Hardwater stock semi finals

Ok I think I've finally narrowed down my list. Disappointed to not have Boesemani Rainbowfish or Celestial Pearl Danios or Threadfin Rainbowfish. But they're in the 250ppm range and my tap water is 307ppm.

Tank is 127 litres or 34 US gallons. 90cm/36" length x 48cm/18" height x 30cm/12" width.

Tap water pH 7.6 (always 8 in tank) and GH is 337ppm (showing up in test in tank as 179ppm for some reason so not sure if this will throw out every thing on list).

So here's the shortlist. Mostly going off stick availability too.

I think Endler/Guppy make only tank for my 60cm/24" length tank for my toddler to enjoy as octonauts or similar theme tank.

Endlers

• Temp 24-30
• Ph 7.0-8.5
• Hardness 268-626ppm
• Tank size 18" x 12" x 12"
• Good with other small peaceful fish. Not guppy opp. gender

Guppy

• Temp 17-28
• Ph 7.0-8.5
• Hardness 143-563ppm
• Tank size 18" x 12"
• Peaceful fish, don't keep with nippers.
• Careful of gender mix with Endlers.

Fintail blue eyed rainbow fish

• Temp 24-28
• Ph 7.0-8.0
• Hardness 258ppm-536ppm
• Tank size 24" x 12"
• fishes of comparable size, disposition, and requirements with many cyprinids, gobiids, eleotrids, and smaller melanotaeniids suitable.

L129 Pleco

• Temp 26-30
• Ph 6.6-7.5
• Hardness 286.4ppm
• Tank size 24" x 12" x 12"
• Peaceful community fish, territorial with other pleco but ok if lots of cover & space.

L144/L114a Blue Eyed Lemon Bristlenose/longfin

• Temp 24-30
• Ph 7.2-8.2
• GH 160-300ppm KH 120-400ppm
• Tank size 18" x 12" x 12"
• Peaceful community fish, territorial with other pleco but ok if lots of cover & space.
• Longfin not with nippy fish.

Celebes Rainbowfish

• Temp 22-28
• Ph 7.9-8.0
• Hardness 179-448ppm
• Tank size 30" x 12"
• Very peaceful, shoal 6-8.

Neon Blue-Eye

• Temp 21-31
• Ph 7.0-8.5
• Hardness 179-447ppm
• Tank size 18" x 12"
• Best alongside fishes of comparable size, disposition, and requirement.

Glass Bloodfin tetra

• Temp 23-27
• Ph 6-7.5 but very adaptable.
• Hardness up to 537ppm
• Tank size 24" x 12"
• Very peaceful
• Group of 6-8

Porthole Catfish

• Temp 24-28
• Ph 5.5-7.5
• Hardness 358ppm
• Tank size 36" x 15" x 12"
• Max size 4"
• Groups of 3-6
• Good community fish even with small tank mates.

Silvertip Tetra

• Temp 23-28.
• Ph 6.0-8.0
• Hardness up to 358 ppm.
• Tank size 24" x 15" x 12"
• Lovely but good community fish.
• Keep groups of 6-10

Cherry Barb

• Temp 20-27
• Ph 6.0-8.0
• Hardness up to 347ppm.
• Tank size 24" x 12"
• Very peaceful, good community fish.
• Keep groups of 6-10

I saw a shoal of Endlers the other day, love them, but don't suit my water........maybe we can set up a water exchange........

kwi said:

I saw a shoal of Endlers the other day, love them, but don't suit my water........maybe we can set up a water exchange........

Click to expand...

Yeah so think I could do 20 endlers in the Toddler tank. Maybe some algae cleaning snails. I love Bristlenose but probably best in the bigger tank.

None of the above.

WCMM
EDR (instead of CPDs.)
Medaka
Dwarf Livebearers

EDR & DLs may be too substratey too live together?

Ok so there are a few things that I get confused by on your list and some really good examples of why I am starting to question some of specifics of the profiles that we rely on as a forum.


Firstly CPD’s Celestichthys Margaritatus, on the profile on seriously fish it is stated as upto 268ppm but the area they are from is known to be harder. They are a very close relative of Celestichthys Erythromycin (to the point they can hybridise easily) which is from Lake Inle which is known to be exceptionally hard. On other profiles CPDs are stated as upto 20 or even 30gh in some instances. I dont know if 268ppm is just a standard cut off point for some fish but there are other profiles that I have seen that dont add up that specifically against other reliable sources.


Secondly the Thread Fin Rainbows - known from a really broad range of habitats in the wild covering huge geography and again all from known hard water locations - exactly how hard for each location is up for reasearch but knowing how hard the water is in some of the south east asian locations and particularly the australian locations makes me question that this fish with such a wide distribution does not occur in water at these higher hardness locations that are common in the countries mentioned in the profile.


Lastly the South American fish mentioned on your list, the plecs inparticular. The Blue Eyed Lemons are a man made fish, I suspect that their hardness range comes from the wide distribution of Bristlenose Plecs (like I was talking about for the threadfins), then the L129’s they are from the Rio Orrinoco but are the only fish from there I can find that seem to be suited to that level of hardness. There are loads of characins, cichlids and catfish (like cories) from the same river system so must pass through the same region as the L129’s? But then you find some biotope profiles that say upto 15gh or 250ppm but that covers endemic species like Blue Rams, Checkerboard Cichlids, a bunch of Cories etc?


I supose what I’m saying is that I personally dont take what the profiles say as a written law because it presents these inconsistencies. I would say widespread fish with a requirements on the hard side of things are ok to consider where as fish where these hard figures are either a. unexpected like the L129s or at the upper end of their expected limits are more to the less preffered side of things.
So for example for me I would keep a fish from moderately hard (eg 200ppm-250ppm) in hard water (250ppm-300ppm). Moving up one of these bandings is not something I would loose sleep over in the same way as a soft fish like a Chocolate Gourami being kept in 300ppm water.

It is also important to keep fish you are truely happy with because they are a big commitment and if you get bored or disinterested the fish loose out in more ways than being in slightly harder water.

So if you want a tank of Thread Fin Rainbows and CPDs I say go for it?

Maybe someone can fill in the cracks that are confusing me - happy to be proved wrong in these instances but I dont think some of it adds up.

Wills

Endlers and Guppy should be fine as would platies, mollies and swordtails in the bigger tank.

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Fintail blue eyed rainbow fish, no idea what species that is (never heard of it). Some blue-eye rainbowfish (Pseudomugils) come from soft water and others come from hard, brackish or even sea water.

Melanotaenia boesemani come from very hard water and most rainbowfish do best in hard water (GH above 200ppm).

Most Iriatherina werneri come from soft acid water. They occur in Cape York Queensland, a couple of places in the Northern Territory and a couple of places in New Guinea. They do ok in medium hard water but normally occur in soft water.

The following link has information on rainbowfish. You can click contents on the top right of the page or try the link at the bottom to download the pdf version onto your hard-drive.

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L129 Pleco
L144/L114a Blue Eyed Lemon Bristlenose/longfin
Plecos and suckermouth catfish tend to be soft water species.

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Celebes Rainbowfish are either good or bad. If you get a good batch they do well in hard water with a bit of salt. If you get a bad batch they will probably all die.

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Neon Blue-Eye (Pseudomugil cyanodorsalis) are a brackish or sea water species that can be kept in pure fresh water but it depends on where they originate from. As a general rule, they live longer and do much better when kept in half to full strength sea water.

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Glass Bloodfin tetra

Porthole Catfish (Hoplosternum catfish) - I always took these things as coming from soft to medium hard water.

Silvertip Tetra
Cherry Barb and all barbs are generally from soft to medium hard water.

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Halfbeaks are a small fish that does well in hard water, or check out the African Rift Lake cichlids from Lake Malawi, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria.

my replies in bold @Colin_T

Endlers and Guppy should be fine as would platies, mollies and swordtails in the bigger tank.

I've currently got Platies that jeep producing fry so want to move away from mixed gender livebearers. Advise here was that Endlers & guppies are ok to keep all male but not other livebearers.
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Fintail blue eyed rainbow fish, no idea what species that is (never heard of it). Some blue-eye rainbowfish (Pseudomugils) come from soft water and others come from hard, brackish or even sea water.

its a Rainbowfish

Pseudomugil furcatus – Forktail Blue-eye (Popondetta furcata, Popondichthys furcatus) — Seriously Fish

www.seriouslyfish.com

Melanotaenia boesemani come from very hard water and most rainbowfish do best in hard water (GH above 200ppm)..

Oops I misread that profile before and actually the Boesemani is an option for me

Most Iriatherina werneri come from soft acid water. They occur in Cape York Queensland, a couple of places in the Northern Territory and a couple of places in New Guinea. They do ok in medium hard water but normally occur in soft water.
yes my water is too hard for the Threadfin.

The following link has information on rainbowfish. You can click contents on the top right of the page or try the link at the bottom to download the pdf version onto your hard-drive.

super thanks!

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L129 Pleco
L144/L114a Blue Eyed Lemon Bristlenose/longfin
Plecos and suckermouth catfish tend to be soft water species.
The Porthole is definitely ok in my hard water. I've asked others about Pleco in particular @seangee. Suggestion was Pleco is fine in harder water & their origin isn't fully known. But I will research more.
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Celebes Rainbowfish are either good or bad. If you get a good batch they do well in hard water with a bit of salt. If you get a bad batch they will probably all die.
I'll these a skip so. Wouldn't want to risk that and I'm not sure how salt is for the other fish.
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Neon Blue-Eye (Pseudomugil cyanodorsalis) are a brackish or sea water species that can be kept in pure fresh water but it depends on where they originate from. As a general rule, they live longer and do much better when kept in half to full strength sea water.
oh ok will skip these guys too as sounds le not suited at all.
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Glass Bloodfin tetra

Porthole Catfish (Hoplosternum catfish) - I always took these things as coming from soft to medium hard water.
simply fish definitely put these at 358 and suitable to my water parameters.

Silvertip Tetra
Cherry Barb and all barbs are generally from soft to medium hard water.
The wild fish prefers softer but according to SimplyFish "The farm-raised fish available in stores are fairly adaptable where water chemistry is concerned and should be happy within the range 6.0 – 8.0. Wild stock are likely to prefer slighty acidic to neutral conditions.

Hardness: 36 – 357 ppm. Wild fish will probably do best towards the lower end of this range."

Puntius titteya – Cherry Barb (Barbus titteya, Capoeta titteya) — Seriously Fish

www.seriouslyfish.com

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Halfbeaks are a small fish that does well in hard water, or check out the African Rift Lake cichlids from Lake Malawi, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria.

i thought those fish were best kept with other similar fish. I really want the Forktail blue-eyed Rainbowfish so might be best creating a hard water Rainbowfish tank.

Wills said:

Firstly CPD’s Celestichthys Margaritatus, on the profile on seriously fish it is stated as upto 268ppm but the area they are from is known to be harder. They are a very close relative of Celestichthys Erythromycin (to the point they can hybridise easily) which is from Lake Inle which is known to be exceptionally hard. On other profiles CPDs are stated as upto 20 or even 30gh in some instances. I dont know if 268ppm is just a standard cut off point for some fish but there are other profiles that I have seen that dont add up that specifically against other reliable sources.

Click to expand...

When I set up my nano I went looking for hard water nano fish as it was before I started using RO. I went to look at these in my LFS and concluded that they are basically the same fish with different patterns as @Wills and SF suggest. And yet other sources cite the hardness as 90-180ppm. When they went into my tank the hardness was 290ppm. They thrived and regularly spawned. Over time I have reduced the tank to its current level of 107ppm. They are still thriving and spawning - so I suspect they are incredibly reilient little fish

I have had a few losses along the way but overall I have more now than I started out with 30 months ago

seangee said:

When I set up my nano I went looking for hard water nano fish as it was before I started using RO. I went to look at these in my LFS and concluded that they are basically the same fish with different patterns as @Wills and SF suggest. And yet other sources cite the hardness as 90-180ppm. When they went into my tank the hardness was 290ppm. They thrived and regularly spawned. Over time I have reduced the tank to its current level of 107ppm. They are still thriving and spawning - so I suspect they are incredibly reilient little fish

I have had a few losses along the way but overall I have more now than I started out with 30 months ago

Click to expand...

I took CPDs off my list because of water Hardness. My aim here is a very peaceful community around the small Forktail blue-eyed Rainbowfish. My thinking currently is to put small fish in groups of 10 in with Bristlenose Pleco and possibly porthole Catfish. I've been really studying the behaviour section of each profile on SF to try get fish that can be active swimmers, less skittish in groups of 10, and peaceful.

At home we are looking into replacing our currently broken softener & adding an RO unit. I'll still have a hard water unfiltered tap but possibility of mixing a little RO in. Personally did rather work off fish that are ok in the 307ppm unfiltered tap water.

I think this would work and be a lovely community:

10 x Forktail blue-eyed Rainbowfish
10 x Celestial Pearl Danios
6 x Cherry Barb
6 x Silvertip Tetra
1 x Lemon/Albino Bristlenose Pleco
1 x Columbian False Zebra Pleco

The Cherry Barb & Silvertip Tetra are both fish as very good peaceful community fish even with smaller fish.

I could do one Pleco. Or no Pleco and try source 4 Porthole Catfish.

@seangee you've a similar tank though I went with taller Clearseal (accidentally). Do you think they'd be ok?

Only fish on that list Ikeep are CPDs and bristlenose. Both of these are fine. Don't know how the CPDs will do with the other larger fish

The Forktail is 40mm-60mm I think @Ch4rlie kept them with CPDs but might be mixed up. If their too skittish I'll swap them out. Maybe they can be a future species only tank in my home office

I've got to say that I really really agree with Wills here. I feel that a lot of water parameter ranges stated on websites are highly inaccurate. They're almost always too restrictive, anecdotal, and unscientific. For example, I have never ever seen water parameters with citations (e.g. actual field measurements of water parameters taken from collection points for the fish, or water parameter measurements from major breeders of the fish).

Even when water parameter ranges are accurate, they ignore the fact that certain species that have been captive bred for generations can be perfectly comfortable in water parameters dramatically different than would be found in the wild.

On this forum and other forums, people make a big deal out of non-waste-based water parameters, and, for the most part, I think they're wasting their energy.

As a final note, you should definitely be basing your choices off the water parameters of the actual water in the tank, not the water as it comes out of the tap. After all, the fish will be in the tank not the tap. If the numbers in the tank are really different than the tap I would suggest measuring the hardness every day for a week (assuming you do weekly water changes) to get a clear idea of the hardness in the tank.

ClownLurch said:

None of the above.

WCMM
EDR (instead of CPDs.)
Medaka
Dwarf Livebearers

EDR & DLs may be too substratey too live together?

Click to expand...

I need the cypher. What's EDR? I'm too scared of livebearers and their fry. I like the white cloud but not the medaka. I'm very set on my mohawk buddies (Forktail blue-eyed Rainbowfish)

Wills said:

Ok so there are a few things that I get confused by on your list and some really good examples of why I am starting to question some of specifics of the profiles that we rely on as a forum.


Firstly CPD’s Celestichthys Margaritatus, on the profile on seriously fish it is stated as upto 268ppm but the area they are from is known to be harder. They are a very close relative of Celestichthys Erythromycin (to the point they can hybridise easily) which is from Lake Inle which is known to be exceptionally hard. On other profiles CPDs are stated as upto 20 or even 30gh in some instances. I dont know if 268ppm is just a standard cut off point for some fish but there are other profiles that I have seen that dont add up that specifically against other reliable sources.


Secondly the Thread Fin Rainbows - known from a really broad range of habitats in the wild covering huge geography and again all from known hard water locations - exactly how hard for each location is up for reasearch but knowing how hard the water is in some of the south east asian locations and particularly the australian locations makes me question that this fish with such a wide distribution does not occur in water at these higher hardness locations that are common in the countries mentioned in the profile.


Lastly the South American fish mentioned on your list, the plecs inparticular. The Blue Eyed Lemons are a man made fish, I suspect that their hardness range comes from the wide distribution of Bristlenose Plecs (like I was talking about for the threadfins), then the L129’s they are from the Rio Orrinoco but are the only fish from there I can find that seem to be suited to that level of hardness. There are loads of characins, cichlids and catfish (like cories) from the same river system so must pass through the same region as the L129’s? But then you find some biotope profiles that say upto 15gh or 250ppm but that covers endemic species like Blue Rams, Checkerboard Cichlids, a bunch of Cories etc?


I supose what I’m saying is that I personally dont take what the profiles say as a written law because it presents these inconsistencies. I would say widespread fish with a requirements on the hard side of things are ok to consider where as fish where these hard figures are either a. unexpected like the L129s or at the upper end of their expected limits are more to the less preffered side of things.
So for example for me I would keep a fish from moderately hard (eg 200ppm-250ppm) in hard water (250ppm-300ppm). Moving up one of these bandings is not something I would loose sleep over in the same way as a soft fish like a Chocolate Gourami being kept in 300ppm water.

It is also important to keep fish you are truely happy with because they are a big commitment and if you get bored or disinterested the fish loose out in more ways than being in slightly harder water.

So if you want a tank of Thread Fin Rainbows and CPDs I say go for it?

Maybe someone can fill in the cracks that are confusing me - happy to be proved wrong in these instances but I dont think some of it adds up.

Wills

Click to expand...

I've no experience to help inform my choose so based these all from Simply Fish. I really love Plecos & miss having them so was hoping to bring smaller breeds back (and seeing Sean has a 15 yr old BN in hard water gave me hope).

If I was to say the fish that I like the most close to or ok in hard water I'd say -

Forktail blue-eyed Rainbowfish
Celestial Pearl Danios
Threadfin Rainbowfish
Cherry Barb
L129
Albino or Lemon Bristlenose
Porthole Catfish

So I'd be very happy with a combination from that list