Hi, I have a shoal of pencilfish and one of the females is gravid and the males are showing a lot of interest in her. I have been toying with the idea of attempting to breed them, having never even bred livebearers before 
. However, my water is very hard (15 dkh) and I may be wrong but I'm sure that any eggs wouldn't hatch in water this hard. I can get some RO water from my lfs but have doubts about placing the fish who ar eused to the hard water in the RO water and then back again. Would I just acclimatise them the same way I would with new fish? Would it be better to move the eggs to the RO water after spawning? I have read the pinned topic about spawning and I don't think I'd be able to use a divider as it's a heavily planted tank so would it work removing any eggs and putting them in RO water? I do have another tank I can use if it would be better to separate a pair but as I say, I'm not sure how to overcome the hardness issue. I did have a breeding pair of Angels but due to the hardness (I'm pretty sure) the eggs never hatched and they spawned 8 or 9 times.
Thanks, Jo
. However, my water is very hard (15 dkh) and I may be wrong but I'm sure that any eggs wouldn't hatch in water this hard. I can get some RO water from my lfs but have doubts about placing the fish who ar eused to the hard water in the RO water and then back again. Would I just acclimatise them the same way I would with new fish? Would it be better to move the eggs to the RO water after spawning? I have read the pinned topic about spawning and I don't think I'd be able to use a divider as it's a heavily planted tank so would it work removing any eggs and putting them in RO water? I do have another tank I can use if it would be better to separate a pair but as I say, I'm not sure how to overcome the hardness issue. I did have a breeding pair of Angels but due to the hardness (I'm pretty sure) the eggs never hatched and they spawned 8 or 9 times.Thanks, Jo
