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my bettas just bred, but my ph is like 8.3-.4 my water is very hard (300) and the alkalinity is 300

i have collected rain water, about 5 gallons worth, and i have put it in the growout tank, it has a slight green tinge to it, but i also have some water that is very dark (the tannons) my dad made it using leaf matter, and bits of wood, is that safe? there are no fish in this tank, and i have throughly cleaned it with a bleach solution to remove all the algae, i cant smell it in the tank...but now my hands are dry.....can i keep doing waterchanges with the rain water? what if it is a little green, is that ok? i thought i remembered that it held tiny organisms, that the betta fry could eat, should i filter it first? to remove the bits of wood? (i added a piece of drift wood to the barrel to ensure the ph went down) i havent done a test yet, but thats next on my list......and the brine shrimp hatched a bit early...gota take care of that as well

Hi,
From what I skimed from your post, you have alkaline water
that is hard and your fish have already spawned and the
male is carring for the eggs.

What I would do if I were you is leave things alone.
If you change the fry to that new tank the water
chemistries are so radical that I doubt that many,
if any, of the fry would survive.

Add the some of the green water to the tank containing
the fry as they will eat the stuff till they get older
and larger. You need to wait until the fry no longer have
the egg sack attached and are driving the "old man" nuts
trying to swim around. Then feed them with your home
made food.

Once you have brought the fry up to an inch or so, then
I would SLOWLY start to modify the water down to whatever
your goal is. Besure to modify "everyone's" water including
the parents, the breeding tank, and the water for the
fry once they grow. When the males start scrapping, then
it is time to isolate them in separate containers.
I had a 30G tank for the females and bought a case of
1 quart canning jars for the males.

The problem with rain water, depending upon where you
live, is polution. As the rain falls through the
atmosphere, it is contaminated with all the polution from
the smoke, smog, and "stuff" that is present around most
cities and downwind from them.

Frankly, if the fish spawned, I would not worry about the
water, every is fine as far as the fish are concerned
and nature is taking its course.

Frank


Last edited by FRANK at 11-Jun-2005 16:06

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well, i read in a book to let it downpour for 20 minuets before collecting, but its been raining all week, so i waited 10 minuets, and i collected water from my basement, which is filtered through the ground before it leaks in, so i added pure rain water, tannon water, and basement water, and i tested the water and got....
nitrAtes-15ppm
nitrItes-.5
hardness-75-soft!!
alkalinity-185
ph- between 7.8-8.4

and i rescued 5 fry, 2 sunfish fry about l l big
a male and female minnow (the male is beautyfull with a bright yellow belly, and yellow fins, a reticulated back, and a black stripe down its sides

and 1 tiny fry, maybe a few days old its l l long, but very thin, and has a strip going from its nose, all the way through its yail its hanging out with my guppy fry now

they seem happy, and the water is very green, so i guess i could feed both the BBS and green water