Moving to rural area

[Mike Davis]

I'll be moving my tanks to a rural area with fairly hard water (well water)
and wonder if anyone has any experience on acclimating fish (pleco, corys,
neons, barbs, and loaches) to the new water. I've cycled one tank and am
looking for suggestions about whether it's reasonable to try to lower the pH
and hardness in the new tank to bring it closer to the old one or not...

Any thoughts or experience would be appreciated.

Mike D.

[Dick]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 21:34:49 -0400, "Mike Davis" >
wrote:

>I'll be moving my tanks to a rural area with fairly hard water (well water)
>and wonder if anyone has any experience on acclimating fish (pleco, corys,
>neons, barbs, and loaches) to the new water. I've cycled one tank and am
>looking for suggestions about whether it's reasonable to try to lower the pH
>and hardness in the new tank to bring it closer to the old one or not...
>
>Any thoughts or experience would be appreciated.
>
>Mike D.
>

Not sure if water chemistry is similar or not, but I live in a small
west Texas town and our water comes from wells.

I didn't move any tanks, but all my fish and plants came through Air
Borne Express. I had a few fish out of about 100 that had ich or
otherwise were sickly, but nothing I would attribute to change of
water condition.

The city water pH runs about 8. I make my weekly water changes
straight from the tap only adjusting temperature. I have 5 tanks
ranging from 75 to 10, the 75 has been up and running for over one
year.

Getting used to not having a LFS may be more of a challenge. I keep
extra supplies of filters, heaters, medicines, etc. I have one friend
with whom I exchange medicines. My closest LFS is 200 miles and I
don't like driving much.

One worry is power which means heating or cooling. All is well so
long as the power is ok, but thunderstorms often bring power outages.
I was getting worried one day last winter when the power was off for a
couple of hours. Everything worked out ok, but I still think about
it. Haven't figured any way to protect the fish if the power stayed
off too long. Both extremes worry me, summer days can reach 100+ and
winter nights can get to 0. When I first moved here about 14 years
ago, the power was even less reliable. I still keep an oil lamp handy
on top of the TV. Welcome to rural fish keeping life.