Richard Sexton wrote:
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.

Never found any measurable ammonia or nitrite in those tanks. We had
biowheels on them so biofiltration was quite good and constant and at
that time there was only chlorine in the tapwater rather than
chloramines. I think it was probably a TDS issue, with the higher kH
plus GH plus DOC plus nitrates being too much. The water changes would
have dropped TDS since the tank only had a few plants. I've never had a
conductivity meter to test my hypothesis.

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__ Elaine T __
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