Water chemistry targets

[geeks_15]

My RO unit is now installed and producing very soft water.

I want to keep and breed a variety of apistos. I currently have a. cacatuoides. I'd love to get some agassizi, panduro, borelli. I have 4 x 30 gallon tanks with tank dividers splitting each tank in half, plus an 80 gallon tank which is divided into 4 sections (essentially 8 x 15 gallon and 4 x 20 gallon tanks).

My question is what should my kH and gH targets be? I can mix the RO water and tap water (quite hard with gH 200ppm and kH 200ppm ) to get any numbers I want. I don't want kH so low that I have dangerous fluctuation of pH. Also, I prefer to have one target range for all my tanks to simplify my life.

Thanks in advance,

Jeremy

 

[peterK]

For most Apistos, you need low kh. And if you are careful, you have never fluctuations of pH. I have naver such situations using 100% RO water in my tanks. Only thing is, after setting up tank, I have never pH lower than 7. After 2~3 months pH lowered by itself. After that, I only added some Tap water to increase pH (if needed).

 

[jose_vogel]

Jeremy,

Your RO unit have a TDS meter?

If so, just test your PH and conductivity.


Besides, it´s not the same breeding borellii, agassizii or cacatuoides than breeding panduro. The latter needs very soft water (personal experience always with wildcaught).

 

[geeks_15]

No TDS meter. I have a test kit that is accurate enough.

My question is really a range of gH and kH to try to achieve.

Should kH be 3 to 6 (degrees kH) or 0 to 10?

Same with gH?

I knew that some species come from softer water than others (panduro), but I wasn't sure if they required different levels of soft water to breed. Will agassizi, borrelli, and cacatuoides breed at the soft levels required by panduro?

 

[jose_vogel]

In that case, I humbling disagree with peterk.

The only function of KH is to mantain the PH stable.



So you´ve to pay attention to GH. If you want to breed A. panduro, try to mantaing the GH below 2. With the other species, you can go up to 4 (I think none of them are wildcaught).