Guppy help please

[Retired Viking]

Crushed coral can increase GH also. I have the revise problem and have to use RO water to reduce the hardness in my soft water tetra tank. I keep my guppies and platys in their ow n hard water tanks. It is easier to increase hardness than reduce it.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

@AdoraBelle Dearheart I know you've had lots of guppy fry. You too @Retired Viking. Have you seen this before?

Regarding GH the guppies need a minimum hardness of 8dh or 143ppm. Have you tested your tap water?

Maybe some extra surface disturbance too by turning up air stone.

I haven't seen that I'm afraid, if it's not ammonia/nitrites/nitrates, I'd wonder about temperature or oxygenation, but it's interesting the way they perked up after adding epsom salts.

Usually epsom salts aren't added to a tank though, aquarium salt is. I'm not confident about the differences, hopefully @essjay can help

 

[AndyDaly]

Crushed coral can increase GH also. I have the revise problem and have to use RO water to reduce the hardness in my soft water tetra tank. I keep my guppies and platys in their ow n hard water tanks. It is easier to increase hardness than reduce it.

I have crushed coral in all my guppy tanks but I have not seen any improvement, I heard seachem equilibrium works well.

 

[Retired Viking]

I have crushed coral in all my guppy tanks but I have not seen any improvement, I heard seachem equilibrium works well.

I use a TDS-3 hard water pen to measure the hardness of the water in PPM, it helps alot as I mix RO water with my hard water. They are cheap, I bought mine on E-bay for around 10 USD.

 

[Essjay]

Epsom salt will increase hardness- it's magnesium sulphate and the main minerals that make water hard are calcium and magnesium (with trace amounts of other metals).
I would prefer to use a mixture of calcium and magnesium to raise hardness rather than magnesium - or calcium - alone.



Epsom salts are used at the rate of 1 teaspoon per gallon for a bath for fish with dropsy. I suspect that a lot less has been used to raise the GH here.