To buffer, or not to buffer, that is the question
Mon, 06/07/2010 - 12:55
Hello all,
I've been away for a while, slammed at work, but I'm wondering what everyone does about buffering in their tanks. Coming from the east coast, where we have 'normal' water, I have always been in the habit of buffering my tanks to the occupants' preferred range. However, moving out here, where the water is ridiculously hard, I'm wondering if I should continuing trying to drive the pH of my South American cichlid tank down to 6.0, which seems like a losing battle... I've heard and read, most likely what you all have, that stability is more important than the specific pH, but being a microbiologist, and wanting the best for and out of my fish, I'm not sold on this idea.
Thoughts and practices?
Greg
Tue, 06/08/2010 - 22:06
#2
All good points Samuel. I'm still working on planting and setting up a refugium to chew up some of the nitrogen byproducts in my tanks. Luckily the soft water species I have are in the largest tank, so overall the bioburden is fairly low, and I've been good about water changes.
So I'm assuming you don't pH your tanks to the species origins?
Greg
Tue, 06/08/2010 - 22:18
#3
I dont change ph in my tanks but I maintain balance in ph which seems to keep my fish happy. But most of my fish like 7 to 8 ph range. My tanks are about 7 to 7.2 most of the time.
Thu, 06/10/2010 - 06:55
#4
Currently my species are all African cichlids, so they do fine in our water here. Technically it should be a bit harder and higher PH to match the lake, but most of them were tank raised and have always lived in ABQ water (i breed them personally), and they seem to like it 
Thu, 06/10/2010 - 11:55
#5
Definitely Sam. This is certainly an African Cichlid keepers paradise, and most likely a Discus keepers worst nightmare, which is rather a shame since I have always thought Discus were such amazing fish, and something I would have liked to gotten into. I also imagine this is a good place for salt water as well, although I have no experience. I'm going to slowly reduce the amount of buffer I'm using and see how it goes with my South American cichlids and other miscellaneous fish...
Thu, 06/10/2010 - 21:00
#6
The soft water for discus is more important for breeding than for health. I've kept perfectly healthy discus in very hard, alkaline water. The only problem I had was that the eggs never hatched. They seemed happy and laid eggs regularly though.
If you really want discus, I'd try it here.
Everything I've heard goes along with the idea of stability over precise parameters. I think most species are fairly adaptable. The only problem with buffering is that if you make a mistake you can get swings which is much more harmful. If you do it consistently, it can work. I think it becomes a lot more like maintaining a salt water tank, where you have to condition and check the water carefully as you add it.
I think conditioning down is harder than conditioning up, because if you make the water hard it tends to go up but also be more stable. If you soften the water, which allows it to go down, it is also more unstable.
One issue you may run into with softwater species in hard water is that ammonia/nitrite/etc become more toxic at high PH, so you really have to stay on top of your water quality.