Water hardness realities compared to what people say..

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TxDemb4theoilOligarchs

TxDemb4theoilOligarchs

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Jun 27, 2016
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All over the internet and among the "experts" I see loads of threads, videos and the like on water hardness and how you can only have soft water fish in soft water, which is fine.

Then I see tens of thousands of videos with people with limestone rock and admitted water hardness of 8 or general hard water parameters with giant clown loaches who supposedly cannot thrive in hard water.....and yet there they are...giant sized in hard water next to African Cichlids... I also see various LFS's with soft water fish in hard water. Also it's obvious a majority of people in the US who keep fish likely have hard water whether they know it or not and yet obviously still keep clown loaches and various other soft water fish.


So what's the deal with that? I hear people constantly railing on near religious levels about water parameters and softness then those same people will go in and compliment a video of a guy with giant clown loaches in hard water with limestone rocks.....

 
nzafi said:
Not sure about that. Over the years I see more people talk about consistency of parameters and only worry about hardness for specific species.
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I just get the impression 90% of the dogma is just that, dogma. Our fish can adapt to most anything in terms of water hardness if enough other environmental factors are in sync.
 
I agree with above..years ago that's how it was but now it's about consistency. Most fish now are captive bred, born and raised in neutral water so they are easier to keep. Just think about discus and how fragile they used to be. Currently I have them hard well water and they are thriving. I've actually had 3 spawns in the last 2 months...I don't raise them I just let nature take its course but you get the point.
 
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Two of them are, including the original. The inaccurate ones claim that GA has hard water. My hardness is 0 out of the tap. That doesn't seem hard to me.
 
Stephen Hiatt said:
Two of them are, including the original. The inaccurate ones claim that GA has hard water. My hardness is 0 out of the tap. That doesn't seem hard to me.
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Regardless you wanting to argue with every water hardness map on google, the point is most Americans who keep fish do not have soft water and yet their clown loaches, discus and other soft water fish do just fine in their big tanks chock full of limestone rocks and substrate.

You may indeed have soft water but that's besides the point I'm making and you know it.
 
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From my basic understanding the pathogens that live in hardware won't live in soft acidic water therefore fish species from soft water areas don't have the immune system to fight them off and over a number of years this can have take its toll
Also remember when looking at videos on YouTube there a small snapshot of time most of the time you don't get a follow-up a few years later
 
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dan518 said:
From my basic understanding the pathogens that live in hardware won't live in soft acidic water therefore fish species from soft water areas don't have the immune system to fight them off and over a number of years this can have take its toll
Also remember when looking at videos on YouTube there a small snapshot of time most of the time you don't get a follow-up a few years later
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But how do you respond to the videos with giant hardwater tanks where there's giant clown loaches that, according to the experts, cannot supposedly get big in hard water?

How are there thousands of 12+ year old giant clown loaches in hardwater tanks? Wouldn't that be in direct defiance of the experts?
 
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