Whats the big deal about soft water cichlids in hard water. Rant

[neutrino]

Domestic discus do just fine in hard water with higher pH values - and no need for large daily water changes. A local discus breeder here with 2-3 thousand gallons worth of discus tanks kept and raised all of his discus in our hard water with pH 8.0. As already explained, the only thing soft water does is allow a higher success rate of eggs hatching. That's it. And his water change schedule was once a week. As he liked to say, warm water + beef = beef soup. In his latter years he fed pellets (NLS) with a treat of blood worms once or twice a week, and changed water once a week. Below are some of his Stendker grow outs raised during this period.

Exactly. People don't seem to connect the dots with there being more than one species coming from more than one habitat.

Recipe for needing many water changes: put one discus pair in 29 gal breeder tank, add zero substrate, plants, or other natural elements that help process nitrogen., feed on beef heart and/or way too much protein-- and presto, a DIY nitrogen factory. Recipe for fewer water changes: bigger tank, more ecologically balanced, not bare, keep protein under 50%, feed stuff fish eat, not what lions or crocodiles or people eat, stock moderately, feed moderately.

Your choice, there's more than one approach to it. Can you feed discus the old Whatley beef heart way? Yeah, if you insist. Must you feed them this way? Absolutely not, and ime you can make them easier to care for and if you know what you're doing they'll probably live longer. Discus should live ten years, can live longer, not the 4,5 years some people expect.

 

[neutrino]

You can raise discus in hard water, in fact breeder prefer some hardness to stabilize pH to raise juvies. But there is no chance to successfully breed discus without lowering tds to black water level because fertilization, hatching and raising larvae will always fail.

I have visited a number of Florida fish farms. They breed discus , rams, some Geos and epistos in separate RO mixed water, but raise and acclimate older fish in harder water. Angel fish, Oscar, and some tetras, however, have no problem breed and raise in hard water. Some fish can adapt by domestication, some don’t. Is it the lack of effort by the breeders to make them adapt, or some fish are just inherently unadaptable. I don’t know.

I kept discus both in New England and Florida. In new England I went 'by the book' as I understood it, kept them in low ph, soft water. In Florida I had high quality well water, very clear, some hardness, pH about 7.6. This was 25 years ago. I cautiously raised pH to 6.8, then 7.0, 7.2, etc., until I stopped treating it for pH. It was a revelation. No problem at all, some of the nicest, healthiest discus I'd had.

Different species certainly have different comfort zones and limits. I once goofed up and for a few weeks had a tank go over 8 pH. The red head Tapajos geos had no problem with it at all (long term may have been a different story). The guianacara were mysteriously (until I realized my mistake) stressing and dying. Most fish have a range they're okay with, short term and long term limits aren't necessarily the same. Too close to their limit can cause stress and shorten their life. I agree with Duane on this, they can seem okay, but not live as long. On the other hand, as above, I don't always agree with the pH police who sometimes make false assumptions about natural habitat or what a species can reasonably handle.

 

[RD.]

Exactly!!!
Some persistent aquarium lore makes me crazy, but you can't convince people. It's the same with discus. Blue/brown discus live in water with pH from 6.0 to 7.8, temperatures down to the mid 70s, comparatively high conductivity, are rarely found in black water. It's the green and heckle discus that come from very sott, low ph water. Where do you learn this? Read Heiko Bleher, science literature describing actual field work, don't believe everything the average discus keeper says, they're just repeating what they've been told by other average discus keepers.

I've lost count how many times I have quoted Heiko Bleher over the years regarding the diet of wild discus. Below is one of the more recent examples.

https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...-american-cichlids.694960/page-4#post-7834063

I even mentioned Jack Wattley in that post. 2006 is no longer "recent", but it was when I first posted that on simply discus years ago. As I recall my message wasn't that well received by the masses at the time. lol

Jack Wattley has recently stated that a good staple pellet or flake food is more ideal for optimum health. In the Dec 2006 edition of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, Jack stated:


"I've moved in a new direction regarding the feeding of discus, and after many tests feel that a top quality flake or pellet food formulated especially for discus is perhaps the best direction to take.”

 

[neutrino]

Jack Wattley has recently stated that a good staple pellet or flake food is more ideal for optimum health. In the Dec 2006 edition of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, Jack stated:


"I've moved in a new direction regarding the feeding of discus, and after many tests feel that a top quality flake or pellet food formulated especially for discus is perhaps the best direction to take.”

Yes. I'd read (or had seen interviews, maybe both) where he'd changed his mind on feeding, tried quoting it a time or two. People can't handle it. It's like telling them the pope converted to Shintoism... or Ted Nugent's a vegan.

 

[RD.]

Yes. I'd read (or had seen interviews, maybe both) where he'd changed his mind on feeding, tried quoting it a time or two. People can't handle it. It's like telling them the pope converted to Shintoism... or Ted Nugent's a vegan.

LOL, so true. BTW - Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes played at my high school back in the early-mid 70's.

 

[Coryloach]

I don't keep cichlids but the majority of my current bunch of fish come from black water habitats and the rest inhabit clear soft water. I raised all of them in hard water. I've had no problem whatsoever with their health. I've had most for many years as they're all long lived species so it is not a short term experience. I've been told in the past I should not keep the fish I have in hard water, yet mine live and look really healthy.

From anecdotal experience in keeping soft water fish in hard water it seems to me the fish adapt just fine and it is the quality of the water, not its parameters, that is of utmost importance.

From general experience reading forums it seems to me majority of fish tanks are overstocked and overfed perhaps, as in the case of raising discus. In these situations fish diseases are inevitable.

HITH is a parasitic disease for example that resides in the gut originally and fish can deal with that quite well as long as they're not stressed. Fish in fact are riddled with all types of organisms but stress from water quality, aggression from other tank mates, overstocking, starvation periods, bad diet, etc...any one of these can cause a weakened immune system, which then leads to a particular pathogen overtaking. That's when one notices the fish has gotten "sick"..... One then treats the aftermath with chemicals but one can only lower the parasitic count. There is no such thing as sterilizing the tank or fish from pathogens....So one still needs to fix the original issue, which is environmental stress of some sort as above.

In relation to sterilization, there was an interesting study I once read on mycobacterium or fish TB in other words. When bleach was used to sterilize a sample infected with mycobacterium, the bleach killed off everything but one resistant strain of mycobacterium. Because all its other competition was wiped out, that species mutated and became prolific, multiplying even faster, overtaking all surfaces.

The point I am trying to make here is that on microbial level the pathogens themselves compete for dominance. They actually do eat or attack each other too, although we can't see that with our eyes. That's where the term "Mature tank" comes from. It is a tank which has a diversity of micro-organisms which keep the balance right. Swing the tank environment in the wrong direction, and a certain pathogen becomes too prolific for fish's immune system to deal with . Majority of fish diseases are caused by secondary pathogens, meaning these are always present in the tank but only affect the fish when the fish's immune system is weak.

 

[tiger15]

Domestic discus do just fine in hard water with higher pH values - and no need for large daily water changes. A local discus breeder here with 2-3 thousand gallons worth of discus tanks kept and raised all of his discus in our hard water with pH 8.0. As already explained, the only thing soft water does is allow a higher success rate of eggs hatching.

I have no doubt that healthy discus can be raised in hard water, as I have done it for 3 years. But I have given up breeding them.

I am skeptical that it is possible to breed discus successfully in water close to 8. Discus is one fish that price has never dropped. If it is so easy to breed discus in ordinary tap water, they won't be able to maintain high price for decades.

The following video is a discus breeder I visited in Tampa, Florida.

He mixes RO water with his pH 8 tap water. He told me that raising discus in pH 8 water is possible, but breeding them will fail. Every breeder in the Northeast US told me the same thing.

Maybe your local breeder didn't tell the truth so he can sell more fish.

I have visited the Peruvian Amazon and swam in the black water where discus are found in pH 4.5 and conductivity zero. It is so acidic and sterile that even mosquito larvae won't thrive, so I was told not to worry about catching parasites. That may explain why discus and some black water fish are so weak to withstand high bacterial count in hard water.

 

[Coryloach]

I have visited the Peruvian Amazon and swam in the black water where discus are found in pH 4.5 and conductivity zero. It is so acidic and sterile that even mosquito larvae won't thrive, so I was told not to worry about catching parasites. That may explain why discus and some black water fish are so weak to withstand high bacterial count in hard water.

If you try to replicate this in aquarium setting, you may find out that you'll have bigger problems on your hands. In river settings, the water even at ph of 4.5, zero conductivity and zero KH is still stable. In aquarium settings you'll most likely kill the fish. You need very good chemistry knowledge and be able to see the bigger picture, in order to manage an aquarium with these sort of parameters. We tend to drill down to parameters readings but what matters is how all they work together in conjunction with the fish. There is a lot more involved than some individual measures.

The science on aquatic micro-organisms is evolving and what was thought before is not true anymore. For example it was believed that nitrifying bacteria die in lower pH levels. In fact, it is now thought that it is not just bacteria, but archaea the most predominant nitrifying species in aquariums. Archaea is a totally different micro-organism.
So I don't buy the "sterile" environment thing at all......Obviously, wild caught fish are fish adapted already to a certain environment but juvenile fish can still adapt, and their offspring even more so.

Yes, some species need certain conditions to breed, some are yet to be figured out how to breed but to keep healthy fish one should concentrate on totally different things than what the pH is. Plus pH is such a limited measure I don't know why it keeps going around as a rule of anything. Two aquariums with the same pH can have totally different conditions.

 

[Coryloach]

Also, in terms of breeding, for some fish it measn a consequence of bad events/good events with the sole aim of breeding, not surviving those events. The aim is to produce progeny.

Breeding conditions is majorly associated with happy fish on fish forums but it is not always the case. Conditions for breeding are not necessarily the same as conditions for thriving.

For example, dry season/wet season. During the dry season lots of fish die in nature die but it is part of the big cycle of events and provides the conditions for breeding. In aquariums we want the adult fish to actually survive and thrive after the breeding cycle. This is a lot more complicated. So pick your task and take the consequences of it.

 

[Woefulrelic]

I'd imagine the misconception of Ph and hardness, in addition to other features of water like alkalinity create a lot of misnomers. I've tried to wrap my head around it a bit but many aspects of water are confusing and temperamental. Many of these aspects swing rapidly while other measures are out of whack, I'd imagine inconsistent variables are more significant when it comes to some of these arguments .