WC Centrals in Soft Water

[ahud]

What do you consider a minimum hardness (GH and KH) for wild caught centrals and their offspring? My water is naturally soft and acidic. Great for South Americans in general, but not so much for fish that come from much harder water.

I recently picked up some f1 A. multispinosus "limon". I know rainbow cichlids are pretty adaptable and there may be no benefit to increasing the water hardness. My tap water generally comes out of the tap at pH of 6.8, KH and GH of 1-3. Conductivity is 130ppm.

 

[tlindsey]

What do you consider a minimum hardness (GH and KH) for wild caught centrals and their offspring? My water is naturally soft and acidic. Great for South Americans in general, but not so much for fish that come from much harder water.

I recently picked up some f1 A. multispinosus "limon". I know rainbow cichlids are pretty adaptable and there may be no benefit to increasing the water hardness. My tap water generally comes out of the tap at pH of 6.8, KH and GH of 1-3. Conductivity is 130ppm.

duanes

 

[Beetlebug515]

Those hardness levels are fairly low. I would add some lace rock or crushed coral to push those levels up a bit. Thankfully, it's much easier to make water hard than it is to soften it. I would wager that your fish might do fine for a time, but could have a significantly shortened lifespan due to lack of minerals for the osmotic process.

 

[duanes]

The multispinossa move to flooded plain areas to spawn in Costa Rica. These are rain soaked, highly vegetation low pH waters, so they will not be a problem.
If you kept species from the Nicaraguan great lakes where the pH is often high (up to 9) I might add a little baking soda, but not for the multipsinnosa.

 

[ahud]

I love Centrals, but shy away because of my water. I especially like Cryptoheros. Would you buffer to a certain mark with the hard water centrals?

Do you know of any published water values for wild A. multispinosus? I have read Paul's article on the species more times than I care to admit.

 

[duanes]

Info I have is pretty scarce, here in Central America, potability is generally the only real concern for scientists. Beyond science, even in American Cichlids II by Staecke and Linke where they took water parameters at many of their collection points, the authors only bothered with temp in the multispinnossa section, probably because seasonal changes are so drastic for multispinnossa it is adaptable to anything thrown at it, and gets every parameter imaginable in the course of a year.
Mine spent most of the time in my above neutral water (pH 7.8, 250 m/L hardness) but spawned when I added low hardness rain water with water changes. I kept a group of 10 in a 400 gallon shallow kiddy pool, where they paired off and spawned regularly.
Although I believe its always best to match the cichlids endemic to the tap water you have, with multispinnossa you get a "jack of all cichlids" adaptability.

 

[HybridHerp]

Mine has been living in water that's only a degree or two harder than yours and of a pH that's essentially the same for the past 4 years. Super adaptable and hardy fish.