Please ID this catfish
- Thread starter ducatigirl
- Start date
The only reason to lower pH per se is to combat ammonia poisoning, but water changes are better, or to breed some species with pH sensitive eggs. What so-called acid loving fish really want is low hardness, which pH lowering chemicals don't address, which is why they are utter junk and designed merely to seperate you from your money. Sulphuric acid is totally alien to aquatic systems; it is generally a sign of pollution.
It is a Syno of some kind.
It is a Syno of some kind.
His tankmates, - banded laporinus- HUGE deceased), electric yellow-5", 3 silver saums(juvies-except one is bigger and bullying smaller saums), this agro blue thing chipokai(in his own tank now), an unid black fish, 2 algae eaters, plus catfish. they all have bite marks, the elecrtric yellow is recovering in own tank.
That chipokai should never have been in there, bloody mean fish!
Why do all the profiles have a ph suggestion?
How do you adjust hardness? I was losing guppies in the community tank cos my water is apparently too soft.
The ph in the pond was 8.4 yesterday, after I added 5 large rescued goldies few days ago.I did a big wc.
That chipokai should never have been in there, bloody mean fish!
Why do all the profiles have a ph suggestion?
How do you adjust hardness? I was losing guppies in the community tank cos my water is apparently too soft.
The ph in the pond was 8.4 yesterday, after I added 5 large rescued goldies few days ago.I did a big wc.
Different fish do prefer different water condtions, but pH is just one measure of whats going on with your water chemistry.
Distilled water has a pH of 7, but it's not good for fish as it has no hardness or buffering to keep the pH stable. Some peoples tap water may have a pH of 7, and a low hardness. In that case the lime and organic acids in the water are in a nice balance, and they are lucky. Or you may have very hard water, with the lime giving it a high pH, you add sulphuric acid to the mix, and you can balance it out at pH 7 again, but it's certainly not the same water as the other two. Hardness is higher, and Total Dissolved Solids is even higher with the acid added.
Anyway, if you are keeping African lake cichlids, they prefer hard water and a pH up around 8 as thats like their natural enviroment.
Now if you decide you want to breed Discus, you have a problem. You could dose your water and get the pH down to 6.5, but it's still not going to work for Discus. In that case you need a new source of water, like a R/O filter that has low hardness.
As for your guppies dieing, if you have high pH tap water, chances are it's quite hard, and thats what guppies prefer. Need to find another cause of your problems there.
Ian
Because of long running myths that fish are far more pH sensitive than they really are. More charitably, many more people measure pH than hardness, and water of the suggested pH is likely to have suitable hardness, because the two are related albeit indirectly.
Amongst the other myths are "pH swings are bad for your fish" - nonsense; large swings may be seen in planted tanks and natural ponds as CO2 is taken out by plants by the day and replenished at night, and "pH shock" - again, I regularly move fish from a pH 7.4 QT tank to my pH 6.2 peat filtered CO2 injected display tank. No ill effects observed. What harms fish is osmotic shock, where the TDS is very different from one tank to another. The pH tends to be different as well, and the pH is wrongly blamed. In these myths the issue is that pH is a proxy measure for something else, which is TDS.
You can add the salts sold for African Cichlids to raise hardness. Reducing it is far harder (it's like a stew; not enough salt, you can easily remedy by adding more. Add too much and it's a far harder problem). Filtering through peat can reduce it a little, but really the only solution is dilution with RO or distilled water. Resin exchange is not in most cases particularly useful because although it reduces hardness it raises the TDS (total dissolved solids), generally the opposite of what you're trying to achieve.
