

If you already have healthy FW tanks then you can take some media and/or media gunk from them, add it to the new tank, and add fish at the same time. Watch the water parameters to make sure that they stay appropriate. From there you can start adding salt, without raising the SG by more than 0.002 per week.

Thanks! Any advice on the Aragonite and kH? That's what I'm really concerned about since I have never had a BW tank.

Also what is a good brand of Aragonite to use...one that rinses and settles easily? What "size" should I get? Really fine or larger pieces?

Srkoe wrote:I know pH can fluctuate in a tank so should I still use Aragonite (sp?) as my substrate? I currently have an API master test kit. It does not measure kH, so do I need to purchase this test? What should my kH reading be at?

There's an article in the Library about Fishless Cycling that might answer your kH questions... Here's an excerpt from the article library/water-filtration/fishlessconsiderations/.

Fishless Considerations article wrote:Low-alkalinity or low-KH water: We all knew that nitrification uses up KH, alkalinity, a.k.a. carbonate hardness. None of the early testers had low KH water, so we did not see the results of extended fishless cycling on such water. Fishless aims to provide sufficient colony sizes of both needed bacterial forms to sustain a fully stocked tank of mature fish, plus a margin of safety. Folks trying the technique at our recommendation, who had very soft and somewhat acid water, started reporting what were effectively pH crashes. Very low pH is hard on our nitrification bacteria. We learned, very publicly, that a KH test was required along with ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate tests.

Test the KH of the water that is used for your tank. If the KH is less than 3-4 degrees, or about 50+-70 ppm (1), you may need to supplement the alkalinity or carbonate/bicarbonate with addition of sodium bicarbonate, baking soda (2). Tropica suggests that one teaspoon (about 6 grams) of sodium bicarbonate per 50 gallons of water will increase KH by about 1 degree and will not increase GH. Do note that such KH modifications should never be done in a tank with fish. The chance of osmotic shock is too great. For occupied tanks, adjust smaller amounts of water outside the tank, such as part of the replacement water for a partial water change, and add that premixed water to the tank slowly when livestock are present. For fishless cycling it is not as significant, but try to avoid overdosing.

Srkoe wrote:Also what is a good brand of Aragonite to use...one that rinses and settles easily? What "size" should I get? Really fine or larger pieces?

I prefer fine Aragonite sand by CaribSea. In my experience, the fine-grained is better than the large-grained. Too much detrius falls through large substrate; the "stuff" sits on top of the fine-grained substrate in a way that makes it easier to vacuum during cleaning.

I bought "dead" sand, not "live"... as PP says, "There's nothing live about sand in a bag." I rinsed the sand in a bucket for a good hour -- rinse, then drain; rinse, then drain -- and it didn't cloud my tank for more than 30min when I added it to my tank.

I was looking at getting the CaribSea sand. It's a little pricey but if it's worth it I'm willing the spend the extra $$$. All my tanks have sand bottoms except my snail tank which is gravel and it sucks!!! I'm about to just make it bare bottom for ease of cleaning. Just worried that I'm gonna throw away a bunch of baby snails when I do so. Anyways, thanks for the info...I really appreciate it! Now to find a tank...lol! If I can't find one on Craigslist that I like by Friday looks like I'll be buying a new setup from Petsmart.

I've been using CaribSea's aragonite for nearly a decade now. Never used anything else, and never will.

I never used anything but Caribsea aragonite substrates. The do have a selection of varying color and particle sizes. Generally fins is preferable (more surface area per pound, so better solubility) and it need not be very deep - F-8s do not dig in. Aragonite is cheap insurance toward keeping the KH higher than it would be in such low specific gravity water. For longest life, higher and more stable KH is significant.

Thanks for all the replies guys. I really appreciate it! CaribSea it is! So do I need to buy the kH test? And what reading do I want. Or is my API master kit enough?

You need to know the KH of any tank you operate.

KH is very important to the stability of the water conditions. The absolute one-of reading, the exact number read by the test kit today, is not terribly important. What matters is the stability of that number over time, week to week to months. Gradual declines in the KH over time are the best indication of a loss of reserve in your water - which is another way of saying a slow build-up of waste. You need to know what the KH of the source water is (some supplies fluctuate with the seasons, especially surface sources such as lakes and rivers), and the KH of the freshly mixed but fully dissolve BW after the marine mix is aged for addition to the tank. Then routine monitoring will tell you how well you are maintaining the water quality. you will not be able to maintain the levels of freshly mixed BW in the aquarium, but the difference between the freshly mixed and the operating tank with fish should be stable over long periods of time, dropping slightly between partials, and being restored with the next partial. If that baseline decreases over weeks to months, you need to modify your tank operation to ensure that it stays stable within a relatively unchanging weekly oscillation from immediately post-partial to immediate prior to the next partial.

KH measures the carbonate/bicarbonate ion levels in the water. Bacteria employ and use up bicarbonate in oxidizing nitrogen-containing wastes both in bacterial biofilters and in live rock. So normal and continuous tank processes deplete KH (among other things) constantly. Water changes do not just remove wastes, they are equally important for replenishing the mineral profile or the aquarium water. That mineral profile is what gives the water stability. Just as we check for unoxidized nitrogen metabolites (ammonia and/or nitrite) due to their toxicity to fish, and we check for oxidized nitrogen concentration s (nitrate) as a measure of pollution of the water, w also need to test KH for the levels of carbonate/bicarbonate to check that our partials are restoring the original levels of carbonate/bicarbonate in the water. So partials alleviate build-up of unwanted things in the water, and also restore the levels of original minerals needed to operate the tank indefinitely. We use KH testing the same way we use nitrate testing - it compares our water right now to what it should be by comparing those things to what they have been historically. Historical comparisons show us how we meed to change our upkeep as the tank and fish mature, and hopefully prove to us that we are compensating for the maturity of the system.

Without such testing and records, we are groping in the dark. With a very few calendar notations we enable ourselves to operate our tank indefinitely and keep the inhabitants healthy. Initially we want the KH of low-level BW to be at minimum moderately "hard" to hard, the latter reading being better because it gives us a wider margin of safety. But the absolute reading is in and of itself trivial. What matter is that we can maintain whatever level we have over a time span of years.

HTH

I like my Salifert test kit for alkalinity. I also use Lamotte.