Re: water hardness

[mjacobs2@tampabay.rr.com]

Nifty point Don..........we sometimes get so carried away with talkng about the 
extrems of fish keeping that we don't talk about "normal" things. A TDS of 34 
ppm is a great all around hardness for probably 99% of the apisto's of the 
world ....and other softwater fish too..........yes the pH will bounce and 
people are findng out that pH in no where near as important as hardness....but 
a suggestion....if you have a particular fish whose spawns just don't seem to 
want to hatch even if the hardness is OK then the pH might be a factor in that 
fish's make-up............ for the longest time T. candidi (Apistogramma??) was 
that way.....when the wild fish were coming in they would spawn but there was 
no hatching of the eggs until the aquarist lowered the pH (<6.0)along with the 
hardness.........each fish is different!.....the hunt becomes finding the 
conditions that each fish likes...then they will spawn......gus these are 
animals and they WANT to spawn, it's their purpose for existancebut their body 
wil only "turn on" with some certian set of circumstances or conditions....and 
sometimes a fish of the same species requires different conditions depending on 
it's ancestry.....an aggie from Lake Tefe need different things from an aggie 
from the Rio Negro.......that for me has been the fun part of keeping fish for 
the last 7-8-9 years!

You guys shouldn't have pushed my button today......I get rolling on this stuff 
and you can't shut me up.....;-)

Mike

P.S. Hey Don...........have you heard from Kent Sahr lately.......it's like he 
droped off the face of the earth!!!!!?????

> Well, I guess I will put my 2 cents worth in too. Where I keep my Ro water 
> the temperature is only around 72F. but the fish room is 79F. So what I do is 
> add 120F water from my hot water tank until it reaches the desired 
> temperature. I have been doing this for about 10 years now and depending on 
> how new the RO unit is and how much hot tap water is needed, I end up with a 
> TDS reading of about 34 ppm which works well for me. My tap water starts at 
> 175ppm with a 7.5pH. I have a pH meter somewhere but don't use it very much 
> as I don't like trying to change it as it still fluctuates so much anyway. I 
> do end up with a 6.0pH most of the time (when I check). Now I know there are 
> many ideas on how to change water conditions and I figure whatever works for 
> each person is correct.
>        Don
> 






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