Blackwater extract use with a Betta, Tank    3/29/06
Hello to all you good folks!
After reading your forum for quite some time I have learned to ask a question before I attempt anything new with my small tank. I was wondering about Blackwater extract and whether it would be suitable for a bachelor Crowntail Betta in a Hex 5 filtered and heated tank. Water parameters are ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate a trace to 5, moderate hardness and alkalinity, pH 7.6, temperature a constant 78 degrees. This is the first week of a 20% weekly water change from tap water (conditioned with Aqua Plus) to bottled accomplished by mixing 25% new to 75 % old, followed by a 50/50%, 75/25% and finally a 100 % switchover. My tap has become suspect after much sewer system upgrading by the town. So if Blackwater extract would be beneficial for my guy how would I incorporate it into my water changes?
<Can be added directly to the water in the tank, or to the new water to be used during water changes>
Would I mix it with my new hybrid gallon of water and test for pH and hardness? What would be acceptable parameters for any sort of change in these two entities?
<Likely no need to test. Won't affect that much>
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Oh, by the way, I have never been steered wrong by any crew member and that "gentleman" should be reminded of that by any and all the people you have aided throughout the years!! Thank you very much. Sue :)
<Thank you. Bob Fenner>

R/O Water For FW  - 03/12/2006
You folks have been so great with my saltwater questions, now I will try my luck with freshwater.  I have a 55 gal with just a few angel fish and a couple danios.  I am hoping to keep some Cory cats, but my tap water quality isn't that great.  I have invested in RO/DI system and think I finally have it figured out for my saltwater.  What do I need to do with it for freshwater to keep angels and Corys?  I will probably be using a 5 gal bucket to store the change water in.  Besides aerating it, what should I do as far as ph and buffers for freshwater?
< Depending on how hard your tap water is, I would recommend a mixture of 50% tap with 50% R/O. Based on your fishes reaction you could increase the R/O portion to 80%. I would not go 100% R/O unless you added a good buffer.-Chuck>
Thanks,
Donna

Re: Softening Hard Water  - 03/12/2006
My TDS meter says 138ppm.  I am not sure how "hard" that is, but I do know that it has a lot of phosphate which most likely is the reason for the algae.
< A TDS meter reading of 138 would mean that you water is moderately hard. Soft water would be under 75 ppm. So a 50% mixture of R/O with no ppm and you tap water would give you a TDS of 69 ppm. Start there and see how you fish react to it. I bet they like it.>  
What would I use to buffer 100% RO/DI with and what would the procedure be
for it?  Would I buffer my 5 gal container of aerated RO/DI water or buffer
the tank when I put the aerated RO/DI water in?
< I never make any water chemistry changes in the aquarium. Pour a 5 gallon bucket full of tap water. Check the pH and TDS. Measure it again in 24 hours. Any dissolved CO2 gas should have off gassed  by then and you will get a real pH reading. Pour half of it out and fill it up the rest of the way with your R/O water. Let it sit for 24 hours and check it again. If your water is under 75 ppm it is soft and start to use this bucket of soft water to start doing your water changes. After a few water changes your aquarium water will become softer over time. If you wanted to use R/O straight then you need to add some chemicals back into the water.  Kent marine makes one called R/O Right.>
I would think that using the RO/DI water would be done in many small water
changes to acclimate the fish?
< Gradual is the way to go.-Chuck>
Thanks for the quick reply, Donna

Hornwort as a Water Softener?
Hello WWM Crew, An uncharacteristically brief questions from me, this time. I have read in a few places that hornwort will soften water. Is this true? If so, should I remove it from my cichlid tanks? Thanks, Ben
< This is really an amazing plant that doesn't get enough credit. I saw hornwort all over the bays and inlets in Zambia while diving in Lake Tanganyika a few years ago. It looked like little wire brushes. When I returned I read up on this plant and found out that it actually gets its carbon dioxide from breaking down the bicarbonate in the water. Pretty amazing. During the process CO2 is removed and you get a calcium carbonate that actually increases the pH. Since coming back I have added hornwort to all my African tanks because they can handle the hard water and do a great job absorbing nitrates from the water.-Chuck>

How to use GH+ Botanica product?
I am not sure how to use the GH+ Botanica product to raise only General hardness. I have a tank of 28 gal, with two goldfishes in it. The GH of my tank is 5 German degrees. For how many more degrees should I raise it?
<Another five or so>
In the instructions says that a capful (5ml) will raise 5 gal of tap water of two GH degrees. My second question is: Can I pour it directly in the tank for 28 gal or should I do it slowly, like adding one capful each day for five days so that the whole gallonage gets conditioned? 
<Better to do this slowly... and going forward, to pre-treat new water before using it>
Thank you very much, I appreciate your help
<You're welcome. Bob Fenner> 

Confused about GH advice from Marina
>Thanks Marina for your help, but I did find confusing your advice about not messing with General hardness. It was advised from Bob Fenner to raise my GH of 6 dGH which will bring it to a total of 10 dGH.
>>If we're talking about goldfish (actually, just about ANY captive-bred tropical fish) here, I would not mess about with it. Goldfish are incredibly flexible when it comes to particular water parameters, they can take very soft water with a relatively low pH, all the way to parameters necessary to successfully keep Lake Victorian African cichlids. If your water is well-buffered it will likely bounce back and forth (the carbonate hardness, or alkalinity), which is far more stressful in my opinion than letting it be and allowing the fishes to acclimate. Trouble can be even further exacerbated if the pH is also affected by changing the hardness, and that WILL kill your fish.
>But now you are telling me to not mess with these parameters. What should I do now? Please help me clarify this issue. Thanks again Marina. Marcellino
>>Ok, let's try it this way - if you didn't test for hardness at all, could your few problems be solved and/or answered any other way? Yes. Can they be attributed to anything else? Yes. You have a brand new setup, which, due to being over-cleaned a bit, will continue to have some unstable parameters. Those most important in this case are those which indicate the establishment and culturing of nitrifying bacteria, which are the consumers (oxidizers) of ammonia and nitrite. The end result of these efforts, and the only reading you should get any positive result for, is nitrate. None of this is affected by hardness to any degree we need to worry about (especially with regard to goldies). If you'd like a more succinct, clearer explanation of GH, KH, and how they affect water parameters, try the following: http://www.algone.com/water_parameters.htm  http://www.aquariumpharm.com/articles/gh-kh.asp  I do hope this is more helpful, and I will remind again to not mess about with the tank so much. Marina

New to the hobby and all its water quality issues, arcane terminology!
Bob,  
            I am new to this whole fish stuff.  My fiancé convinced me to do it and it's not going so well.  I have a 30 gallon tank with a heater and a penguin 170.  Currently there is 3 Plecos and 4 Dempseys and 3 convicts in the tank.
< Your Jack Dempsey's get up to 8 inches long and will eventually get too big for your tank.>
   I am having some real ammonia problems lately, and after contacting my LFS I have done everything they told me to do.
Frequent water changes.  And use ammo lock.  But I hesitate to do that; I gave it a try anyways.  Now for some reason my ammonia has spiked beyond even 8.0ppm (I know its higher but my testing kit only goes to 8.0) Anyways the nitrate is going up as well but the ammonia has not changed a single bit.  
I do not know exactly what is going on.
< Here is what is going on and how to solve it. First check the ammonia of your tap water. Many water systems now use chloramines instead of just chlorine. Chloramines are a combination of Chlorine and ammonia! Check your tap water with your ammonia test kit. Not all water conditioners get rid of chloramine and this is what you could be reading on your test kit. Use Amquel from Kordon or a new product called Ultimate. Both will tie up the ammonia. Usually what happens in a new tank is the fish excrete waste and any left over food is broken down into ammonia, especially in an aquarium in which the pH is greater than 7.0. In an established tank the ammonia is broken down into nitrite. This is less toxic than the ammonia but is still not good. This may take a couple of weeks. Eventually the nitrites are once again broken down into nitrates. These are not good either but they are the least toxic of the three. Nitrate levels should be kept no higher than 25 ppm, but some fish can take them as high as 50 ppm. Make sure you are not overfeeding and make sure you clean the filter often. The excess food may be accumulating in the filter and adding to the problem. You need to get the waste out of the system on not just let stay in the filter.>
After calling the same LFS they told me to do a huge water change.  90%, which I did very carefully as to not harm the fish.  I ran the test again and my ammonia is still sitting at 4.0ppm.  And all I left was 1 ½ inches of water.
< Fill up the tank and keep the system running. You may have too many fish to get things started. The good news is your fish are fairly tough. Fill up the tank, feed once a day with only enough food that you fish will have it all consumed in a couple of minutes. Get a 5 gallon plastic bucket and check the water for chloramines and treat according to the directions on the bottle. Check again and make sure it works. You may still have the ammonia in the water but it may be ties up by the chemicals and reading on your test kit. The water should be clear and have no odor. Ammonia makes the water very cloudy. If the water is clear and the fish are doing fine then I would not worry too much about the test kit results.-Chuck>  I do not know what is going on any insights as to help with this?  
I am attaching some data below for you’re review as well.  

Kordon's Amquel Plus?
Hi to all at WWM:
<Hi! Ananda here tonight....>
I was wondering if any of the crew had used this product?
<Judging by the fact that the response got delayed a bit, and I just saw your email today, I'm guessing not...sorry about the delay.>
I was previously using the regular Amquel to treat my make up water for each water change.
<Okay>
Two weeks ago I decided to try the Amquel Plus instead. I have a what I think a heavily stocked 110gal FO tank. I perform 6 gal water changes twice a week and test the water regularly and I seem to maintain a nitrate reading of approx 25ppm.
<Hmmm. Time to increase your filtration capacity, amount of water changes, or both if you are concerned about this nitrate reading. Have you considered live rock?>
However, one day after using the Amquel Plus the nitrate was zero. During the last two weeks I tested my water and the nitrate increased to about 20ppm. I used the product yesterday and now this morning the nitrate was zero again. I am a little concerned about now effective this product is, maybe too good to be true? I am not sure how this product works and is there a problem with such fluctuating nitrate readings.
<Well, I'd prefer there to be a generally lower level of nitrates...but the reason for doing water changes is to keep the nitrates down. I suspect many tanks go through nitrate fluctuations like this. That said, I did a little research on "Amquel+", as the product literature calls it. The short story is, Kordon is not releasing any info about what's in the product, because they've got patents pending on the stuff. For how it works, they're referring to how Amquel works as an similar product. For the long story, check out their web pages: http://www.novalek.com/kpd79.htm for Amquel+, and http://www.novalek.com/kpd51.htm for original Amquel.>
I appreciate your thoughts on this one.
Thanks, Gene
<Read their literature, find out what others think about it, then make your own decision... a good general plan of attack for most products. --Ananda>