Nitrate, hardness and cloudy water problem

[Essjay]

The API strips only go as high as 180 ppm so your GH could be 180 or anything higher. Can I suggest you look at your water company's website for hardness. It's usually on a page called in your area or something similar. Most have a box to enter your address or postcode. Make a not of the number and the unit of measurement as there are several they could use - or better still, post a screenshot. If you can't find it, tell us the name of the website and we'll see what we can find.

It is better to get fish which need the same hardness as our tap water. Altering the hardness is not something to be undertaken lightly. With 64 litres (17 gallons for our American members) toy do need to choose small fish. Fish such as endlers or guppies, though males only as females have a lot of fry and would overpopulate the tank very quickly; or some of the smaller rainbowfish in the genus Pseudomugil https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/search/pseudomugil
But we do need to know how hard your water actually is before suggesting fish.

 

[Megan2022]

The API strips only go as high as 180 ppm so your GH could be 180 or anything higher. Can I suggest you look at your water company's website for hardness. It's usually on a page called in your area or something similar. Most have a box to enter your address or postcode. Make a not of the number and the unit of measurement as there are several they could use - or better still, post a screenshot. If you can't find it, tell us the name of the website and we'll see what we can find.

It is better to get fish which need the same hardness as our tap water. Altering the hardness is not something to be undertaken lightly. With 64 litres (17 gallons for our American members) toy do need to choose small fish. Fish such as endlers or guppies, though males only as females have a lot of fry and would overpopulate the tank very quickly; or some of the smaller rainbowfish in the genus Pseudomugil https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/search/pseudomugil
But we do need to know how hard your water actually is before suggesting fish.

Thank you. Yes I'm happy for small fish until I am confident enough to upgrade my tank.

Yes the KH is 240
And the GH is 180

This strip (pic attached) is from 3 days ago, I didn't think to take a pic of my one earlier.

 

[Wills]

It's only 64 litres so I'm not going crazy with fish when I come to adding them, just trying to get accustomed to being able to keep a fish tank running before I go any bigger.

Thanks for the link I'll take a look.

No probs check out the fishless cycling article I think thats the best option.

On one of the other posts you mention the gh is 180 - is that 18 or 180ppm? Gh of 18 is pretty hard but 180ppm isnt too high and a lot of fish would do good.

I'd echo some of the comments above about adding some live plants check out a couple of youtube channels like George Farmer and MD Fishtanks to get an idea of whats achievable

Wills

 

[Megan2022]

No probs check out the fishless cycling article I think thats the best option.

On one of the other posts you mention the gh is 180 - is that 18 or 180ppm? Gh of 18 is pretty hard but 180ppm isnt too high and a lot of fish would do good.

I'd echo some of the comments above about adding some live plants check out a couple of youtube channels like George Farmer and MD Fishtanks to get an idea of whats achievable

Wills

This is the strip from 3 days ago and the GH/KH are still on the higher end of the scale. I didn't think to take a picture of today's but will do on tomorrows testing.

 

[Essjay]

The strip only goes as high as 180 ppm so yours could be 180 or 200 or 250 or even 300, the strip can't tell you. Your water company's website will tell you exactly how hard it is.
This does make a difference as many soft water fish are fine at 180 ppm. But if it's actually higher than 180, soft water fish would suffer and you would need hard water fish.

 

[Megan2022]

The strip only goes as high as 180 ppm so yours could be 180 or 200 or 250 or even 300, the strip can't tell you. Your water company's website will tell you exactly how hard it is.
This does make a difference as many soft water fish are fine at 180 ppm. But if it's actually higher than 180, soft water fish would suffer and you would need hard water fish.

Thanks, didn't think to check that! So I think my water is quite high...

 

[Essjay]

"Hardness as CaCO3" is the same as ppm, so your GH is 300 ppm (to the nearest 10) which converts to 17 dH. These are the two units used in fishkeeping. I suspected it was a lot higher than 180 ppm from your postcode when you had that as your location.

Alkalinity is what water companies call KH, yours is 240 (rounded to the nearest 10) which is the same as the test strip. KH is not as important to fish as GH. It is a buffer which stabilises pH. The higher the KH the harder it is to change the pH and with KH as high as yours it will be almost impossible to change pH. The fish which like your hardness also prefer pH over 7 so yours is fine for them.

I see they also report your tap water nitrate as 24.3 ppm which is more or less the same as your strips.

 

[Megan2022]

No probs check out the fishless cycling article I think thats the best option.

On one of the other posts you mention the gh is 180 - is that 18 or 180ppm? Gh of 18 is pretty hard but 180ppm isnt too high and a lot of fish would do good.

I'd echo some of the comments above about adding some live plants check out a couple of youtube channels like George Farmer and MD Fishtanks to get an idea of whats achievable

Wills

Great, thank you.

"Hardness as CaCO3" is the same as ppm, so your GH is 300 ppm (to the nearest 10) which converts to 17 dH. These are the two units used in fishkeeping. I suspected it was a lot higher than 180 ppm from your postcode when you had that as your location.

Alkalinity is what water companies call KH, yours is 240 (rounded to the nearest 10) which is the same as the test strip. KH is not as important to fish as GH. It is a buffer which stabilises pH. The higher the KH the harder it is to change the pH and with KH as high as yours it will be almost impossible to change pH. The fish which like your hardness also prefer pH over 7 so yours is fine for them.

I see they also report your tap water nitrate as 24.3 ppm which is more or less the same as your strips.

Ok thank you for this! Appreciate it. I'll start looking into what hard water fish I can have.
And I'll follow the link instructions for help with the nitrate levels.

Thank you!

 

[Wills]

Check out those rainbow fish essjay mentioned but also check out galaxy rasboras and emerald rasboras. Live bearers like guppies, endless and platies would be a good choice too. Amano shrimp would be a good clean up crew too!

 

[Essjay]

I forgot about celestial pearl danios (the current name for galaxy rasboras , Celestichthys margaritatus) and emerald raboras (Celestichthys erythromicron) but not together as they can cross breed.
The main downside to platies is they are bigger than the other fish we've mentioned so the tank won't hold as many of them.

 

[Megan2022]

Thanks so much guys you've all been so helpful

 

[Wills]

I forgot about celestial pearl danios (the current name for galaxy rasboras , Celestichthys margaritatus) and emerald raboras (Celestichthys erythromicron) but not together as they can cross breed.
The main downside to platies is they are bigger than the other fish we've mentioned so the tank won't hold as many of them.

I was thinking a couple of male platies as centre pieces (maybe a blue and a red) and a school of the rasboras and a school of the rainbows (or one big school of one) and a group of amanos

 

[Megan2022]

I was thinking a couple of male platies as centre pieces (maybe a blue and a red) and a school of the rasboras and a school of the rainbows (or one big school of one) and a group of amanos

When you say big school, how many would you class as big?

 

[Wills]

When you say big school, how many would you class as big?

Your tank is about 17 gallons and I use the inch per gallon as a very basic guide. So if we allowed 4-5 for the platies two schools of 6/7 of each or 12/14 of one. Maybe be able to do a bigger school of just the rasboras as the rainbows get a bit bigger. One school would be more natural and more impressive but if you wanted the variance.

 

[Megan2022]

Your tank is about 17 gallons and I use the inch per gallon as a very basic guide. So if we allowed 4-5 for the platies two schools of 6/7 of each or 12/14 of one. Maybe be able to do a bigger school of just the rasboras as the rainbows get a bit bigger. One school would be more natural and more impressive but if you wanted the variance.

Ok, lovely. Food for thought for me. I'll get my researching head on this evening. Thanks again.