L183 Starlight

I am looking at potential plecs to keep. I like the look of the L183's but on reading about them here it says they prefer a ph of between 4-6. This is much lower than my tap water of about 7.6.
I know it is easy to raise ph but lowering appears a lot more difficult.
Would I be able to lower my water ph to a sufficient level and keep it stable enough to keep these?

Steve

You would need to use RO water to lower your pH and more importantly TDS using RO will be the more stable long term solution but it is not without its drawbacks it take a bit of research and time to get the water right but once there you should find it easy

Thx Jo, I'll look into that.

I'm still a lil confused tho, the profile of this plec gives params of 4-6ph and 24-29c

The only breeding log I found here so far, from Jacqueline, gives her ph as 7 ?? with 30+c as a temp. The temp isnt to far away but a ph of 7 is a lot higher than the max 6 the profile gives isnt it?
If they thrive in a ph of 7 how much further can you push it, upto my 7.6 say ??

Steve

Hi all,

This is much lower than my tap water of about 7.6.
I know it is easy to raise ph but lowering appears a lot more difficult.
Would I be able to lower my water ph to a sufficient level and keep it stable enough to keep these?.........

The only breeding log I found here so far, from Jacqueline, gives her ph as 7 ?? with 30+c as a temp. The temp isnt to far away but a ph of 7 is a lot higher than the max 6 the profile gives isnt it?
If they thrive in a ph of 7 how much further can you push it, upto my 7.6 say ??

Click to expand...

You really need to get your water parameters from your water company (Severn-Trent?), pH is a bit of a funny measurement and doesn't tell you enough on its own. The problem is that all tap water in the UK is now treated with a base (usually sodium hydroxide - NaOH) to raise the pH, and stop any copper or lead going into solution from old pipes etc.

This leads to a situation where a lot of people have soft water with very little carbonate buffering (dKH) and a high pH.

Have a look at these threads which explain a bit more:
<http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8744>, <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8904> & <http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9323>

cheers Darrel

A trip to Severn Trent's webpage gives me a list that looks.........:wb:

Still, it says
ph = 8.4
Hard Lvl = soft
Clark = 3.00
French = 4.00
German = 2.00

there's lots of others to Conductivity = 122.76 µS/cm at 20°c, sodium 7.91mgNa/l, chlorine0.34mg/l, nitrate 1.86mgNO3/l etc

downloading the report it would appear that the figures are the avg for the area.
The total hardness as CaCo3 = 46.618mg/l

Hi all,

ph = 8.4
Hard Lvl = soft
Clark = 3.00
French = 4.00
German = 2.00
there's lots of others to Conductivity = 122.76 µS/cm at 20°c,
sodium 7.91mgNa/l,
chlorine0.34mg/l,
nitrate 1.86mgNO3/l

Click to expand...

Perfect, this is actually very soft water (2dKH), clean water (from the Elan Dams?) with a high pH purely due to the added NaOH.

It should be fine for L183, and you can treat it exactly like the water in the linked threads.

cheers Darrel

thx Darrel.

Ill start going thru the threads to work out how to treat it then

Steve