I meant the original poster for rams or discus. When my ex-husband kept
discus here, they needed a minimum of 50% weekly water changes to handle
the higher pH and hardness, and twice weekly was better. Otherwise they
went dark and striped and hid in the corner. I think the high pH
stressed them so that DOC and nitrates had to be at an absolute minimum.
Since rams are similar, I'm adding enough RO water to my tank with the
ram to drop the pH to about 7.2 and that's working much better. (I'm
guessing 8 the correct measurement for OP's water since it's hard to
read above 7.4 with bromthymol blue.)

I can't see how discus would be bothers by that ph and hardness
or how water changes would fix that. The water you're adding is
still hard and alkaline right? Sounds more like ammonia to me.

Despite the water here being hard Ihave no problem keeping
fish from 0ppm acid water like killies and apistogrammas,
here's a pic of red agassii eggs laid here in this water;
the fish were raised in soft acid water.

http://images.aquaria.net/fish/cichl.../agassizi/red/

Now, they didn't hatch, and I suspect were infertile; Ron
Harlan told me calcium ions attach to the unfertilized egg
and block the entry of spermatozoa.

Water hardness is not fixed. Last fall in southern ontario
a bunch of people teste their hardness. Lake Ontario
watr is supposed tobe hard (375ppm) but people found
anwhere from 30 - 175 ppm depending on where they lived,
even though the water all came from the same source. Very
odd.


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