Adding water treatment chemicals slowly to tank water

[bekateen]

Hi All,
So I'm going to stick my neck out again with another tip/idea I learned about recently, and it's so useful to me that I want to share it... but if it's old news to most of you, please be kind. My notion to share the idea stems from a recent thread about water chemistry/quality and strategies to change that (or to leave it alone).

When you need to adjust water quality (e.g., pH, hardness, or whatever) in an aquarium that is already full, using a chemical treatment (like pH up/down, or with what I use, SeaChem's Neutral Regulator and Discus Buffer), you don't want to simply dissolve your chemicals in a small amount of water and then dump them directly into the tank because it can cause a sudden water quality change that can shock/harm the fish. The owner of the LFS in San Francisco taught me this trick:

For this project you'll need a large (about 1 Qt/L or larger) plastic drinking cup (the kind you might get at a sporting event), about 3 inches of normal aquarium tubing, and a small plastic "drip" watering emitter (I used a Rainbird LadyBug EM-L20 emitter; http://www.rainbird.com/ag/products/dri ... itters.htm).

Rainbird LadyBug EM-L20 emitter

ladybug.jpg (7.63 KiB) Viewed 3185 times

First, push one end of the tubing over the outflow tip of the emitter. Next, poke a very small hole in the side of the cup, very near the bottom corner of the cup. Now push the emitter's inlet (which is barbed/pointed to facilitate insertion) into the hole in the cup. If your emitter is inserted correctly, it should fit snugly in the side of the cup; it may not form a perfect seal, but it won't leak significantly. However, if the emitter is very loose, then you'll need to start with a new cup or patch up the first hole on the old cup and start again.

That's it! Now you can dissolve your chemicals in a small volume of water, add them to the cup and then fill the cup up with more water. Position your cup over your aquarium and let the solution drip slowly into the tank. The emitter I have (EM-L20) is rated to flow at 2.0 gal/hour when it's used with pressurized water. However, since the cup is not pressurized, it can take hours for this water to drip into the tank, making any water chemistry changes occur very slowly, which your fish will appreciate (the actual time is determined by the size of the cup/volume of water).

I also use this cup when I bring home a new fish in a plastic bag, before introducing the fish to my aquarium. I put the fish, still in its bag from the store, into a pitcher or other similarly sized vessel. Then I fill my cup with water from my aquarium and position my cup above the level of the pitcher/fish bag and allow the aquarium water to slowly drip into the fish bag. This allows the fish to acclimate in a more meaningful way to my aquarium water than it would experience if I simply floated the bag in the tank for 20-30 min and then dumped the fish into the tank.

Cheers, Eric

[TwoTankAmin]

I am not in agreement with the above. The referenced thread hit it on the head. pH is relatively unimportant, it is coductivity/TDS (C/TDS) that matter. However, in most cases high conductivity/TDS are typically found in higher pH waters and vice verse.

Part of this is due to the fact that higher pH is maintained by a decent level of KH which also contributes to C/TDS.

Next, fish which live in waters which are subject to seasonal changes are better adapted to handling rapid drops in parameters than those in more stable environments. I recently had a tank of H. zebra which I put through a dry and rainy season. In this case I raised my tap water params from pH 7 and TDS of 83 ppm to their ultimate high TDS level of 180 ppm. This took me a couple of months. However, in the first rainy season onset water change I dropped the TDS to to the low 120s range in one go and two days later down to tap level. While they did not spawn, none had any problems with the changes.

I also keep altum angels. I have personally dropped the pH in their tank by as much a 1.1 pH in 5 minutes to no ill effect. I learned this trick when I picked up the fish from the importer. While touring the facility I watched him do this in tank after tank. He explained his wife did the water changes during the day while he was working his other job and when he came home he took care of the pH. I know the levels involved at his facility and in my tank because we both use digital monitors which give continuous readings fro pH, C/TDS and temperature. I have kept altums in water with a pH as low as 4.2. I would also note that I now have those altums living in a pH close to neutral but their TDS is still maintained in the 60s ppm wise.

The other thing I can say is when I do water changes that go into the altum tank, it is premixed and brought to the needed parameters before it is added. The same applied when working with the zebras. because using any chemical to affect parameters will also change the C/TDS, I use ro/di water mixed in to balance out the potential for changes from additives.

If ones parameters are allowed to get out of range in a tank, then one needs to be somewhat careful about how this is addressed. But if one's fish are maintained in the needed parameters by altering one's tap, then one should not be adding buffers or acid etc. directly to a tank, the water going in is what is treated.This is way easier to control and regulate than the system suggested above, imo.

Oh yes, here is my acclimation procedure for new fish, which go into a Q tank before the main tank. I remove the outer bag and rinse off the remaining bag (my water is from a well so I do this under the tap, for water with chlorine/chloramine dry the bag after rinsing or use dechlorinated water). The bag then gets floated in the tank for about 15 minutes. Then it is opened and the fish are poured into a net to get them out of the bag water and the fish are then put into the tank. No drip, no adding tank water to the bag just plop and drop.

The thing is, it doesn't take hours or even days for true acclimation, it takes a few weeks. Read research on this and the studies all indicate fish get acclimated from 2 to 4 weeks in the lab tanks before the experiments even begin. Here is an example "Gill membrane remodeling with soft-water acclimation in zebrafish" http://bio.mcmaster.ca/fcl/grantm/web/P ... 0Craig.pdf It can take one or two weeks before the physiological changes in the fish due to parameter changes are manifested.

[racoll]

The bag then gets floated in the tank for about 15 minutes. Then it is opened and the fish are poured into a net to get them out of the bag water and the fish are then put into the tank. No drip, no adding tank water to the bag just plop and drop.

I don't even usually bother with that. Fish just get netted out of the bag and go straight in the tank immediately. I think that sitting in the bag or the acclimation bucket for hours stresses them more than the change in water does.

This is perhaps not wise in all situations, but has served me fine.

[dw1305]

Hi all,
I agree with "TwoTankAmin's" post. I think one of the problems with discussion of pH is that people extrapolate their (valid) experience of alkaline highly buffered environments (like Lake Tanganyika) to softer water.

In systems with high levels of carbonate buffering small changes in pH reflect large changes in water chemistry, but in systems with little carbonate buffering small changes in water chemistry cause large changes in pH. They are very different, and in very soft water pH will always be unstable.

As well as in the linked thread, there is a more complete discussion of this in: <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 0&p=270646> & <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 3&p=221166>.

Personally I don't use pH buffers etc. and I would recommend to every-one that unless they really understand what they are adding to their tanks, and why they are adding it, they should follow the same approach.

The are exceptions to this. You can easily raise pH (and incidentally conductivity) by adding a weak (base) alkali "a weak base is a chemical that does not fully ionize in an aqueous solution." A base is a proton (H+ ion) acceptor, meaning that it will take a H+ ion from H2O, leaving OH-. Because pH is a measure of the ratio of H+:OH- ions, more O-H ions = higher pH. Because the base is a weak base it has a reserve of non-ionized "buffering".

If you want to raise all of pH, dGH and dKH, "oyster shell chick grit" is a very good (and cheap) option.

Adding things to "water" is really easy, because water is a solvent for a large range of solutes. What we call water is actually a dilute solution of one, or more, salts.Taking things away is much more difficult. We can use a process like distillation or reverse osmosis (RO) to get pure H2O, but as a general rule we can't add things to take things away (we can replace things by processes like "ion exchange", but that is "replace" not "remove").

Other people may disagree but I think that if you want to lower pH, and you can't do this with a weak acid, like the humic acids from leaf litter or peat, then there isn't really any point in resorting to "pH down" etc.

If people read the linked thread I think some of the problem for "jodilynn" are that her tap water (run through a NaCl ion exchange resin) is unsuitable for the majority of fish that people normally keep <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... =5&t=41502>.

I don't even usually bother with that. Fish just get netted out of the bag and go straight in the tank immediately. I think that sitting in the bag or the acclimation bucket for hours stresses them more than the change in water does. This is perhaps not wise in all situations, but has served me fine.

I use the Racoll method of fish acclimation as well, for the same reasons. If the water in your tank is of poorer quality than the water the fish have sat in the bag, then you need to do something about your tank water.

cheers Darrel

[bekateen]

Okay. Well I wasn’t expecting this reaction...

And this is why I’m glad there isn’t a “dislike” button at PlanetCatfish! A bunch of dislikes without explanation would have been meaningless.

To all of you, I appreciate your feedback, and for the most part I agree with what you said. I would suggest that I’m coming at this from a different angle than you are, and I suspect that the specific presentation/word choice of my initial post may have lead you erroneously to some assumptions about what I intended/advocated.

TTA, since you were the first to respond, and since the other comments build from yours, I will start there.

The referenced thread hit it on the head. pH is relatively unimportant, it is coductivity/TDS (C/TDS) that matter.

Yes, I understood that and I agree. In the present thread about using the drip cup I didn’t say that jodilynn should have added water treatment chemicals; I simply said that it was her thread that got me thinking more about this and it gave me the inclination to share this info. My impression from your post is that you believed I was advocating that jodilynn should add chemicals to change her water - I am not.

Next, fish which live in waters which are subject to seasonal changes are better adapted to handling rapid drops in parameters than those in more stable environments. I recently had a tank of H. zebra which I put through a dry and rainy season. In this case I raised my tap water params from pH 7 and TDS of 83 ppm to their ultimate high TDS level of 180 ppm. This took me a couple of months. However, in the first rainy season onset water change I dropped the TDS to to the low 120s range in one go and two days later down to tap level. While they did not spawn, none had any problems with the changes.

I also keep altum angels. I have personally dropped the pH in their tank by as much a 1.1 pH in 5 minutes to no ill effect... I know the levels involved at his facility and in my tank because we both use digital monitors which give continuous readings fro pH, C/TDS and temperature.

Okay, this is all fine. And to be honest, this is where I confront my ignorance or insufficiency as an aquarist: I have a variety of fish mixed together in one tank. And while I have a good knowledge about some of the species, I admit my knowledge is not equally complete for all species. Honestly, I cannot tell you off the top of my head, for each and every individual species I own, which are blackwater vs. which are whitewater, or which handle significant water chemistry changes vs. which don’t (I know for many spp., but not all); therefore I am inclined to err on the conservative side when it comes to how I treat them; I would describe myself as being shy about introducing abrupt changes like you’re describing. Perhaps the slow drip system isn’t needed because the fish “can handle” a sudden change; but if that is the case, then a slow drip won’t harm them either.

Also, I think that it’s wonderful that you have the good fortune to have access to information about the water chemistry conditions of the fish you acquire from the importer. I do not have that information, and I bet most fishkeepers don’t either. Almost every fish I own has been “store-bought” from a chain store or from a LFS. And IME, most stores, even most decent LFS, don’t take the best care of their fishes. For the most part, I don’t trust that the fish I buy are being kept in optimal water conditions.

The other thing I can say is when I do water changes that go into the altum tank, it is premixed and brought to the needed parameters before it is added. The same applied when working with the zebras. because using any chemical to affect parameters will also change the C/TDS, I use ro/di water mixed in to balance out the potential for changes from additives.

If ones parameters are allowed to get out of range in a tank, then one needs to be somewhat careful about how this is addressed. But if one's fish are maintained in the needed parameters by altering one's tap, then one should not be adding buffers or acid etc. directly to a tank, the water going in is what is treated.This is way easier to control and regulate than the system suggested above, imo. (emphasis added by Eric)

I fully agree with you here. When I do routine water changes or when I have to top off a tank because of evaporation, I add any chemicals to a 5 gallon bucket filled with tap water, check the parameters to make sure they are what I want, then add the water from the bucket to the tank. IMO, it is NEVER ideal to add chemicals straight to the tank, especially if you do not have extensive experience with the specific chemicals you are about to use, and you don’t have a thorough awareness of how they will affect the tank.

That said (here is where we may disagree, and this is why I like the cup), sometimes I have to deal with my tank under less-than-ideal conditions. Sometimes I do a water test and the pH is really off, but I’m walking out the door to work (or somewhere else) and I don’t have time to do a water change. As you and others have pointed out in various threads, the first thing we need to know is the quality of the water coming out of the tap if we’re using tap water (it’s what I use - I don’t own or have access to an RO system; I do collect some rainwater, but not enough to meet my tanks’ needs from week to week). In my area, the water is slightly soft and slightly alkaline. I prefer my water to be slightly acidic, but not too acidic. The conditions in my tanks tend to drive pH down lower and lower over the course of a week, and if it starts to happen too quickly and I don’t have time to do a water change, I’m going to use chemicals to address the pH drift. No, it’s not optimal, but I don’t feel comfortable letting the pH drift further unless I know I can do a water change really soon.

Of course, the other thing that wasn’t addressed in my original post (on purpose) was what specific chemicals you add. As I’ve posted elsewhere, all I use are SeaChem’s Neutral Regulator and Discus Buffer (always used together) in order to bring my pH to a mid 6 range. This is not the same as someone who randomly adds drops of pH down or pH up - those products scare me, as do many other products.

Honestly, my preferred approach is one that Darrel has expressed in previous posts: KISS ("Keep it simple, Stupid!") I prefer to use as little additive as possible. But everyone lives in a different place, and water chemistry is not the same from city to city, and even within the city there can be occasional fluctuations. And again, most aquarists don’t have RO systems or big holding vessels to use for conditioning water for big tanks. They may have one or a few tanks and they’re carrying buckets of tapwater from their sink or bathtub (or sometimes even using a garden hose) to fill the tank. Sometimes you have to mess with your water. No, not optimal, but sometimes it happens.

Oh yes, here is my acclimation procedure for new fish... The thing is, it doesn't take hours or even days for true acclimation, it takes a few weeks. Read research on this and the studies all indicate fish get acclimated from 2 to 4 weeks in the lab tanks before the experiments even begin... It can take one or two weeks before the physiological changes in the fish due to parameter changes are manifested.

TTA, I will confess that when I first read this, I took offense at this comment because I felt it insulted my intelligence. But you don’t know me or much about my background and training (except perhaps what I’ve previously posted here at PC), and I realize therefore that you couldn’t have meant anything personal by your comment. I apologize for jumping to such a conclusion.

That said, I am well aware of what the word acclimation means in a true physiological sense. Still, I’m sure you know that most aquarists, and even most LFS owners, don’t use the word in a physiological sense (as annoying as this misusage is). In fact, the word borders on meaningless when LFS owner’s talk to us about “acclimating” our fish in the tank before we release them. The only merit I see in the use of the word is to remind us to avoid any possible overt stress or shock we might cause our fish when we first release them into the tank, in case there are any abrupt changes in water temperature or chemistry. To finish this line of reasoning, I have to include with your comments the comments from racoll and Darrel:

Oh yes, here is my acclimation procedure for new fish, which go into a Q tank before the main tank. I remove the outer bag and rinse off the remaining bag (my water is from a well so I do this under the tap, for water with chlorine/chloramine dry the bag after rinsing or use dechlorinated water). The bag then gets floated in the tank for about 15 minutes. Then it is opened and the fish are poured into a net to get them out of the bag water and the fish are then put into the tank. No drip, no adding tank water to the bag just plop and drop.

I don't even usually bother with that. Fish just get netted out of the bag and go straight in the tank immediately. I think that sitting in the bag or the acclimation bucket for hours stresses them more than the change in water does. This is perhaps not wise in all situations, but has served me fine.

I use the Racoll method of fish acclimation as well, for the same reasons. If the water in your tank is of poorer quality than the water the fish have sat in the bag, then you need to do something about your tank water

Again, I appreciate what you’re saying here, and this is one more instance where familiarity breeds confidence to be bold. When I am familiar enough with the fish I am acquiring, AND I am familiar enough with the water quality from the source of the fish (LFS/importer/etc.), AND if I am confident that the level of stress my fish might be experiencing is acceptable, then in that case I would do basically the same thing as racoll and Darrel. Only once have I ever bought fish that were double-bagged, so I usually don’t have to fret that step, but net and drop works for me in these cases. But as I said above, for most of the fish I buy, I don’t have any confidence in the quality of the LFS water that the fish are coming from. And even if it’s okay for the fish in the store, factors like pH might be off by more than one full point when they get home. I have never felt comfortable exposing a fish to pH changes greater than 1.0, so I use the drip method just in case (I haven’t ever tested the pH of the LFS water, so this is only precautionary, since I know my water can drift down towards 6, and the LFS usually say their pH is above 7).

To summarize my feelings about all of this information, and about the utility of the drip cup, I’d put it this way: As was expressed by others, I don’t promote or like to dump chemicals directly into a mature tank as part of routine water maintenance. However, if and when I do make changes to the water chemistry, I don’t feel comfortable or confident enough in my fish experience to create sudden (few minutes) water chemistry changes (e.g., TTA’s example of his Altums and his dry season/rainy season - I’ve never yet tried to recreate these conditions to any significant degree other than to do a water change with water at a cooler temperature). I feel safer letting the chemicals drip in over a period of hours. If other people find themselves in the same position, I would advocate the use of the cup. If nobody else has these concerns, then please disregard the idea.

Thank you all for your feedback. If you have more comments, I look forward to reading them. I have learned a lot from people at this site, and especially from you TTA on various subjects, and I don’t want to insinuate that I am disinterested in your knowledge or opinions. (BTW, by singling out TTA, I didn't mean to "dis" on either racoll or Darrel - honestly, the three of you have provided me more scholarly resources and info than probably anyone else on this site; in that sense, it's nice that I get the feedback from the three of you).

Cheers, Eric

[Mol_PMB]

An interesting thread

I have very soft water, KH 0.6 and TDS 40 out of the tap. I keep mostly South American fish. I agree that pH is less important than TDS and in practice my pH usually varies between 6.8 (tap) and 5.5 (blackwater tank with peat-filtered water). TDS in my tanks is very rarely more than 100 (even when adding plant ferts) and the blackwater tanks are stable around 50.

I buy fish from a variety of shops locally but in most cases the TDS of the shop water is close to 1000, sometimes 2000. pH can vary a lot too.

In such cases I believe that there is a very real risk of 'TDS shock' if no acclimatisation process is used.

I empty the fish and bag water into a bucket, and use an airline to siphon water out of the tank into the bucket. When the bucket is nearly full I test the TDS and if it's close to tank values I net the fish out into the tank. If it's still a way off then I use a jug to part-empty the bucket and continue.

I don't think the fish get overly stressed spending an hour in a dark bucket with a continuous supply of fresh water. Surely less than being taken out of TDS2000 and put in TDS50?


That's just my ha'porth (or 'two cents' as you might say over the pond).



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bekateen]

I empty the fish and bag water into a bucket, and use an airline to siphon water out of the tank into the bucket. When the bucket is nearly full I test the TDS and if it's close to tank values I net the fish out into the tank. If it's still a way off then I use a jug to part-empty the bucket and continue.

Yes, I used to do this too, before I started using the cup method. The primary reason I switched to the cup for new fish was that there was one occasion when we had purchased a fish, brought it home, put it into a bucket and started the drip directly from the tank. Alas, something came up during this process and we were distracted away from the fish for quite some time; when we returned, the water had spilled over the rim of the bucket onto the floor (it wasn't a big bucket). Although the cup in my example may be too small for your needs, the advantage of the cup is that its total volume is fixed. Thus, as long as you know that your receiving container is sufficiently large to hold the combined volume of the fish's original water (from LFS) and the water you're adding, then even if you forget about the fish for a few minutes, the slow drip won't overfill your bucket.

Cheers, Eric

[racoll]

TDS in my tanks is very rarely more than 100 ... the TDS of the shop water is close to 1000, sometimes 2000.

Yeah, this is the kind of situation where I would be a bit more careful.

[TwoTankAmin]

I have a problem again here. 1000-2000 TDS vs 100 TDS. The difference there is so great that either the store has the fish in water that is harming them or else you do. I am not aware of fish kept in the hobby which can do well in both these levels. I am not even sure it is possible using any methods at all to have the same fish be alive in both 2,000 TDS and 100 TDS. So I wonder if the above numbers reported are incorrect.

I will say this again, doing a drip to change parameters does nothing to protect fish against the dangers any significant difference would make unless the change is done gradually over many days. I will link you all to another paper which takes this right down the specific mineral content etc. It is a pretty good read on conductivity/tds and additives. I would like to quote one small part of it:

When I was with Wardley/Hartz we analyzed competitor’s products as we were looking for a product to compete with other conditioners. We tested them by analyzing blood work on fish after using specific products we saw that after 72 hours the Cortisol (Cortisol is an indicator of stress it is found in the blood it is released as a response to stress) levels started to increase rapidly.

from http://www.tbas1.com/Exchange/The%20New ... d%2011.pdf
Scroll down to the article: Water Chemistry: Osmoregulation, Ionic Imbalance & pH by Joe Gargas

Again we can see that the effects which drip acclimation is supposed to prevent do not even show up physiologically for a few days.

Darrel- if you really want to try to keep your pH from dropping add a small bag of crushed coral (calcium carbonates) to your filter. I would start with about 1/2 cup for every 50 gals of water. Over time this will gradually dissolve and release both calcium and carbonates into the water. By using such a small amount this should have little or no effect on your GH but it should raise your KH by a couple of dgs. This will help prevent the drop in pH without raising the TDS very much. It takes a bit of time before the effect of adding the coral can be seen. As the water becomes more acid the coral dissolves faster, so it is sort of self regulating in this respect. It also needs to be replenished every few months or so.

The other thing in all this is the mentioned use of the two SeaChem products- Discus Buffer and Neutral Regulator. The Seachem page gives dosing directions based on these products being used with RO or DI water. If one uses these in tap water, then one needs to adjust these dosages for the amount of those substances in one's tap by trial and error which is not my idea of how to keep a fairly stable environment in a tank. Have a read here http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/DiscusBuffer.html

Neutral Regulator and Discus Buffer can be used in combination to achieve a desired pH when performing water changes or adding top off water. The ratio chart on the back of the label is designed for r/o water where there is generally no buffering capacity. Since you are using tap water, a little testing will be needed to establish the exact ratios to bring you pH down to 6.8 . Example: in r/o water you would use 1 part Discus Buffer to 1 part Neutral Regulator for a pH of 6.8 but in tapwater, since there is already a buffering capacity present, you may need to use 2 parts Discus Buffer to 1 part Neutral Regulator to achieve a pH of 6.8.

This works fine until your tap parameters change. I have well water. When i got into the hobby I tested heck out of it. I knew my pH, GH and KH. My hardness was 6 dg and my KH was 5 dg and my pH was 7.4. Or I thought I did. One day about 7 or 8 years into the hobby a friend came over to pick up some fish and several 5 gal. buckets of my tap water. She also brought her TDS meter. I was shocked to see what I believed to be a TDS in the range of 107 - 124 ppm was testing under 80 ppm. When I tested the pH it had dropped to an almost perfectly neutral 7.0.

The population growth in the area changed things with and increased demand on the aquifer which reduced the time the rain water entering it had to become mineralized before it was drawn out. When you have a municipal water supply, parameter changes can happen without warning due to treatments as long as they are presumed not to have an effect on humans. Very few water systems issue warnings relative to fish etc. only relative to people.

In the end. most fish can do well in a parameter range, there is never one single number that must be hid on the head or else. How wide the ranges may be will differ from species to species. The one thing that is certain is that any fish has evolved to live in certain parameters. This means it is always best for us to try keep those fish within those parameter ranges. Anything else is not fair to the fish.

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Eric there is no offence intended.

After a bit of thought I can see more clearly where you are coming from. I think there are differences between the UK and USA, even though we tend to complain about our tap water in the UK, it is actually of fairly high quality compared with what a lot of people have to put up with. Our supply is a lot less chlorinated than yours, and my suspicion would be that relatively few UK LFS regularly add "therapeutic" salt to their tank water. I'd recommend every one reads the Joe Gargas article that "TwoTankAmin" linked. I've referenced it (in the last post) in this thread <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... hp?t=36860>.

Another issue that I hadn't really considered was that I don't buy many fish, and if I do buy fish from a store, it will be from some-one I know and who is a "fish-keeper with a shop", rather than a "shop-keeper with fish". I realize not every-one is in this happy situation.

I'm sticking with the buffer answer, "Seachem Discus Buffer" is a phosphate buffer, you can mix Na2HPO4 and NaHPO4 <http://cshprotocols.cshlp.org/content/2 ... _only=true> to give you a range of stable pH values, but some-one is going to have to try very hard to persuade me that your water with added buffer is better for your fish than it was before you added the buffer.

Darrel- if you really want to try to keep your pH from dropping add a small bag of crushed coral (calcium carbonates) to your filter. I would start with about 1/2 cup for every 50 gals of water. Over time this will gradually dissolve and release both calcium and carbonates into the water. By using such a small amount this should have little or no effect on your GH but it should raise your KH by a couple of dgs. This will help prevent the drop in pH without raising the TDS very much. It takes a bit of time before the effect of adding the coral can be seen. As the water becomes more acid the coral dissolves faster, so it is sort of self regulating in this respect. It also needs to be replenished every few months or so..

Yes, oyster shell grit or crushed coral would work, they are both the biogenic aragonite form of calcium carbonate, so more soluble than calcite. I started advising people to use "oyster shell grit" because it works in the way you describe, it is the sustainable by product, readily available and really cheap to buy. There is some background in this post and linked threads <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showth ... shell+grit>

Personally I'm really lucky in that we have a tap supply derived from a deep limestone aquifer, and it is pretty well devoid of ions other than being fully saturated with Ca++ and HCO3-(about 18dKH), so I can use that as my source of buffering. I very rarely measure pH or dKH, but I occasionally measure conductivity.

cheers Darrel

[Mol_PMB]

I have a problem again here. 1000-2000 TDS vs 100 TDS. The difference there is so great that either the store has the fish in water that is harming them or else you do. I am not aware of fish kept in the hobby which can do well in both these levels. I am not even sure it is possible using any methods at all to have the same fish be alive in both 2,000 TDS and 100 TDS. So I wonder if the above numbers reported are incorrect.

Out of interest, I did a full set of tests on the water from my favourite fish shop, after a recent purchase. This is a very highly-respected specialist shop to the north west of Manchester. Their fish appear healthy. I admit my testing methods are limited to hobby equipment, but I believe them to be correct to better than an order of magnitude. I used API liquid tests for most of these. KH was a Salifert liquid test. TDS and conductivity were electronic meters.

Shop water after 2 hours transportation with one medium-sized fish per bag:
TDS 2150
Cond 4200 us/cm
Temp 22C
pH 6.6
NH3 0.25
NO2 0
NO3 160+ (off-scale)
PO4 10+ (top of scale)
KH 0.6
GH 20 (but I think this may be influenced by high nitrates?)

During the drip acclimatisation, I monitored the TDS and it dropped in accordance with my expectations as I diluted the shop water with my tank water. This (to my mind) rules out gross non-linearities in my instrumentation.

My tanks have similar values of pH and KH. However, I typically have a TDS in the range 50-80. Tapwater TDS is 40. I keep Amazonian fish, mostly from blackwater habitats. Several of my species are breeding including Farlowella vittata, Dicrossus filamentosus, Cory melini, Cory 'gold laser', and Ancistrus sp. I hope my water is not harming my fish but if you think I'm doing something wrong, please let me know so that I can improve my husbandry.

Regards,
Paul

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Out of interest, I did a full set of tests on the water from my favourite fish shop, after a recent purchase. This is a very highly-respected specialist shop to the north west of Manchester. Their fish appear healthy. I admit my testing methods are limited to hobby equipment, but I believe them to be correct to better than an order of magnitude. I used API liquid tests for most of these. KH was a Salifert liquid test. TDS and conductivity were electronic meters.

Shop water after 2 hours transportation with one medium-sized fish per bag:
TDS 2150
Cond 4200 us/cm

The conductivity values will be right, the other values aren't necessarily accurate you to interference from other ions.

I think that the answer is that, assuming the shop is the one in Wigan?, the proprietor of the shop advocates adding NaCl to the tank water. They are a member of this forum, and there is more in this thread <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... hp?t=35797>.

cheers Darrel

[Mol_PMB]

Thanks - that's an interesting read. Other sources have led me to believe that salt is generally bad for catfish, especially blackwater species. But there's a lot of misinformation out there.

I buy fish from several retailers (mostly the one in Wigan), the only times I ever had a TDS reading less than 400 were from the now-closed Rare Aquatics which was typically 50-80 like my tanks. Most shops round here are 1000+ despite very soft water.


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[dw1305]

Hi all,

Thanks - that's an interesting read. Other sources have led me to believe that salt is generally bad for catfish, especially blackwater species.

Yes, that would be pretty much my view. Against that the shop in Wigan imports, and then keeps alive, fish that I'm pretty sure I'd struggle with.

cheers Darrel