New starter. Easy questions to answer

[1mac1]

Hi everyone,

Just starting out and about to purchase a breeding pair of L333.

A few questions:

1. What is mS an abriviation of? Something to do with water quality.

2. What is considered 'very soft' water?

Thanks in advance

1mac1

[Mol_PMB]

mS is milliSiemens, a measure of electrical conductivity. You may also see microSiemens, sometimes written as uS.
This can be used as a measure of the number of dissolved ions in water. Hard water has more dissolved ions than soft water. However, the relationship isn't quite that simple because not all ions behave quite the same, and temperature also has an influence.

There are many other measures of hardness which usually refer to the concentration of certain ions such as carbonates or bivalent metals (calcium, magnesium). It's actually quite a complex subject and with different vocabularies and measurement units there is lots of scope for confusion.

A quick google found this page which gives conversions between the many different units and a table at the bottom linking hardness to conductivity:
http://www.globalw.com/support/hardness.html

[1mac1]

Thanks mol_PMB,

I have an Ro/Di unit that I was planning on filling the tank up with. The TDS is 0. Would that be ideal or too 'Pure'?

[1mac1]

I might start with L138 instead of L333

[Mol_PMB]

For most purposes, RO/DI is too pure. You may need to add remineralisation salts or mix with tap water.
You need some carbonates for the nitrifying bacteria in your filter.

[1mac1]

The tank is 2/3 full of ro/di at the moment. My tap water TDS is around the 500 mark, I think our water here is recycled and my ro water has a TDS of 30. What do you recommend I do from here? I don't have any salts nor would I know where to get them from? I've never heard of them!

[1mac1]

Should add that I live in Australia

[Mol_PMB]

Do you know what the 500ppm in your tapwater consists of? e.g. is it carbonates, nitrates, etc?
Can you check with your local water supplier - in the UK our supplier is obliged to to provide details online of the water chemistry.
For example, if I go to this web page and put in my postcode M41 5RD and then click on 'view detailed report' then I get a full breakdown of the water supply:
http://www.unitedutilities.com/waterquality.aspx

When you say your RO is 30ppm, is that before the DI?

What water test kits do you have?

[Jobro]

The tank is 2/3 full of ro/di at the moment. My tap water TDS is around the 500 mark, I think our water here is recycled and my ro water has a TDS of 30. What do you recommend I do from here? I don't have any salts nor would I know where to get them from? I've never heard of them!

You should not use pure RO Water.

Where will your new Plecos come from? Australian tank bred or wildcaughts from South-america?

If they are tank bred. Ask the breeder about his water. Tell us or just imitate his water routines if possible.

Usually it's not a big problem to keep plecos in a little harder water. It won't put much stress on them. They can handle it quite well. Though breeding might be another challenge.
Very soft water (like pure RO Water) on the other hand can be quite challenging even for fish coming from very soft waters in the wild. Your RO water has almost all minerals removed. This puts extreme osmotic pressure on your fish. Fish can take this osmotic pressure under perfect conditions in their natural habitat, but it will put a lot of stress onto new fish that still have to get used to their new environment and all the changes that come along with it (like new bacteria and higher conentration of the former in a tank when compared to wildlife). Also, some sort of fish might need a constant availability of some of those minerals your RO-System has removed.
Think like this:
Natural Soft Water: Very little minerals dissolved, but the minerals are still available in a tiny quantity. Fish can still get all the minerals they need.
Aquarium Soft Water(RO only): No minerals dissolved. Fish can not get any of the minerals they need.

Adding those minerals/salts can be done by adding special "Aquaristic Salts". There are a dozen of available mixtures from various brands.
Those are often used for Discus or other south-american Cichlids that need very soft water but will suffer from a lack of minerals ("hole in the head disease") in tanks with RO-only water. (Here a product from Sera, no idea if it's even available outside of Europe: Mineral Salt). This can do wonders for Cichlids. I don't think it's needed for Plecos though. You should not need it.

Still, you should not go with pure RO-water. If your tapwater is drinkable for humans and is not chlorinated you can simply add some tapwater (mix it to get a TDS of about 150ppm or 200µs. It's always good starting wit a little higher TDS, this way you can try triggering some spawning by lowering the TDS later on). If it is chlorinated you should use some sort of water conditioner for aquariums that remove chlor and heavymetals from your tapwater. Adding some tapwater will usually add all of those minerals needed. No need for expensive extra minerals from any shop.

I don't know about rainwater in Australia, but I prefer to use rainwater for my south-american tanks when possible. It's soft and accidic by default. But should be run through some mechanical filtration before being added to the tank. Testing it for PH/KH/TDS and maybe copper(Cu) if it is collected via coppertubings etc. before using it the first time should be taken into consideration. Adding just a very little tapwater might come in handy again to insure the existence of important minerals in the water. Using rainwater might be more suited for experienced aquarists though. I never had problems. But some people sure had. You never know.

There is a whole lot to talk about water chemistry and best practices differ from person to person and tank to tank. A lot of it is personal experience. Not any pleco will behave the same. There are no golden rules that will always work out perfectly. Maybe they would even breed in just tapwater. This can differ a whole lot, depending on your very own plecos and the care you put into them. It's better to get a lot of input from different hobbyists, you may always find new good insights from someone else. Don't rush it.

[1mac1]

Do you know what the 500ppm in your tapwater consists of? e.g. is it carbonates, nitrates, etc?
Can you check with your local water supplier - in the UK our supplier is obliged to to provide details online of the water chemistry.
For example, if I go to this web page and put in my postcode M41 5RD and then click on 'view detailed report' then I get a full breakdown of the water supply:
http://www.unitedutilities.com/waterquality.aspx

When you say your RO is 30ppm, is that before the DI?

What water test kits do you have?

Not sure of what it consists of. I'll make a phone call to the water Corp today too see if I can find out.

I'm keeping a marine tank, have done for years so I have all the test kits for that. I have a digital Ph stick, Red Sea Alk, nitrate, ammonia, phosphate, calcium, magnesium.

Ro/Di is 0 TDS
Ro is 30 (TDS before Di)
Tap water 500 TDS

[1mac1]

The tank is 2/3 full of ro/di at the moment. My tap water TDS is around the 500 mark, I think our water here is recycled and my ro water has a TDS of 30. What do you recommend I do from here? I don't have any salts nor would I know where to get them from? I've never heard of them!

You should not use pure RO Water.

Where will your new Plecos come from? Australian tank bred or wildcaughts from South-america?

If they are tank bred. Ask the breeder about his water. Tell us or just imitate his water routines if possible.


Still, you should not go with pure RO-water. If your tapwater is drinkable for humans and is not chlorinated you can simply add some tapwater (mix it to get a TDS of about 150ppm or 200µs. It's always good starting wit a little higher TDS, this way you can try triggering some spawning by lowering the TDS later on). If it is chlorinated you should use some sort of water conditioner for aquariums that remove chlor and heavymetals from your tapwater. Adding some tapwater will usually add all of those minerals needed. No need for expensive extra minerals from any shop.

Most L numbers are bred here, very little wild caught. Our import rules are very strict. The L333 will more than likely be bought from an aquarium store.

Our tap water is drinkable and is chlorinated, I have some Seachem prime which should do the trick as far as chlorine/chloromine. Mixing tap with Ro/Di is simple enough. If I aim for 150 TDS now, what would I need to lower that too to tricker spawning?

Is it possible to house and breed L333 and L183 in the same tank with a partition? Or even without a partition? Dietary requirements are different I realise but the water chemistry isn't too far apart.

[pleconut]

I just thought I'd step in here, I'm not very clued up on the ro water factors involved, but just to point out there's much more to take into consideration when attempting to trigger a spawn, factors such as conditioning the plecos in a whole lot of other areas, obviously water quality, parameters etc are a very big factor. The parents of my breeding group, breed regularly in hard tapwater and have to be stopped from breeding. I may need to tweak things slightly differently to this in order to trigger mine off to breed for the first few times. But I wouldn't do so without checking the all other factors also are checked off the list.

[1mac1]

Thanks Plecconut,

Feel free to elaborate on the other areas of conditioning.

What plecos are you breeding in hard water?

[pleconut]

Mine haven't started breeding yet, but are a group of L397s I've been growing up from youngsters I'm planning to spawn them when they are all adults. Though prespawning behaviours have started in a few already mature ones. It's good you're asking questions and like you I'm also very new to this. As mentioned I may need to alter the water params of my tap water to trigger the first few spawns, so I'm learning about this also, but the breeder of the group i have living locally with the same tap water parameters as me, now does nothing except temperature adjustment to trigger off the parents of mine. But once in the routine, in regards to ro water it may not be a necessity each time, other factors are temperature, feeding to condition them, sex ratios, breeding caves, some even need a dry/rainy season imitation. I've heard arguments for and against flow rate adjustment, some say it matters, some dont. But flow rate does seem to influence the behaviour of the adults in my group. So alterations to parameters are part and parcel of a lot of other factors. Sometimes though a combination of the above changes are needed each time.

[1mac1]

Great insite thanks Teresa!!

It's a learning curve but it's fun.

Being a reefer I have access to controlled flow pumps, I might put one in and have a play with different flow rates

[pleconut]

If you were to run a forum search, by pressing the search tool at the top left corner, go to the advanced forum search, put in +breeding+L333+plecos in the loricariiridae forum you may find how others have achieved this. This may give you some starting points. Also +hypancistrus+breeding might help.

[pleconut]

Hypancistrus (l333)

There's a good number of breeding reports on the species info page to which here is a link.

[1mac1]

Thank you

[pleconut]

Just a few starting points.

[1mac1]

So I ran a few TDS tests today as my tank water was over 300 when I filled it up yesterday with 12 hours of cycling

Originally 2/3 full of Ro/Di and the rest with tap water at 500 TDS so it should have been around 150.

Only things I added To the tank were brand new seachem matrix and used noodles.

I took out the litre of matrix after it had 12 hours of cycling and put it into a new bucket with a few litres of Ro/Di water. TDS came in at 30

Tested the Ro/Di water coming out of the garden hose of which I filled the tank up with. 35 TDS

It's starting to add up!

Just rinsed new course matting in RODI water, 10 TDS

Rinsed the other litre of unused seachem matrix in a few litres of water. 150 TDS!! There's the culprit!

Now to empty the tank, buy new 6mm tubing for the RO unit and gill it back up. Also found a seachem product called replenish and it does exactly what it says. It's designed for Ro/Di water like the above posts mentioned

[VelcroWY]

I like to think I'm fairly intelligent and I have quite a bit of experience with fish way back and a little more these days, but the info shared on this website, such as in this posting, just blows me away. Truly some VERY knowledgeable people. Thanks to all who shared.

P.S. In the Rocky Mountain region, hard water seems to be the norm and people breed plecos all the time. My water runs 8.8 pH with an acceptable mix of minerals (nothing extreme). So I soften and such by various means. But breeding still occurs around here at pH of 7.2 and up - sometimes in somewhat hard water. As the experts above would point out, it depends on what TDS includes. I haven't dug that deep yet.

[pleconut]

Nor have I, but I'm in a hard water area, local breeders don't seem to have too many problems.

[Jobro]

I think this depends heavily upon the species and their origins. Wildcaughts will usually have higher requirements regarding water than tank bred ones.

With L333 there are some tank bred strains that will almost reproduce like common ancistrus. The guy where I got my young L333 from said he isn't doing anything with really hard tapwater (kh 20) and he is swimming in fry in a community tank.