PlanetCatfish.com

alwayz_luveable wrote:is it ok for the red to eat both live fish and pellets... oh can anyone tells male or female this it word is driving me nuts..

You must be pulling your hair out by now! I admire you for sticking with this.

All things considered, you might want to slow down on the feeding a bit. And keep up with the water changes, as suggested, slowly and carefully.

Are you using test strips or test kits with test tubes and solutions or pellets? The latter are a bit more accurate and cheaper in the long run. Ammonia and ph are the ones you will always have to monitor more closely with that fish than one would usually.

I wouldn't worry about sex right now, myself. Those fish are just cute and entertaining no matter what.

But you might want to lose the castle before you wake up one day and find he is either stuck in it or has eaten it ;-)

Hey, it happens with goldfish--at least the stuck part.

troi

80
0
300
80
7.2
ok thats in order
nitrate
nitrite
hardness
alkalinty
ph
everything is looking better but how do i soften the water that won,t change????

Softening water is pretty difficult. There are some ways:
1. Use something that "soaks up" the hardness. This would be something like peat, dry leaves or such. Unfortunately, if your water is quite hard, this usually doesn't do much without SIGNIFICANT quantities of the "soak material".

2. Use demineralized water. This means that some processing prior to adding the water to the tank, such as running it through a distiller or RO unit (Reverse Osmosis Unit). RO is easier in the long run. (And causes no conflicts with laws, as a distiller MAY do, as they are commonly used for producing illegal alcohol).

You can NOT use a plain water softener (ionexchange unit) as you would fit to your dishwasher/washing machine in a hard water area, as this only REPLACES minerals, rather than remove them, so instead of cacliuma carbonates (for instace), you end up with sodium chloride of an equal amount. This is not good for any fish that is intolerant to salt, which would include a large number of catfish, as well as many other freshwater fish.

3. Purchase processed water. Same idea as above. OK if you want to soften water only temporarily, but once you decide to use soft water permanently, you need to consider the fact that you'd be paying for some other persons demineralisation unit, and they are adding a profit on top of that. Along the lines of renting or buying a car. If you need it for a short term, renting is cheaper. But if you need a car to keep you on the go for a year or so, then you'd be looking at serious extra cost for renting compared to owning, even if you get a "good deal".

4. Move to a soft water area...

--
Mats

ok thanks is the hardness bad for the catfish how do i get the ph down a lit..

the redtail's getting better and feeding because you're changing the water!

keep changing 50% a day until your nitrate is the same as the tapwater.

then change 50% once a week to keep him healthy. and start saving for a HUGE tank!

Please DO Not do a big water change. I can't believe people are suggesting this.

i disagree Pimbuddy. i've always done 50% water changes, and never had any problems. we do all learn from our own experiences though.

i wouldn't have recommended that if the pH of the tank had been below 7, but i would imagine that the tapwater is slightly alkaline, so the shock wouldn't be too great. i do understand your point though.

I agree the red looks so much better and so much more active is it normal for the red to look like it swallowed an egg.?. and i use the 5 in 1 test strips.... and thanks again everybody i have really learned alot from this post.. so much easier than spending hrs surfing the whole net looking for answers that i didn,t even get.. i got so much answers through here and more.. and thanks again im sure ill be asking for more questions

with regard to the hardness and pH, i don't think you should worry about changing it at all. a young redtail will easily acclimitise to these levels and be OK i think.

ok i guess i can relax now

I'm in agreeement with racoll. You don't need to change the hardness of th water for the fish to be happy. I was just trying to point out that it's quite hard to change the hardness of the water to softer. [It's easy to add some suitable mineral to make it harder, no problem at all].

It is much more important that the nitrate level is low, than the hardness being "just right".

You need to aim at 20 ppm nitrate _AT THE END_ of your water change period. So if you have a normal water change period of a week, at the end of the week just before you chagne the water, you should have 20 ppm nitrate. That obviously means that just after a water change, you need to be below the 20 ppm.

Your hardness, by the way is 300 ppm -> 300 * 0.056 -> 16.8 dH. Fishbase.org has a single figure for the dH "range" of Red Tail catfish, which says "10". I take that to mean that one sample of water was taken for one collection point of these fish, and it happened to have a hardness of 10. Since this fish lives in a pretty wide ranging area, I would expect the fish to adapt to some variable hardness, so I'm pretty sure that 16.8 isn't outside it's adaptability range.

Fishbase page

--
Mats

alwayz_luveable wrote:80
everything is looking better but how do i soften the water that won,t change????

yes, you readings look better.

I just moved from a place with nearly 0 in hardness to a place where the water is SO hard it has left an abrasive layer on my bathtub, so with the zeal of a new convert--

Make sure you substrate is neutral, like silic or the stuff water filtertation companies use in filtering drinking water.
If you want to drop the hardness the easiest thing to do is use RO water. Here, we can get it at WalMart, and probably other groceries stores, sold as Drinking Water in one gal. jugs. Read the labels: some drinking water is just UV'd RO water. Our healthfood store sells it in larger quantities and cheaper. Coffee houses use it and might sell it if asked. Some LFS sell RO, but it probably costs more thatn drinking water.

If you decide to use RO to soften you tank water, start off mixing it with the tap water for you changes, then maintain a mix that seems to work.

If you keep the red-tail, you m ight want to get a big RO system of your own and sell the excess to locals for fish or drinking water

The other thing you can do is to add a huge number of huge snails and let the shells pull the calcium out

And, as has been pointed out, your hardeness is not horrible. Acclimated catfish do OK here in local water where I am, the hardness of which I stopped trying to titrate at 23 dH.

good luck and give that handsome fellow a pat on the head for me.

BTW, the pot belly is normal after a "gorge" meal, which these guys like.

troi

ok cool ill get some snails only thing i don,t like about snails they multiply to fast.. and to much

alwayz_luveable wrote:ok cool ill get some snails only thing i don,t like about snails they multiply to fast.. and to much

oh, dear, this was a joke! the snails do absorb calcium, tho. The rams horns don't breed and take over as fast as teh nasty old pond snails. The red tail might eat them, come to think about it.

troi

ok thanks i won,t get snails

Hey good point Racoll I forgot about the PH factor. It was along time ago but I do remember the PH being very out of wack as well. Many people state the the RTC is sensiteve to water quality but I think as they get older they get a litte more hardy. I have a question for everyone so any input would be great. I've been living in Miami and finally own a place to put an outdoor pond, about 1000 gallons. I wanna build the structure from landscaping wood which many people have done and want to know if anybody has good resources or info about keeping Pims outside all year around and knowing little about ponds what is a good filtration system. So many options and with the design I have in mind it would provide a good natural enviornment with an area for strait swimming and deep area for daytime resting. Anything would help since I couldn't find anything on the internert Thanks

I would try a new thread for this pimbuddy...I am sure you will get more of a response, plus this way it's kinda like hijacking the thread.

Sorry will do.