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Would my platies be all right if I move them to my 55 gallon that I am plannning to stock with a couple of angel fish a couple of blue rams and a school of blue tetras?

I can't imagine any problems right off hand, but I thought I would ask y'all. The only thing I can think of is maybe the angels and rams would eat any platy fry that happen to pop up and that would be fine by me....population control for the prolific little monsters. Does anyone see any other potential problems? I plan to soften my tap water just a little for the 55 with a 50/50 mix of tap an RO water....would the platies adjust?

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

That actually sounds like a very nice mix

You're definitely right about fry, angels are well-known for fry control

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There is water at the bottom of the ocean

crazyred,

Sounds good to me as well, but maybe you could explain why you want to soften the water.

I assume you have very hard tab water, in both KH and GH, right? Do you have any idea what a 50/50 mix would give you (I don't - I ask because I would like to know more about it) ? Would you have to add other goodies to the water?

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Thanks for the input y'all!

Yeah, Ingo, basically my water is liquid rock. I would probably be better off with African's but the less aggressive ones are hard to come by here.

My water has 300 ppm hardness. The kH stays in the 80-120 ppm range, and the pH is pretty good actually...about 7.2. I've experimented a little with equal parts RO/tap in a cup and have come to the conclusion that I can lower the hardness to about 120 ppm and keep the kH over 40 ppm if I use about 60% RO and 40% tap....rough approximation. I'm just thinking that rather than asking typically soft water fish to adjust to my liquid rock....I will try to accomodate them just a little. I'm NOT going to do any pH down or any of that mess....just RO, driftwood and maybe a little peat. I shouldn't have to do any mineral replacement as my tap water seems to have plenty even at 40% concentration.

I might have to keep my eye on the pH though and hold off on the DW and peat if I run CO2 injection and lower the kH of the water to 40 ppm. I sure don't want any crazy pH crashes!

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

crazyred,

Thank you so much for your explanation .

If you don't mind, here are some thoughts:

- To maintain a rather stable environment for your CO2 addition you should shoot for a Kh of at least 3DH, in other words, about 54ppm.
- Let's assume you replace 60% of your tab water with RO water, and your tab GH is 300ppm (16.76DH), then you would achieve a GH of 6.7DH, rather soft.
- If at the same time your KH from the tab was 80 (or 120), your KH after addition of RO water should be 1.8DH (or 2.7DH), in both cases below 3DH.
- Taking your lowest KH from the tab, 80ppm, and deducting the 3DH (54ppm) that you would like to have at least, and then taking the percentage of how much water can be replaced with RO water, I conclude that you could savely replace only 32.5% of the tab water with RO water.
- This in turn would mean that your max GH of 300ppm with a 32.5% thinnage of RO water would leave your GH with 202ppm, or 11.3DH. Still not too bad.

Well, overall where I want to go with this is that you want to make sure that you don't thin out your KH too much, either by reducing the percentage of RO water to tab water or by adding baking soda afterwards.

Just some thoughts, and now have fun trying to understand what the heck I am talking about

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

I understood every word....LOL. That will be easier for me...less RO to put upon filling the tank and with every water change. Sounds like a better plan. I just don't want my water to be full strength hard like it now and I know peat will help soften it a little perhaps without compromising the kH too much. I do have experience with adding baking soda to raise the kH...I had to do so in my 29 after I added two sizeable chunks of DW. What was weird about it was...it din't lower my pH all that much, just my kH.

Thank you so much, Ingo you're are also so helpful!

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

I keep angels, rams and rummy nose tetras in my water. It's really hard too, I use the strip tests to measure my kh and gh and they both measure 300 ppm. I know those aren't the most accurate of tests, but my ph always registers as 8.4 on them and with the liquid tests it's 8.0. Anyway, I don't do anything to my water and my fish have all been happy for over a year now.

"Constant vigilance!"
Mad-Eye Moody

Actually I've kept all those in hard water as well and the only ones I'd be slightly worried about are the rams. They can survive and even breed in hardwater but acclimating them to the water is the difficult part. Angels and blue tetras have no trouble acclimating to or living in water with a ph of 8.2-8.4 and a dkh of 18-20.

If you do want to dilute it half and half the platies will adjust just fine. However if your kh is as high as mine you'll find that a 50/50 mix won't lower your ph much. A mix with 2/3rds ro or distilled to 1/3rd of my wellwater still comes out at 8.0ph.

Also keep in mind that if your injecting co2 to such water you won't get much of a drop in ph so you need to keep an eye on how the fish act. Even injecting the highest amount possible without affecting fish health my ph didn't budge. The water is just buffered too well so you can't measure co2 very well. Most charts don't even go up to that level of kh and ph.

Sounds great! Actually, the rams are what I would be worried about in such water, but one of the LFS's around here has an enormous display tank with agels, rams, tetras, and discus (I know, not the greatest idea in the world) and their rams seem fine. I should go by there and ask if they use 100% tap water or if they are using RO.

Interestingly enough, even though my gH and kH are pretty high, my pH is relatively neutral...about 7.2 straight from the tap, so pH shouldn't be an issue in this case. The main thing I worried about was the 300 ppm gH.....top of the test strip. Sounds like y'all (Sham and covered-in-bees) didn't have any problems.

If I go with rams (which I probably will they are SO beautiful) I will take hours to acclimate them.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."