My Black mollies....and others

[blue_ram]

I dont know much about alkalinity or ph etc cause someone once told me never to play about with it.

Good advice. Unless you know what you're doing, messing with hardness and pH does more harm than good. But, if your alkalinity is low (< 80ppm or ~4dkH), then you need to monitor your pH, and do water change weekly.

I use a water conditioner when I add new water to my tank and do weekly nitrate, nitrite and ammonia tests

This is also a good practice, although I'm lazy and don't bother with ammonia and nitrIte test on tanks over 3 mos. old (unless I change something). NitrAte test is a good indicator of water quality, and should be kept at no higher than 20mg/L (or ppm) for fish sensitive to water conditions, and 40mg/L for all other fish.

Note that nitrAte itself isn't toxic (not highly anyway). But it's a good indicator of level of organic pollution in the tank.

 

[blue_ram]

Now I just have a few more questions so things don't go crazy again.
do I still need to do water changes to get the make the nitrate go down more or is it ok where it is?

It's fine for now. Test your tap water for nitrate. If you have a tap water with high nitrate, then don't go crazy. Just try to keep it to at about 20mg/L above the tap water level.

What is the Hardness of the water supposed to be?

I'm not so sure if I believe your alkalinity reading. 40ppm means you have virtually no buffer, and may be prone to pH crash(rapid drop in pH). Usually, the best way around this is frequent water change, but your water has almost no buffer anyway. You need to monitor your pH weekly. If your pH drops below 6.5, add a whole sea shell in the tank. Do small amount of water change (15%) weekly.

Will my fish die if the alkalinity is to low?

Low alkalinity itself won't kill fish, but pH crash due to low alkalinity will. That's why I said to monitor your pH weekly. Soft water with low alkalinity is great for experts who wants to breed south american fish, but is problematic for beginners. In general, it's easier to keep fish in hard water than soft water. The only nice thing about soft water is that you don't have to worry about ugly white calcium deposits.

Any other info you can give me that I should know from my readings would be great!!!

Pickup a cheap 10gallon quarantine tank from flea market, good will, etc. Use it as a quarantine tank. Only thing you need is the tank, filter, heater, and a thermometer. A lid of ANY kind is also helpful to prevent fish from killing themselves, but you don't need a full hood. When you buy more fish, fill the quarantine tank with water from your main tank and keep them in the quarantine tank for at least 2 weeks. If possible, swap the filter media (or bio-wheel) from the old tank with the quarantine tank. Only when they look healthy after 2weeks (3 weeks preferred), add them to your main tank.

Buy only a few fish at a time. You don't want your quarantine tank go through the new tank syndrome.

One more thing. Check to see if your water conditioner states that it "neutralizes" ammonia. If it does, be very careful. They usually contain some acid to convert ammonia into less toxic ammonium. Normally this is good, unless you happened to have very soft water....

 

[Mezoblue2]

Thank you!