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This might be one of the most “DUH” statements in the world, but when it comes to keeping aquarium fish, WATER QUALITY IS VERY IMPORTANT! Sure there are many domesticated fish that can survive in a range of water conditions, but for the most part, wild caught fish or even recently domesticated species are very particular about their water. For example Macs and Wild Discus thrive in soft acidic water while most African lake cichlids thrive in hard alkaline liquid rock. Depending on where you live and how much you are willing to spend in order to achieve the best water for you fish, the process can get quite involved. So… if you have macs, and unless you live in Stratham, Georgia, where liquid Amazon flows from the taps, be prepared to do a little tinkering with your water. Preliminary Water PrepFor most people, the crisp clean water that arrives at your faucet is actually laden with lots of dissolved stuff, dissolved metals, salts, chemicals etc. While some of the stuff there occurs naturally from whatever water source your local water supplier uses, most of the stuff is in there as a result of the water purification process. Take Chlorine or Chloramines for example. These are artificially added chemicals that are great for disinfecting water and killing some of the nasty organisms in the water, but it not only makes your tap water smell and taste funky, it may cause irreparable damage to your fish’s gills and lead to death. That is why the most common water maintenance chemical sold in pet stores is de-chlorinator. For most people, the best way to deal with Chlorine is simply to age the water overnight in a bucket or water barrel with a couple drops of de-chlorinator. Run an airline into the barrel and allow the water to aerate overnight. Aerating serves a couple of purposes
Before you add the water to your fish, you may want to test the water for chlorines with a test kit. But unless your water has chloramines, generally aerating overnight should do the trick. A quick check I do is to give the water a good sniff. If you smell chlorine (bleach), there probably is still some left over. Here's a pic of my barrel which i bought off ebay. (You REALLY can buy anything off of ebay!!) Not a good camera shot.. but eh... That white line running across the front is the R/O output which usually goes into the barrel. You can't see, but there's a powerhead inside to agitate the water and to help with mixing the buffers.
Acidity, pHWhat the heck is it?? Well, in short, it is the concentration of hydrogen ions dissolved in a liquid. The more the concentration, the less the pH and hence the more acid the liquid becomes. I won’t go into the chemical details here, but if you really want to know, Wikipedia has some in-depth stuff. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH). Most people know that Acids can burn… some of us know what that feels like. Some of us also know that Alkalis can burn too. But yet there are some animals that can survive and thrive in conditions that are extremely acidic or alkaline. For example, vinegar eels can survive in a solution of vinegar and water. The fact is different organisms are well adapted to a range of pH that is comfortable to them. Anything beyond that range and proteins start to denature, and bodily functions start getting affected. The same goes for fish …Macs in our case. Common literature out there on Macs describe the natural habitat of the Macs as having a pH of around 4.5 to 5.5. That’s about the range of the pH of a tomato to acid rain! Unfortunately, unless we live beside the Del Negro River, water like this is usually not readily available out of our taps. Some aquarists compromise by keeping their macs at a more practical pH of 6 – 7. I have tried keeping Macs at pH 6.5 and they seem to be fine, but as soon as I switched to my current pH of 5-5.5, I noticed that the males seems to have visibly brighter colors. So that’s the way I’m keeping it. If you are receiving water from a municipal source, chances are that alkaline has been added to the water in order to prevent excessive corrosion of water pipes. Hence our water might emerge somewhat on the alkaline (pH greater than 7) side. Most of us have tried at some point or another, to add stuff like pH adjusters to our water only to find out that within a few hours, the pH has returned to normal. Hence fighting pH has become a great struggle. So how do we achieve the sweet acidic pH for our acid loving fish? Here are a couple of suggestions
Lowering pH1. Peat Filtration Peat is basically decaying vegetation that is found in wetlands and bogs. It usually consists of Sphagnum moss, but may also consist of whatever plant grew and died in the vicinity. Because of the humic acids from the decomposition of the plant material, peat provides a good source of natural acids to lower your pH. It also contains some mystery stuff that stabilizes the water even at low pH and KH. Peat usually comes in compressed bales and is readily available in garden stores or the garden section of your large chain store. In North America, most of the peat comes from Canada. Make sure that you have just pure peat. If the bag says that it has fungicides added or “fungus control” or “fertilizers added” or “nutrients added”, you want to put the bag down and walk away. Try somewhere else. I prepare my peat by first rinsing under running water and then popping it in the microwave for a couple of minutes to fry any unwanted critters and organisms that may inhabit the peat. Take it out of the microwave and LET IT COOL before placing some in a filter bag or and old stocking. The peat bag can then be placed in your aging barrel, directly into your filter or directly in your tank. Or if you need to condition large amounts of water, you can build yourself a peat bomb. Peat tends to discolor the water by imparting a brownish coloration. I personally find this rather unsightly and do not do very much for my plants. But there are some out there who really love the tea-colored look. Do note however that if your water is extremely hard or if you have high alkalinity (KH – Concentration of dissolve carbonate), you will only see a small decrease in pH compared to if you have soft water and low KH. Hence if you have pretty hard water (as do I), peat filtration alone might not be enough. Here's a tip submitted via the comment form by "mathao0069" regarding a combination of Peat Filtration and IAD (described below). Read what he said (Used with Permission).
2. Indian Almond Leaves, IAL (Terminalia Catappa L.) While I was growing up in Singapore, we had a great big Indian Almond tree growing in our neighbor's lot. This thing was massive. It towered mightily over the houses around the neighborhood. That thing shed like a dog. It came to a point where the groundskeepers wouldn't bother bagging the fallen leaves and just rake it into a ditch. Anyway, these are tropical rainforest trees that are rarely found naturally in the U.S. However, they are used extensively in South East Asia aquaria. I remember that the old LFS’s in Singapore used to have tea colored tanks with IAL at the bottom. I don’t think there has been a consensus on what this humble leaf actually exudes that makes the water just right for acidic fish, but there has been worldwide consensus on one thing… the stuff works! Pop a couple in your aging barrel or directly into your tank. It’ll sit there and slowly decompose while releasing acids and tannins into the water. Growing up, the old-timers at the Singaporean LFS’s used to tell me that only the dried, brown leaves should be used. Don’t use fresh leaves as it contains sticky sap. I know of some online places selling dried GREEN leaves. I have not used IAL before so I cannot comment on whether the brown or green leaves work better. Here's a pic of the soaking process from an actual B. Splendens farm that i visited in Singapore. What they do is soak and areate a bucketful of these leaves for about a week or so. The end product is a tea colored water which is soft and acidic. For more pics of the trip, go HERE.
As with peat, you will notice a significant drop in pH only if you have relatively soft water with lower KH. For more info on IAL, Wikipedia has the answers! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_almond) One reader of this website sent me a nice e-mail sharing his "green vs brown" experiences with IAD. Read what he had to say here. (Used with permission).
3. R/O Reconstitution This is my favorite method of water adjustment. It may be a little expensive to acquire, but the payoffs are great. Low TDS water is very easily manipulated to obtain the correct pH (especially low pH’s like 4.5 – 5.5). The reason why you can’t just add stuff like pH down to your water and maintain a low pH is because the water is buffered (usually carbonate buffering, KH). In order to overcome the buffer, you need to add massive amounts of acid to neutralize the buffer completely, or simply start out with pure water with no (or little) buffers. RO is a great way to do so and with output water of close to 0 total dissolved solids (it is pretty impossible to get exactly 0 TDS), water can then be adjusted and buffered to your liking. I start out with a 9:1 RO/ tap mix. The tap water is there mainly for some trace elements that may be required by the fish, but I have also used 100% RO and reconstituted trace elements with stuff like Kent’s “RO Right”. Because of the low pH required, 100% Carbonate buffers (which buffer at a higher pH and pretty much amounts to using full tap water again) cannot be used. Also, I like to keep my Macs in planted tanks; hence phosphate buffers (which are notorious for causing algae) are out of the question. The only product out there that are not 100% carbonate and phosphate buffers is a pair of products by Seachem called “Acid Buffer” and “Alkaline Buffer”. Used together in varying proportions, I can achieve any pH of water between 3 and 10 that I want. The only problem is that it is not as stable a buffer as phosphate buffers, so there is slight fluctuation between day and night of about pH (+/-) 0.1. To achieve pH of 5 – 5.5 usually requires 2 parts (by weight) of acid buffer to 1 part of alkaline buffer. Some people might find this whole mixing chemistry thing too tedious, but I believe that if you are truly committed to keeping an endangered species such as Macs, you should find the time and energy to do so, otherwise, I’d suggest goldfish as a suitable alternative. Besides… you’ll get used to it. After all these years of preparing water for discus, doing stuff for Macs is a snap! If you need info on RO hardware, Randal Bogarth (Known to the discus world as RandalB) has a great article on www.simplydiscus.com on tips and assembly instructions.
4. 100% Tap Water Ever since moving to Houston, this has been my favorite method of mixing mac water. I'm sure many of us have been frustrated by attempts to lower tapwater pH by using products such as "pH down" only to find that the pH has rebounded after a couple of hours. Then you keep adding "pH down" and the pH continues to fluctuate like a roller coaster and all of a sudden, BOOM... the pH crashes you end up with a tankful of water that's pH 3. You just killed all your fish. Well, there's good news for people who have tap water that has relatively low carbonate buffering (kH less than 4) and medium hardness (GH less than 10 or TDS 100uS or less). You CAN actually use your Tap water at 100%. It takes a bit of work the first time, but once you get it down, it's a snap. Since there's a lot of information to this particular topic, i've dedicated an entire page to it.
Alkalinity, KHKH is a topic that has been beaten to death by water exponents all over the aquarium world, but it is still the least understood of the water parameters. Because KH is not directly crucial to macs (except when adjusting water), I shall not elaborate but direct you to a good site if you want to know more.
Hardness, GHAgain, this is another topic that has been explained by many experts out there, so I'll save some typing and point you to this link again: http://faq.thekrib.com/begin-chem.html For now, if you are not interested in the Chemistry behind General Hardness, it suffices to say that from personal experience, a GH of 10 and below is suitable for raising Macs. I have yet to conduct experiments on how GH affects hatch rates, but this experiment is planned for the future. PLUG On the urging of my friends, I started this website by putting together the original (and quite successful) B. Macrostoma pages. Since then it has grown by quite a bit. All this time I've provided all this info and lots of free e-mail support to anyone who needed help. The advertising on this page helps out a little to offset the cost of webhosting. So if you see something that you may be interested in listed within the Google Ads banners, then please don't hesitate to check it out. I thank you all for your great interest in my articles and I hope to keep hearing from you guys, even if it is just dropping me a note to say hi. God Bless! |
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