Soft water/Ro unit

[Pyramid_Party]

Ah yeah. I definitely want one of these. I think some guy linked me to one and it was kind of pricey. I add seachem equilibrium to my planted tanks. On the jar/bottle it says good for RO water. It says restores and maintains mineral balance and GH. I use it on my planted tanks like I say, it adds trace minerals like iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium etc.

I don't know how this would work if I decide to start using RO water.

 

[Pyramid_Party]

Where can I find TDS or PH meters in person? What kind of place sells them?

 

[xthao3]

to be honest with you, i dont think you need to change pH or Gh at all...I keep discus and a lot of "professionals" will tell you that you need a pH and a GH of this and that but seriously they will do fine in tap water with some SeaChem Prime...

 

[xthao3]

Where can I find TDS or PH meters in person? What kind of place sells them?

ebay

 

[Pyramid_Party]

Yeah I know keeping them in tap they can live, but breeding is a different story. Also I was hoping I can find a place that sells those meters. Cause I would like to go check it out today and possibly buy one.

 

[Pyramid_Party]

Where can I find these meters in person? What kind of store sells it?

 

[squint]

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg/branchSearchRender.shtml

 

[RedDwarf]

Let me try to help here. The RO unit is used to make clean water with less impurities in it. As a result of this, it also drops the hardness of the water because it's impedes the dissolved minerals from getting to your product water. Most higher quality RO units will have a TDS meter on them so you will know when your RO membrane is exhausted.

Now since we are talking about farm breed rams and not wild caught fish, the pH doesn't need to be that extreme for them to breed and for the eggs to hatch. The bigger problem your going to find is keeping a steady supply of live food for the fry.

If you want to lower the pH, I would suggest running peat in your filter or you could also put it in a bag in the tank. You could also use driftwood and it would have the same effect or get some almond leaves. Bare in mind that the tannins released by the peat or driftwood/almond leaves will color your water. This is a natural blackwater extract.

I'll pm you about some electric blue rams at a store near you.

 

[rnocera]

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I agree with what people are saying about pH and hardness. I have some horrible water (extremely hard and with a pH closer to 8 than 7), and the only thing I've never really run into problems keeping anything because of it. The LFS I used to work in ran a steady 7.7 and they had rams breed in the tanks in the store once while I was there. Kribs bred all the time, and I saw angelfish do it a time or two- didn't usually have many adult angels in the store.

As was pointed out, peat and driftwood will both lower pH, as will RO water. If you want to get them to breed, you can do a water change with some RO water and throw some peat in the filter. I actually know breeders who do this for angels, and a couple of them swear their angels spawn more this way, as soon as the water starts to show tannins. You can buy RO water at a lot of LFS. Or even store bought water (gallon jugs) would probably be softer than your water.

RedDwarf hit the nail on the head- we're dealing with captive bred specimens today, and most of them are several generations in of only the survivors passing on their genes. They're a lot hardier than they were even a few years ago.