# Ouch



## mr. luke (20 Jun 2010)

Just figured out why i  dont do as well as id like to  with certain fish at my girlfriends house.
Tested the gh, and the scale doesnt go high enough..
It goes straight to 500mg/l as soon as I do it on 2 different tests.
Would also explaine why i cant keep certain plants alive   
Gonna start mixing with ro water I think.
We are metered so i dont think an ro unit is the way to go.
Good job im not dosing ei, else id be changing abot 200l of water a week.
With my current regime, i change about 30l on 1 tank, 5 on another and 10 on the other a week. The other contains shell dwellers, so im alright there.
Im into dwarf barbs at the minute, and they suffer a bit, so i need to start this now.
Water changes arre gonna get expensive from now on


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## GHNelson (20 Jun 2010)

Hi
I wouldn't bother with RO unless your going to breed some species of fish that require lower Ph, Gh, Kh.
Why do your barbs suffer? I have similar water to you, most plants do very well with a few exceptions.
I have even got these to grow in another set-up with some more lighting and adding more ferts/trace dosing.
Also ditch the tester.If you loss fish it must be another reason why.
What plants dont do well? 
hoggie


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## mr. luke (21 Jun 2010)

The are f1 ''lipstick barbs'', i think thats why they dont do so well.
Amazon swords are the ones i cant grow for some reason, but my girlfriend is a big fan/collector but about half the species look terrible in the tank, the others look acceptable.
I also collect shrimps, so this would open up my selection hugely.


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## GHNelson (24 Jun 2010)

Hi
Have a look at ghostsworld post on Amazon sword.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10146&p=113460&hilit=+ferro#p113460
Swords are hungry root feeders also.What substrate do you have?
Are you dosing fertilizers into the water column? 
Regards
hoggie


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## mr. luke (24 Jun 2010)

No dosing, peat substrate capped with sand.
Im going to start dosing the tank adn see how it goes.


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## ceg4048 (25 Jun 2010)

mr. luke said:
			
		

> Just figured out why i  dont do as well as id like to  with certain fish at my girlfriends house.
> Tested the gh, and the scale doesnt go high enough..
> It goes straight to 500mg/l as soon as I do it on 2 different tests.
> Would also explaine why i cant keep certain plants alive


This cannot explain why you can't keep certain plants.


			
				mr. luke said:
			
		

> No dosing, peat substrate capped with sand.
> Im going to start dosing the tank adn see how it goes.


Yes, OK, this explains why you cannot grow certain plants.


			
				mr. luke said:
			
		

> Gonna start mixing with ro water I think.
> We are metered so i dont think an ro unit is the way to go.


I don't think this will have any affect on your ability to grow certain plants, or to keep certain fish either..


			
				mr. luke said:
			
		

> Good job im not dosing ei, else id be changing abot 200l of water a week.


How can this be a good job if you cannot grow certain plants?


			
				mr. luke said:
			
		

> With my current regime, i change about 30l on 1 tank, 5 on another and 10 on the other a week.


 This might go a long way in explaining the troubles. Neither fish nor plants do well with such anaemic water changes. RO will not change this because RO water gets just as polluted as tap water. 


			
				mr. luke said:
			
		

> Water changes arre gonna get expensive from now on


And unnecessarily so quite frankly.

Cheers,


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## arty (25 Jun 2010)

Make a ro water and remineralize, You pay only once around 60 pounds for life if use with great care, then change cartridges is cheap - practicaly in same total cost as water conditioner. I will do same. I think in many TAp waters are all periodical chemical table .
I fight 2 months with silicates from my tap - brown algea, diatoma and i have 1-1.5w only per galon, will now upgrade lightning system that only way accelerate plant growth and slow down automaticaly brown algea, currently at middle my tank where light is good algea less. And next step i will scrub some cash for RO unit.
And check Yours water on Magnesium,  my tap is a lot of calcium carbonate but Mg close to 1-2 ppm only, i add every week together with water changes MgSo4. My tap all hardnes from calcium and i don't know from which more elements , but Mg - 0. If You have United Utilities water supply here are link, You can look water parameters with postcode:

http://www.unitedutilities.com/waterquality.htm


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## ceg4048 (25 Jun 2010)

There is no correlation between silicates in the water column and diatomic algae. Diatomic algae occurs during tank startup due to too much light. Using RO water can never prevent diatoms.

Cheers,


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## ghostsword (25 Jun 2010)

Hi, I was having issues with my amazon swords, and after some reading on the forums I just added much more iron into the tank, provided much more nutrients to the plants and they rewarded me with amazing growth and beauty.

I am not sure that the plants care much about the water GH or PH, however if you got no nutrients, no CO2 and inadequate light (too much or too little), then they will not grow.

I also found that the plants take a while to adapt to changing circunstances. So if you add too much CO2 today and not enough tomorrow, or 5 hours of light today, and 10 hours tomorrow, you will encounter problems. 

My plants went...

From this:











To this:
I got flowers




I got plantlets on stems at almost 60cm long




See them at the back


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## mr. luke (3 Jul 2010)

ceg4048 said:
			
		

> mr. luke said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Im finding it more and more difficult to apreciate your tone in replies.

Bobitis doesnt like harder water, to name just one.
My fishes health and colour have improved since i have started with the ro addition.
As stated, i have f1 barbs which are from softwater in the wild, so it is of benefit regardless of what you say.
I also stated how much water i change on my tanks, but i didnt state my tank volumes so you are making assumtions here without backup. 30l wc change could be on a 60l tank for all you know.
Its a good job im not dosing EI as i woul be changing more water weekly as part of the EI method.


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## JamesC (3 Jul 2010)

mr. luke said:
			
		

> Bobitis doesnt like harder water, to name just one.


I can name a couple more that I have in my tank that uses RO water. Utricularia graminifolia and rotala macrandra. In hard tap water they just die.



			
				mr. luke said:
			
		

> My fishes health and colour have improved since i have started with the ro addition.


Without a doubt this is the case. I only have cardinals but compared to when they are in hard water their colours are much more vivid. I would also say that their life span is also increased but this is hard to prove but from personal experience I find that the ones that are in soft water have lived a lot longer than when they have been in hard tap water.

James


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## ceg4048 (3 Jul 2010)

There is scant data to show that high GH has a negative effect on plant growth. Now, certainly, you may actually be correct. A GH of 30 may in fact be the upper limit and may be detrimental, but the path in which it was decided does not seem reasonable. I've grown Bolbitis in GH of about 23 or so and I didn't have any trouble with it. The fish were also fine. Again, this is not to say that they wouldn't both do better had I lowered the GH in that tank. I failed to do that so I can't say categorically that there is no difference.

But suppose there were something else in the tap water that has an effect? Or suppose it was something else that you were doing that causes your problem? If there is something else in the water, like high KH for example that the plants responded poorly too it would be impossible to tell. Likewise, if there is something else in the tap that the fish were responding poorly to, such as heavy metals, or inorganic pollutants, then this would be lost in the translation.

So if your fish are doing better now, is it because of lower GH, or because of lower something else that you hadn't thought about or hadn't even measured?

Switching to RO, you removed many things, not just Calcium and Magnesium. So to confirm that it was high GH causing the problems you should now add back only Calcium and Magnesium, in order to see if the fish and plants responses are the same as when you were using tap. In fact it's not even clear how much Ca or how much Mg the tap has, so to be consistent we would need to know those values as well because that may make a difference. Maybe Ca has more of an effect that Mg. Everything else has to be held constant while varying these two.

There are very good reasons for using RO, but they ought to be the right reasons, not just because test kit readings show high GH. If one has difficulty growing plants, then the probable causes should be addressed first, i.e., nutrient dosing, CO2, lighting and so forth.

Here is an image that I use a lot to show a tank that has high GH. It comes out of the tap at around GH 23 and I actually added GH booster to raise it above GH 25. I didn't have trouble with very many plants including Bolbitis and UG (although my UG disintegrated when I started adding Excel). So my results show no ill effects to fish or plants. 
Of course, my tap water isn't the same as any one else's, despite the similarity in GH value, so this implies that there is something else in the tap that warrants the use of RO.





Cheers,


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## JamesC (3 Jul 2010)

Hardness of water comprises of 2 parts, temporary and permanent or more commonly known to the fishkeeping world as GH and KH. The 2 tend to go hand in hand so when GH is high so is KH. When you have a KH of 15+ I can tell you that a good number of plants don't do at all well. Then again some plants absolutely thrive in these conditions. Same goes for fish. GH isn't that much of an issue.

James


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## mr. luke (4 Jul 2010)

I am more than willing to spend that extra few quid a week to see my aquariums thrive.
Im cutting down my number of tanks as we speak so cost is becoming even less of an issue 
I have seen improvement in fish behavious, less hiding, some courting behaviour and looking generally more 'healthy'.


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