Hello From York

Hi, welcome to the forum 

Can I ask you to type your postcode in here https://www.yorkshirewater.com/water-quality/check-your-water-hardness/ and tell us what the number they give is, please. The unit should be "mg/l calcium".
I know someone who used to live in York and they said the water was quite hard.


I should explain that water hardness is another thing we've come to understand better in more recent years. Fish need to be kept in water similar to that in which they originate, and this is more important for wild caught fish. Hardness is the amount of mainly calcium, some magnesium and trace amounts of other metals in the water.
Fish from soft water which are kept in hard water will not live out their full life span. Soft water fish have evolved to retain as much calcium as possible from the water, and if there is a lot of calcium they retain too much. Autopsies of cardinal tetras kept in hard water show calcium deposits in their organs which shortened their lives.
Fish from hard water suffer if kept in soft water. Hard water fish have bodies which have evolved to excrete all that extra calcium which is in the water they ingest. In soft water, they continue excreting calcium but there is not enough left for their bodies to perform properly so they become sick much more easily.


Unfortunately, both the fish you name - green neons and cories - are soft water fish, which is why we need to know how hard your water is. And wild caught fish such as green neons are more likely to suffer if kept in a hardness that is "wrong" for them.

If it does turn out to be hard, there are many fish you can keep, from livebearers such as guppies and endlers (the others get too big for your tank) through to fish such as some of the Pseudomugil species.


It is possible to 'soften' water by mixing tap water with 'pure' water such as reverse osmosis (RO) but this is not something to undertake lightly. If you really do want soft water fish, we can talk you through this.



Is your local MA the one in Poppleton? I live in Teesside and we use the Poppleton park & ride when we visit York - so naturally I go into the garden centre to look at fish  MA is one of the better shops, but some branches are better than others. Be careful about taking advice from any shop worker, even those in MA. They stock soft water fish because they are not there long, and they don't care what happens after they leave the shop.

Mixing tap and RO water is easy to work out. Half and half will reduce the hardness by half, ie from 14.4 to 7.2 dH. Three quarters RO and one quarter tap will give 3.6 dH. Unlike pH, it is a linear relationship.

You can buy RO water or RO equipment. If you are on a water meter it could be expensive making your own as there is a lot of waste water made during the process. You would need to have some RO on hand at all times in case you should ever need to do an emergency water change.


The fish in the shop are only there for a very short time. Fish that don't sell don't make money.

Thanks Sue and Littlefish

The tap and RO ratios seem simple enough.

I know MA at Poppleton sell RO water.  I have several 20 ltr containers in my garage so should be able to buy enough RO water for my needs - until multiple rank syndrome kicks in.

Seems research before entering the shop seems a good idea.

Cheers Peter

Great to hear that you already expect to succumb to multi tank syndrome.
That makes me feel much better. 

Just to warn you - another thing that has changed over the years is that water changes are now recommended as at least 50% per week, if that affects your thinking on RO water.

Hi Sue,

Where has this recommendation come from? What is the rationale behind it? Fair enough if you're using the Estimative Index (EI) method for plant fertilization but otherwise I don't get it. Please enlighten me.

JPC

Jaypeecee -
It's just that over the years fishkeepers have realised that the more water that is changed per week, the healthier their fish are. Some people advocate 75% weekly water changes! There is no scientific evidence, just something that experienced fishkeepers (and I'm not one of them!) have worked out for themselves.

The people recommending larger water changes all tend to have planted tanks, but use nothing other than root tabs and/or liquid fertiliser. They don't have plant substrates or use CO2, gas or liquid.

sharpandroid -
The figures to look at are:
Hardness 96.8 mg/l calcium. This is a peculiarly British unit and is not used by fishkeeping websites. It converts to 13.5 dH and 242 ppm - those are the units that fishkeeping uses.
Nitrate 13.6 mg/l is the same as 13.6 ppm. The number 50 is the maximum allowed in drinking water. It is low enough that you should be able to keep your tank nitrate under 20 ppm.
pH 7.1 (the 6.5 to 9.5 is the range allowed in drinking water). Test your tap water. Test both a freshly run sample and a sample that's been allowed to stand overnight and see which one agrees with the water company's figure.





TDS = total dissolved solids. Hardness measures just calcium, magnesium and some trace metals, but there is a lot more besides them in our tap water. TDS measures everything. Soft water fish need low TDS as well as low hardness.

Jaypeecee -
It's just that over the years fishkeepers have realised that the more water that is changed per week, the healthier their fish are. Some people advocate 75% weekly water changes! There is no scientific evidence, just something that experienced fishkeepers (and I'm not one of them!) have worked out for themselves.

The people recommending larger water changes all tend to have planted tanks, but use nothing other than root tabs and/or liquid fertiliser. They don't have plant substrates or use CO2, gas or liquid.

Hi Sue,

Thanks for that.

There may be some correlation between fish growth rate and the build-up of pheromones in the tank water column. I will explore this further with my mates at the Bracknell Aquarist Society of which I'm a member.

Doing water changes of whatever percentage and whatever frequency needs to be considered alongside the frequency of cleaning the filter system. To some extent, they go hand-in-hand, don't they? It is common to see recommendations about the former but not so common to see recommendations about the latter. I prefer to be guided by measurements. Notably, conductivity, nitrate, phosphate, KH and GH. I dabbled with ORP/redox a while ago and may return to it.

JPC

All these biochemicals need to be removed.

The brown goo that builds up inside them is often referred to as a nitrate factory.

Hi Sue,

Taking your first point above, it is unclear to me how effectively we remove these biochemicals. Activated carbon may help but to what extent? There are also products like Seachem Purigen or Seachem Renew. But, again, how effective are these with biochemicals/organic waste? And plants will probably help. Seachem has this to say about Renew:

"Renew™ will remove organics and particulates in the sub-micron range; it will also help control ammonia, nitrates, and phosphates".

The word "organics" tells us that it's a compound based on carbon but not a lot more!

With reference to your second point, the brown goo isn't just a nitrate factory, it's also a dissolved organics factory.

I've done various experiments in an attempt to measure dissolved organic compounds (DOCs). With only minimal success. But it's a subject that interests me and I will persevere with this one.

JPC

The organics in tap water obviously can't be removed by water changes. Those aren't mentioned in my water quality report as such, the only things listed that could be described as 'organic' are benzo(3,4)pyrene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and trihalomethanes.

Hi Sue,

It's interesting that different water companies' reports vary somewhat in terms of what they include. My South East Water report lists various compounds, which I've worked out are herbicides, insecticides and pesticides. They all appear to be less than the PCV (Prescribed Concentration or Value). It also lists Total Organic Carbon, which had a mean value of 1.80 mg/l in 2018. I include this figure here for information only as I have nothing with which to compare it.

JPC

Going okay so far.

Still have 4ppm of ammonia.

Need to test for nitrates tonight.

The only problem I have is my wood I have put in the tank seems to have a white film starting to cover it. 

Oh yes I have purchased another tank. Slightly bigger at 91cm.