Loaches Online Forum

KH is the measure of bicarbonate and carbonate ions in water, or "carbonate hardness" . These prevent the pH from budging at all. No - the parameter which we measure is alkalinity. It's the same what "pH buffer" is. Carbonate hardness is not the same. As we see, our "KH" is sometimes higher than "G...

Adding acid will reduce the KH. What hapens is the following: 1 acid will lower the KH 2 as lowering the pH will help CO3-- -> HCO3- -> H2O and CO2 (a gas, which will leave the water) lowering the pH (that is, adding acid) will lower the KH However, a high KH will imply the need of a lot of acid In ...

@ blackwater extract - I would not know, I never saw it here, in Europe, for sale With regard to water softening, the very idea of hard water comes from the laundry business. Calcium and magnesium - the stuff which make water hard - inhibit the action of soap, and thus make it hard to clean clothes....

I would suggest you start with a bicket of water from the tank. Measure the pH To this you add something which would acidify the water, such as oak leaf extract. A little, such as 1 ml. Then measure the pH again. Most likely, the pH is a lot lower, perhaps it went from 7.5 to 6.5. If it is more or l...

While your stocking might be odd, what's important is how many fishes you have in the tank, and that is not too much. When the tap water changes, water change can be the reason fish die, but in most cases, such changes are not that big. Most likely, the fish you got after it was only 1 day at the st...

European books say the smallest tanks for kuhli are 60 * 30 8 30 cm, or 2 *1 * 1 feet. Don't know how much gallon (US or UK?) that is

Greek, you might want to try Germany. I live in the Netherlands, that is on the other side of Germany, and I find quite a lot of Botia, among which striata, in the shops in nearby Germany

A month ago I was looking at 1 of them in a shop, and requested them to get a few more.

They did not contact me, so I think in the Netherlands, perhaps broader in Europe, they are now not available. Perhaps the season is ending?

Nitrite is more than a thousand times more toxic than nitrate.

That is, nitratie is rather harmless, in many places the tap water cntains nitrates in amounts of 20 mg a liter, but nitrite is deadly. Even for humans

If for no explanable reason nitrate is high, the reason must be something, somewhere in the system, is decaying. You might want, after another water change, today 50 %, tomorrow 50 % and so on, to make a list of all fishes which are supposed to be in the tank, and then look for each and every one of...

Unfortunately, the fish in your tank will also make other stuff which can harm them. Therefore you will still have to change water. Is there anything you could do agains the evaporation? If you could, you could just go on, but now drain 50 gallons of old water every week. As far as I know, I'm not a...

While alternatives for an Eheim excist, they will ultimately be more or less the same size. After all, one needs a certain size of filter to filter a certain size of tank. But an alternative could be using 2 small filters instead of 1 large one. Basically this will do the same filtration, but each o...

Precisely. And as I don't know exactly where to put the rocks - and I like to have a feww close to the frons screen, in order to make the tank look deeper than it is, I put it everywhere

I overlooked these, but your fish will provide fertiliser too

As a matter of fact, I have a few very nice pieces of moss, in one tank 2/3 of the whole bottom is covered with it - 10 cm hiegh or more

without any fertiliser

I have polystyrene in a ot of tanks under the sand. In one tank it has been in use for almost 12 years now (it was made on 4 October 2003 and filled it 3 weeks later) this polystyrene will have to be replaced though, it has been too lonig in the water. On top of the polystyrene I have some tiles, to...