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The water where i live is very hard.

From the tap it has a GH of 21ºdGH and a KH of 8ºdKH

I understand you can lower KH by doing partial water changes with deionized water, but what are my options when it comes to lowering GH? I want to breed my angels and they obviously need softer water if they are ever going to spawn.

Is the only option water softener pillows, or are there other reliable stable ways of doing it?

Kieran,

You can use RO, Reverse Osmosis, or DI, De-Ionized, water to mix with your tap water to reduce the GH and KH of your water for your angelfish.

Remember, GH is general hardness that is primarily the measure of calcium (Ca++) and magnesium (Mg++) ions in the water. Other ions can contribute to GH but their effects are usually insignificant and the other ions are difficult to measure. GH will not directly affect pH although "hard" water is generally alkaline due to some interaction of GH and KH.

Your level of GH is "very hard" and you will need to reduce the GH to 4 to 8 dGH for optimal spawning. Assuming that RO or DI water has zero hardness that your proportion of tap water to RO/DI would be 7 parts RO/DI to 3 parts tap water. The mixture will also reduce the KH of your water from 8dGH to 2.4dGH.

The hardness of your water will not prevent your pairs from spawning. It will reduce the viability of their spawns. Once, you have identified a spawning pair, I recommend setting up a spawning tank of 10 to 20G with a slate and sponge filter. Acclimate the pair to their "new" water conditions and let nature take its course.

Please note that hard water is great for growing out fry.



__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

Thanks for the advise.

But some of your advice leads me on to another question. If the hard water will not stop them from spawning, why do you think they haven't?

There are 4 green angels (scientific name unknown) that have been in their tank together for about4 months now.

It is filtered with an undergravel filter with airstone and an internal powerfilter (positioned to not cause too much turbulence) fairly well planted, with rockwork and bogwood.

Reading's are consistantly good

any ideas?

Angels can spawn around the age of 12 months. Males may take longer to mature. If your fish are older than 12 months and have not attempted to spawn, then:
a. You have all males,
b. You have all females,
c. They are immature,
d. They don't like the partner choices,
e. They are celibate.

You will notice the angels choosing a partner as two fish become a "couple" and become aggressive to the other angelfish. Without the partner thing... no spawning!



__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

The agression is there, from time to time.

There are two "dominant" ones that tend to stick together and show agression to the others, around feeding time mostly. When i first noticed this behaviour i thought they may have paired off. But apart from the agression i have seen no mating behaviour at all. The two of them "paired off" (or not) about 2 months

I have successfully bred my angels repeatadly(except for the raising of the fry never had the facilities to do that lol) in water with a PH of 8-8.5 and quite high GH/KH (can't remember exact figures, will check when i get home)

What size are you're angels? Mine started breeding at about 2-3" length. Try feeding lots of live foods to help condition them up.

Also if you still want to lower your GH/KH you can use peat filtration or CO2.

Ok, i don't wanna sound stupid here, but when sizing an angel, what measurement do you take? I'm assuming you don't include finnage so is it body length excluding finnage?

I do it like this, if u consider an angel's body a circle (ok i know it isn't but it isn't too far off) then i take the radius of the "circle" horizontally.