In praise of plants (again)

[GaryE]

I go at 30 to 50% with regular tap water, dechlorinated. I have extremely soft water, however, and keep rainforest species.

A large mistake a lot of us make in discussions is assuming we know what tapwater is. It varies, even within the same city or region. I lived on an urban island where at one end, the water was moderately hard from limestone reservoirs, and at the other, was Amazon soft.

Where I am now, in another region, there would be no reason for me to buy an RO system. I breed cardinal tetras in my tap water here. So how one person manages water can differ greatly from another. My soft tap generates different advice and discussion than if I lived in an agricultural zone in the US midwest, with nitrates in my tap water.

 

[f_luxus]

A large mistake a lot of us make in discussions is assuming we know what tapwater is.

Amen. Congratulations to your soft tapwater
I'm not against water changes, i just don't do it so regularly. My way is more intuitive, then having routines.

I also have emerse plantation. My fish are all healthy, the tetras maybe a bit chubby

 

[seangee]

They remove N P K and micro nutrients. In the end they remove everything except what you find in seawater. Seasalt is what remains. With a TDS meter, i can measure that rest, very easy.

@seangee Every week 50-75% with tap water or RO water?

For me its RO. I have softwater fish and what's in my tap is hard enough to walk on. It also contains nitrates at the legal limit (50ppm)

 

[GaryE]

For me its RO. I have softwater fish and what's in my tap is hard enough to walk on. It also contains nitrates at the legal limit (50ppm)

Call me obsessive, but when I was choosing a part of my current city to live in, I downloaded the most recent water analysis and checked for that. Luckily for me, the whole region has clean water, though one pocket served by a municipal well has hard, pH 8.2 tap. Living in a place with high nitrates would be tough going for a multi-tank aquarist.

 

[jigsyboy]

Around 6 weeks ago I went off on 3 weeks hols. The day I got back I did my usual water changes - water change only never touched the plants.
Sad to say I have done nothing since besides feeding. First I came down with the lurgy and then just as I was getting over it I got a nasty eye infection.

Happily I'm all over it now so decided to attack the tanks today. These were all completely overgrown with frogbit and between them I scooped out over 20 litres of the stuff. Understandably they were very dark. When I got to the community tank I noticed a lot of surface scum / muck. Oh no - I forgot to turn the filter back on, and its probably been off for 3 weeks! What I saw was left over food trapped in the floating plants
Pic is after scooping out a full bucket of frogbit and pulling the tops off the ambulia, but before changing the water or cleaning the glass. I also never trimmed anything else. The advantage of low tech is as the light goes the plants below grow slower but suffer no real ill effects. The fish are all acounted for and appear to be thriving.

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Before the next time you get in a panic that your filter has failed remember that insurance is cheap and easy . And NO! I'm not in the least bit worried that I have lost my cycle.

I’m new to this fish lark, my guppy’s have had babies twice now, is there any way I can stop them

 

[GaryE]

I’m new to this fish lark, my guppy’s have had babies twice now, is there any way I can stop them

Since you're new, start a thread if you have a question that doesn't relate to what's being discussed. Otherwise, your question gets lost while derailing discussion on what someone else asked for feedback on.
But your answer is no. Depending on your tank size and set up, which you should include in your new thread, you may be able to introduce a peaceful fry predator that will reduce the guppy population. Start a thread with more info and see what's suggested by the community here.

 

[gwand]

As I posted in the past my well water has a nitrate level that varies from 10-30 ppm. I use a nitrate resin filter when the nitrate level is high but it doesn’t take the nitrate level to zero. So in addition to having submerged plants I just finished a project of adding hydroponic plants to the rim of five tanks.