Water Quality Levels

[ecarso10]

I should warn you though - the vast majority of Scotland has very soft water, though a few regions do have hard water. You have guppies and mollies which are hard water fish, and if you live in a part of Scotland with soft water they will not do well.
Have you tested your water for GH?

We don’t have the GH tester but I can get it. We have had the guppies for nearly 2 months and only issue is one of them being attacked recently (separate post in the emergency forum/thread). We got 4 mollies and 2 died quickly. Other 2 are doing good and that’s been nearly a month

 

[ecarso10]

Thanks everyone

 

[Essjay]

Your water provider's website should tell you your hardness.
If you download "Water hardness data 2019" from this page

Water Quality - Scottish Water

Water Quality

www.scottishwater.co.uk

you can find your hardness. You need the numbers in two columns - hardness as mg/l CaCO3 and German degrees. These are the two units used in fishkeeping.


If you do have very soft water, that could well have contributed to the deaths of the mollies.

 

[ecarso10]

Your water provider's website should tell you your hardness.
If you download "Water hardness data 2019" from this page

Water Quality - Scottish Water

Water Quality

www.scottishwater.co.uk

you can find your hardness. You need the numbers in two columns - hardness as mg/l CaCO3 and German degrees. These are the two units used in fishkeeping.


If you do have very soft water, that could well have contributed to the deaths of the mollies.

34.42 and 1.82- it says soft

 

[Essjay]

Mg/l CaCos is the same as ppm, and german deg is the same as dH. You'll see ppm or dH in fish profiles. So you have 34.42 ppm and 1.82 dH.

I'm afraid this is far too soft for livebearers. Guppies need over 200 ppm and mollies need over 250 ppm. I think this needs to be discussed in your other thread.

Yellow guppy being attacked by other guppies

Hi, I am new to the forum so hope this is the right place for this. So here goes an account of the drama over the last 5 days and the story of survival... I have 100 litre tank with tropical fish. We have 8 male guppies, 2 mollies (it was 4 but l’ll get to that) and 4 penguin tetra. After...

www.fishforums.net

 

[ecarso10]

Mg/l CaCos is the same as ppm, and german deg is the same as dH. You'll see ppm or dH in fish profiles. So you have 34.42 ppm and 1.82 dH.

I'm afraid this is far too soft for livebearers. Guppies need over 200 ppm and mollies need over 250 ppm. I think this needs to be discussed in your other thread.

Yellow guppy being attacked by other guppies

Hi, I am new to the forum so hope this is the right place for this. So here goes an account of the drama over the last 5 days and the story of survival... I have 100 litre tank with tropical fish. We have 8 male guppies, 2 mollies (it was 4 but l’ll get to that) and 4 penguin tetra. After...

www.fishforums.net

I’ve added it

 

[Essjay]

Thank you

 

[ecarso10]

So we think the tank is sorted. We removed the spray arm from the filter and it was clogged with algae. I’m not sure why the test kit was reading so good if there was algae in the spray arm, although that’s the only place it was. I wonder if it was getting cloudy because of the lack of action from the spray arm and then algae slowly getting back into the main body of water after we’d done a water change

 

[Essjay]

I have a mini spray arm on my filter and I use one of those big chunky paper clips straightened out to clean the holes.

Algae is caused by more than poor water conditions - too much light is one cause and the spray arm is right under the lights.

 

[ecarso10]

I have a mini spray arm on my filter and I use one of those big chunky paper clips straightened out to clean the holes.

Algae is caused by more than poor water conditions - too much light is one cause and the spray arm is right under the lights.

That would make sense as my water quality tests were coming back fine. We have realised we have had our light on far too much so we adjusted that recently.

I am a baker so I had a very small cleaning brush for my piping nozzles that has now been donated to my fish! We used that to get inside the arm and through the holes.

The algae that we got out looked like seaweed or a plant even!