Hard Water

[suzie]

Can a high GH value kill my fish eventually or will it just cause them not to breed?

 

[sylvia]

Depends on just how high and what fish you have. Most fish will adapt and do fine. They may even breed though the eggs may not hatch.

 

[suzie]

I can't tell how high at the moment cos I've only got a dip stick test for GH. However all of my fish have been fine for about 10 months and I've even had my Bristlenoses and Guppies breed several times. But two gold nugget plecs have died with no signs of any infections at all and the GH is the only irregularity in my water levels. One plec died within 3 weeks the other died within hours, could the GH be causing this?

 

[sylvia]

Possibly - especialy if they came from far away (wild caught or shipped over) as they won't be used to your area's water. I'm thinking your other fish do fine cause they were most likely rbed in similar water. The other thing to consider is that some fish are just less hardy and easy to stress than others. When you get a fish from your LFS the trip home obviously causes a lot of stress. It is essential that you find out whether your LFS keeps the fish in local water that is exactly like your own and acclimatize your fish accordingly so that they get a chance to gradualy adapt to their new environment - thus reducing stress and so also reducing the chance of disease. The fact that those plecos died so quickly suggests they were very stressed or were shocked by very different water params. to what they were used to. A bad batch and illness is a possibility too.

 

[Sanj]

The Gh according to my dip test reads >16 and sometimes a little lower.

Readings i have taken in the past from AP test kit have given readings of about the same~16

My kh however is much lower 4-6 (depending on the tank).

Unless your fish are particularly senstive you should be ok. I keep Cardinals and Rummys and they are doing fine (bright red noses on the Rummys).

Alot depends on how well your fish have been acclimatised, where thye were bred/ caught etc. It is apossiblity that your KH was too high to what the plecs were used to. It is a good isea to ask the lfs what water they are kept in (as in parametres).

As mentioned above there are other reasons that could have led to the fish deaths.