Parrot Cichlids in Soft Water?

[Kayarisha]

I have a Parrot Cichlid I got free from my local fish store almost half a year ago. He was in a sickly batch of jelly bean parrots, so my lfs guy let me have a couple pretty much free since he knew they might not make it. He pal didn't but hes been doing great.

I've always kept driftwood in my aquarium because I have a bichir (plus it looks cool). But I just learned while looking for possible tank mates, that parrots don't like soft water.

In the time I've had my parrot, hes always been healthy and active causing mischief every which way. Is the soft water thing something I need to be worried about? Could it cause problems down the road?

Here's a picture:



Tank mates are:

Senegal Bichir- 4in
Brown Knife- 4in
African Butterfly- 3in
Eclipse Cat- 2in
Striped Raphael Cat- 3in
4 Silver Dollars- 1in
2 Angel Fish- 1in

He gets along with all of them, cuddles with the Raphael it's pretty cute.

 

[Kaliedoscope]

the main problem with soft water and hard water fish is immunity,
hard water fish usually have a thick slime coat- this is something that dosent work very well in soft water for reasons i'm not entireley clear on. coincidentally this is the reason soft water fish like discus go downhill fast when they have a disease.
I made the mistake of putting 2 syno cats in my knifefish aquarium because i didn't have the room for them in my cichlid tanks.... they got ich the next day and other infections which killed them in a few days....
that my friend is the danger of putting a hard water fish in soft water. mine were in a cichlid tank and moved to a tank that was buffered like a discus tank (w/ phosphate buffer, which has no carbonates etc) so it was this difference that destroyed their slime coat.

Don't flame me for this btw, I only learned this info because of that mistake, it was a while ago.

How soft is your water? I'd say if the reason you're worried is because of the driftwood, the tannins leached from the wood shouldn't be enough of a problem to be worried about imo, especially since your parrot has been living in the tank for a while. It seems like mostly the problem occurs when fish are moved into soft water for which they are ill prepared.

Keep in mind though that parrots were bred in medium hard water...
PH6~8,KH3~6 according to happy breed (this is for mammon but they are pretty much just different expressions of the same genotype)
From various sources I've found that the consensus is that parrots breed and live best in medium hard to soft-ish (but not soft) water with a ph of about 6.5. this is how I keep my parrots and they lay eggs all the time, though they don't hatch for various reasons I'm still experimenting to figure out.

Midas cichlid are from generally hard water and so are synspillum, though not as much, so the hybrid has a natural tendency toward hard water, but the water they were bred in is softer so they are somewhat adapted to that (but this is evolution in decades instead of centuries).
For the most part I wouldn't go around messing with your parrots water unless your tap water comes out with a real low KH (because you don't want the tank acid crashing).
Stability is more important IMO than exact water specifications, especially considering that the parrot is a domestic fish.

for this stocklist you could keep your water between 6 and 7 and medium soft/medium hard. Frankly I'd worry more about your brown knife and butterfly, as those are more likley wild than farm raised, given the current socioeconomic climate in africa, and how difficult they are to breed.

Or you could just give in to temptation and get another tank for your cichlids!
thats what I would do : )