How soft is too soft?

[matt85]

I want to keep apistos and wondered how soft is too soft water? I have nitrates in my tap water at 40mg/l thus even a 1:4 ratio of tap to ro water would not be ideal.

Thanks for the help.

 

[gerald]

Wow, that's pretty high nitrate for tap water. Is that measured as the whole nitrate ion, or just the nitrate-N ? The US-EPA drinking water standard is 10 mg/L Nitrate-N.

Regarding hardness, I would suggest at least 8 mg/L hardness (as CaCO3 equivalent; about 0.5 dGH) even though it can be much lower in some S.Amer blackwater streams. I doubt any fish really "needs" lower hardness than that. The lower it is, the more difficult it becomes to keep things stable in an aquarium, and all living things need some Ca and Mg.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I would suggest at least 8 mg/L hardness (as CaCO3 equivalent; about 0.5 dGH) even though it can be much lower in some S.Amer blackwater streams. I doubt any fish really "needs" lower hardness than that. The lower it is, the more difficult it becomes to keep things stable in an aquarium, and all living things need some Ca and Mg.

I think that is good advice, a small amount of hardness definitely makes water management easier, and low levels of nutrients allow you to have some plant growth.

Wow, that's pretty high nitrate for tap water. Is that measured as the whole nitrate ion, or just the nitrate-N ? The US-EPA drinking water standard is 10 mg/L Nitrate-N.

Gerard assuming that is Walsall in the UK, it is NO3, the water companies have to supply the customer with water parameters if you ask for them, so I would guess these figures are from Severn-Trent water.

The EU limit is 50ppm for NO3 and this is actually only slightly higher than the US-EPA limit of 10ppm N. Nitrate (NO3) has an RMM = 64, the RAM of N=14. Therefore the percentage of N in NO3 is 14/64 = 22.6% N, and 50ppm x 0.226 = 11.3 ppm N.

I'd tell the original poster you can largely ignore the NO3 level, assuming you have some plants, the level will actually go down over time. This is the difference between keeping planted tanks and relying on water changes to reduce your nitrate levels.

You should be able to get hardness figures from your water company as well, that you can convert into dKH etc.

cheers Darrel

 

[matt85]

Hi

Thanks for the replies. I only have a couple of plants in my 85 litre. How many would you suggest in order to efficiently remove nitrate? Think I'm going with a 1/5 tap to ro which will leave me with just under 10mg/l nitrate (the whole molecule! -Thanks for clearing this up).

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

How many would you suggest in order to efficiently remove nitrate?

I like a floater because it has access to aerial CO2. It doesn't matter which one, although Limnobium (Amazon Frogbit) is my preferred option. I've got spare Frogbit, Indian Fern (Ceratopteris), Water lettuce (Pistia) or Floating Fern (Salvinia) you can have. PM me if you want all or any of them, I don't want any money for them, just enough to cover the cost of the P&P.

Have a look at this thread <http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/index.php?threads/daphnia.12707/>


Cheers Darrel

 

[matt85]

Just an update for the guys that helped me :

http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/index.php?posts/85252