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Re: Hmmmm...

Posted By: Wintek <wintek@aol.com>
Date: Friday, 26 March 1999, at 4:08 p.m.

In Response To: Clown Loaches and salt (Robert)

Hello

When you say water softener, the kind you dump 50 lb bags of salt into? If so,

Then your water is not soft in the same sense as the water the fish see's in nature. The water softener removes calcium and magnesium (by definition, GH) from the water and replaces them with twice as much sodium. The "softened" water has very little GH, but has the same KH and close to the same pH and total dissolved solids (TDS) as the untreated water.

Does all this matter? I don't really know for sure, but IMHO, I think so because the "softened" water still has lots of minerals dissolved in it. Should you change anything? If the fish are healthy, and behaving normally, then I wouldn't change anything.

Going from memory, clown loaches prefer GH below 5 dH, KH about 2 dH, a pH below 6.5, and tank temperature around 81 F. Repeating rumors, clown loaches like low DOC, in a non planted tank that can be approximated by keeping the nitrates below say 30-40 ppm.

Hope this helps!

Wintek
 

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