Do water parameters matter?

[Waterstrider]

Short answer depends on the fish. Just like other animals just because it’s mostly found in one place is not a guarantee it would have problems somewhere else.
It’s much more individual then most people keep, which is why fish folk come to so many different conclusions.
Many fish have constantly changing environments and have biological safeguards for that. HOWEVER, some do not.
Bristlenose plecos honestly live great in hard or soft water and because of that they e even become invasive in places some fish folk will say they can’t survive .
Best bet is to ask about specific species because they’re not equally sensitive.

 

[Waterstrider]

I try to have all fish in a tank be in the same hardness range but will stretch things a bit. For instance I plan on having Panda Garra and Ember Tetras. Going just PH since I won't get a good idea of GH/KH until the tank is up and running I will be running on the edge. The PH of my tap water varies between 6.3 and 6.7. 6.5 is the low end for Pandas and the high end for the tetras so I will be on the line as to the fish matching the water but I don't really think being off 0.2 back and forth is a big deal since the average will be within range for both fish.

Now, I used to do pretty much S.A. Cichlids and would have never considered adding hard water African cichlids as it would just result in a short life for the Africans.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think the water hardness/softness has to be exact for each species but it should be as close as possible.

I have seen panda garra do great in as high as ph 8. They’re arguably one of the most flexible of fish.ember tetras much less so.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I agree with the overall trend here. I also agree with the original assertion that changing one's water hardness can be troublesome and sometimes cause more problems than it fixes.

One thing I would add is that some fish seem to be more adaptable than others. This is especially true of fish that migrate long distances or (more common in our hobby) live in intermittent streams, estuaries, and/or monsoon zones. Fish like panda garra or plains killifish might go from a super-hard evaporation pool to r/o-like softness in the time it takes to have a good rainstorm, and they seem to roll with it.

But I'd say fish like that are the exception, not the rule. Most fish aren't that flexible.

 

[gwand]

Not necessarily, depends on species

Re-read my post. I stipulated that!

 

[MaloK]

Still a fish that goes trough different water chemistry during seasons is not relegated to that same water condition continuously like it would occur in an aquarium.

Meaning that even the "adaptable" could struggle the same if constantly maintained in the same extreme condition.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

When one wants to talk about bristlenose, the following factoid needs to be considered:

There are currently 76 recognized species of Ancistrus, according to Wikipedia. PlanetCatfish recognizes 187, including L-numbers, while a post on WordPress.com mentions that they are in the hundreds, with new species being discovered regularly.

The above is from the Google AI. Whether you limit the discussion to described species or you go with the PC numbers which include yet unidentified fish, there are a lot of them. They do not all need the exact same parameters as they are spread out over SA in many different rivers.

I have kept and bred a number of plecos which are adapted to changing conditions between the peaks of the dry and rainy seasons. These fish adapted/evolved to be able to survive in such changing conditions. However, there are still limits to the parameters which they can handle.

On the other hand one of the rareset fish species in the world is the Devil's Hole Pupfish. (Google it to learn how rare and how parameter specific they are.) To date even the best scientists have not been able to keep them alive if they are removed from their lone habitat. The point is that fish come in all sorts of varieties in terms of the range in which they can survive. But all of them have limits and if we try to keep them outside of those limits they will suffer and often die.

So the answer to the OP's question is yes parameters matter, but how wide a range those parameters may be for any given species will vary. And there is a difference between surviving and thriving which is important for what fish we keep in our water.

I kept Altum angels for a number of years. To do so I needed an RO/DI unit and a lot of botanicals etc. When I was getting in wild Altums early on I had the tank for them at a pH of 4.2 and the TDS were between 10 and 30 ppm. I was able to change the parameters to more like 6.0 and TDS in the 60 ppm range. This process took me six months. And while they did survive, they would have been better kept in somewhat lower numbers. There was 0 chance they would spawn in those parameters.

 

[MrsShrimp]

We are in a very hard water area and when I do water changes I always treat with Tap Safe. I have tetras, corys and sparkling and honey gourami and they all seem well. Do you think that Tap Safe actually works on such hard water?
Thanks

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

We are in a very hard water area and when I do water changes I always treat with Tap Safe. I have tetras, corys and sparkling and honey gourami and they all seem well. Do you think that Tap Safe actually works on such hard water?
Thanks

All TapSafe does is neutralise chlorine and chloramine, it doesn't have any effect on water hardness that I know of

 

[jaylach]

We are in a very hard water area and when I do water changes I always treat with Tap Safe. I have tetras, corys and sparkling and honey gourami and they all seem well. Do you think that Tap Safe actually works on such hard water?
Thanks

I've never used Tap Safe so looked it up. All I saw on it was that it is to remove chlorine. I doubt that it would have much, if any, affect on hardness.

One thing I noticed is that it claims to support the slime coat on fish. This normally means aloe which is not good as it, over time, can mess up the gills. This is also true with Stress Coat.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

API Water conditioner is a good one if you wanted to replace TapSafe in the future

 

[Essjay]

To be sure, this is the product CaptainBarnicles mentioned (API make a few water conditioners)

API® | TAP WATER CONDITIONER™

API TAP WATER CONDITIONER treatment removes toxins from tap water instantly, so you can add fish to your aquarium (or add them back after a water change) immediately.

apifishcare.com

The dose rate is very small, my 118 ml bottle says 1 ml per 76 litres/20 US gallons; or 1 drop per 4.2 litres/1.1 US gallons for chlorine. Chloramine needs more.

 

[jaylach]

To be sure, this is the product CaptainBarnicles mentioned (API make a few water conditioners)

API® | TAP WATER CONDITIONER™

API TAP WATER CONDITIONER treatment removes toxins from tap water instantly, so you can add fish to your aquarium (or add them back after a water change) immediately.

apifishcare.com

The dose rate is very small, my 118 ml bottle says 1 ml per 76 litres/20 US gallons; or 1 drop per 4.2 litres/1.1 US gallons for chlorine. Chloramine needs more.

That is the product that I use. Seems to be good stuff.

 

[anewbie]

For the fishes i keep it matters a lot - that little fellow in my profile picture would die pretty fast in harder water - I have over 15 aquariums with species that either prefer or require blackwater - some require water with ph below 6 to breed.

here are some of the fishes i have:
a. sp ladisalo
a. sp d39
a. winkelfleck
a. wolli
a. nijjeni
a. sp inispra
a. bluketa
wc discus (with wc Dicrosus maculatus - really like these but a little too friendly)
a. norberti
----
The ones i like a *lot* include the d39 d. maculatus, a. nijjenji (these are fairly common - mine are wc and they can tolerate harder but not hard water).

Anyway i pretty much prefer sa dwarf cichild these days - there are some interesting west african fishes and gourami but right now i think i'll stick with what i ahve. I really only have two fishes on my wish list but they also require very very soft water.

Anyway my typical aquarium has an ec of 20 to 30 (for those that use tds this is between 10 and 15).

 

[MrsShrimp]

All TapSafe does is neutralise chlorine and chloramine, it doesn't have any effect on water hardness that I know of

Thanks for the advice.

 

[GaryE]

That's a really important question to raise. Our hobby is riddled with myths. One category is the ones that exist because we want to hear them. If a myth is very convenient for us, of course we'll believe it.

The idea that the entire kidney situation for creatures that battle to maintain a balance of water inside and outside their bodies could transform in a couple of generations is silly. There's no better word for it. It would be nice, but. Mineral levels affect osmoregulation (the water balance in and outside the body), skin defenses, neurological function (I hope you've never seen a molly die in soft water from that one), sperm and egg function, and probably other systems we don't factor in or can't test.

There are species that travel between water habitats, or face seasonal changes in their native waters. They tend to have well adapted systems for coping with that. Fish from somewhere like the Amazon basis, where the water is usually chemically stable, have fine tuned, specialized systems. The flip side is the popular hardwater Great Rift Lakes of Africa, where the fish would die horrible deaths in soft Amazon water.

The story told about fish adapting in a few captive generations is convenient. It's also untrue, but then again, aren't fish disposable lives anyway? If you say yes, then we have myths for you! Plus I can sell you new cardinals every year.

Some people like it when their fish die after very short lives. They get to replace them.

Other similar myths?
All fish eat the same foods.
One temperature works for all the fish sold in stores.
All fish are breeds (like dogs) not species, so they can be treated the same.
Fish will stop growing to the size of their tanks.

There are so many more. It's once you start saying "that sounds too easy" and check to see if it's true, species by species, that the world of this hobby expands and becomes a million times more interesting.

I think I'll go replant my all my houseplants in sand now. They come from the plant trade so they must be adapted...