Test Kits and loach problems

[Curtis]

Food wise, I feed them everything from a decent flake food, to sinking carnivore pellets to shimp pellets to some freeze dried blood worms and salad shrimp from the supermarket cut up finely and algae wafers... and a few other foods but I can't remember off hand.

I try to keep a variety of foods going so that everyone in the tanks get food.

I haven't switched to a new food in many months so I'm sure that isn't the problem.

[Tinman]

TDS meters can tell you lots if you know your base incoming TDS. solids building is bad as that is waste or rock leaching. Many rocks leach only after a year. Lose any in question and test them in a bucket seperately to decide if they are safe. It only takes one bad rock even in your large system.. If I increase salt for meds I can calculate the salt content based on my incoming water plus the salt to get to the desired level even though I do not know what the base solids are I know the increased solids are the salt. A portable is about 30.00 Us and if used daily can tell you much info to help you with your decisions. It is the single best instrument I have purchased in the past few years and took me up several levels as a keeper because of the extra info at my disposal. I have been keeping fish over 30 years now. I searched for several years to solve your problem with added filtration ,sump ,removing rock etc. but slowing the water change was a major improvement within days and the losses declined to almost zero within days. I had no symptoms and a very similar set up as yours hence my suggestion. Make sure you are splashing the surface of your tanks. With the 50sq. feet of surface you are sporting don't let it go to waste. I made many changes but slowing the water change appears to "let" my filters work better and my fish are very much improved over what I thought of as excellent anyway

[Curtis]

I have a portable TDS meter, I guess I've never used it as such a good indicator as it obviously can be.

Thanks, I'll let everyone know how things are going.

[chefkeith]

... TDS hovers around 150 or so, Tap water is around 140......Is TDS a decent way to monitor water quality?

I've found that the target zone for my tanks is about +30 ppm from the source TDS. My tap water TDS range is from 120 to 140 ppm, so I try to keep the TDS in the tanks 150 to 170. If I get lazy the TDS climbs above 170 ppm, and I know it's time to clean them filters. The TDS increase in the tanks is nearly equivalent to the Nitrates increase.

You may want to check the source water TDS often because the water company may play around with the total hardness of the water.

I'd agree with Tinman. You can slow down the drip rate.