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What would be the best way to set up an acidic blackwater environment in the aquarium? I do own an ro\di unit and many different sized aquariums.

You should aim for something like 1 degree KH and no GH. You can buy bicarbonate of soda to provide KH only.

If you actually try to reproduce the environment in the rivers themselves, where the KH is "nonexistant", you will have an unstable environment, and the pH will crash. Anything below pH 6.0 is likely to crash "if you look at it the wrong way".

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Mats

I thin, you will mix the ro-water with tap water, so you get water with low KH, approx 1 - 3 KH.
It may be possible, to acid the water with some dried infructescences - when they became wodden - of the red alder - alnus rubra.
The infructescences may make the water acid ~6.5 ph and add some humin acid into ít. And the water will be a bit of brown like tea, this belows on much oder less of the infructescences.
Here in Germany most tank-keepers do this with the infructescences of the black alder - alnus glutinosa - but unfortunately this tree doesn´t grow in USA.

I presume, the infructescences of the red alder works as well. So I would try this with a bucket of water first and check the water parameters.

best regards
Dieter

Thanks Dieter. I had to look up inflorescence in a dictionary. In essence you are using seed cones to release natural oils and acids into the water if I am interpreting correctly. Do you use the seed cones after they have fallen from the tree or while they are still developing?

Hi OldMan,

you´ve interpreted correctly. I use the seed cones, they give humic stuff and acid in the water.
I pick the seed cones just from the tree´s, just at that time, end of autumn, before they fall down.
At home they get a little bit showered, than i put some (about 10 seeds) in a bucket with ion-exchanged water and use the solution, which is coloured like tea oder coffee (depends on the amount of cones) with a ph ~ 4.5. The other cones will be stored an dried.
It works very well.

best regards
Dieter

I made an experiment a while back you may find interesting:
http://mikes-machine.mine.nu/blackwater ... g_tank.htm

(On a completely unrelated note, that page and my page titled "protein bomb" are my most visited pages. Some page titles just seem to attract more attention than others. )

Hi,

very interesting experiment. I know the results with peat - an I know the smell as well
Therefore it is better, to make a solution with the stuff and add this into the tank water as necessary.
But peat may have the following risk: peat may produce only co2 and colour the water. Not more, no humic stuff.
Seed cones of alder give humic into the water.

hi there is there another way to set up for black water with out using reverse osmosis RO water unit
sorry to post on this topic lol

trying to get my L182 bristlenose to breed

Depends on what you mean - as I posted in the other thread on the L182 breeding subject, there are other options to soften the water, but none are as easy as using RO water - it's either more cost or quite unpractical (e.g. moving to Scotland will give "free" access to soft water, but will not only cost more than an RO unit [although that may be countered by the lower cost of housing in Scotland], but in my case also make the commute to London Waterloo even worse than it is right now, and probably make my current mortgage payments into alimony payments as my wife would divorce me if I decided to do that). The problem here is that you are trying to remove the minerals that the water picked up as part of passing through the ground on it's way to your water supply. That's no easy feat. You can make "soft" water by a water softener, and for dish-washers, washing machines and other machines, that's a fine solution. But unfortunately, for fish, that's not a working solution, because a traditional water softener REPLACES the mineral content in the water with salt - and for the purposes of "soft water", salty water is just as bad or worse.

Can we try to keep this discussion in ONE of the threads, however, as it's painfully complicated to keep track of the same subject in different threads. I'll leave it to you to determine if you want to continue in this thread or in the L182 breeding thread.

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Mats

In addition to what Matts wrote, in natural circumstances (such as above undestroyed parts of Amazonia) rain is almost pure water - as in H2O, with its main co-compound carbon oxid. This comes from the air, which does contain this stuff

After falling down, however, the water will change quite rapidly, depending on where it fell. If it fell on peat, or dead leaves, the water will dissolve organic materials, thereby getting brown and acidic. This is the falling leaves season, and as I have some buckets with rain water outdoors, I see very clearly how fast this goes - and how dark the water gets - Instant blackwater, so to speak.

However, most rain falling in Europe will fall on mineral rich grounds, and dissolve calciumsalts, magnesiumsalts and thereby get hard. Most salts further tunt the pH up as well

If you intend to make blackwater, you should first return your water to something similar to rain - which is most easily done with w RO unit. Than the water can be turned into something blacker - literally

Bas,

Of coruse, collecting rain-water, as long as you live in an area and house where that is possible, would of course be a solution. However, rain-water is a little bit tricky in the sense that you have to make sure that:
1. You haven't also collected a bunch of exhaust-fumes and other pollution.
2. It's not "instant access" - some days it rains, other times it doesn't. So you need a way to store up volumes of water so that you can do water changes when it's not raining too. When trying to breed fish, we often need to perform a "dry season/wet season" cycle. If you happen to get a lot of rain during the "dry season" and then no rain for the "wet season", you've just got a problem.

RO units are a lot more predictable - the water comes at a rate of however many liters per day the unit is rated at (it varies a bit depending on temperature, newness of the filter, etc, but it's not going to take 4 weeks to collect 200 liters, and then four hours to collect the next 200 liters).

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Mats

it does make since in wot u have sed so will have to save up the money to buy one or i just ask the wife to buy me one for xmas lol


thx for your replys will update this when i have one to used or not maybe !!!!

Also, in both north america and europe you can find peat bogs (more so the further north you go). The water in a peat bog is natural black water: near zero salt content, dark in color, and with low pH. You'll need to check pH before use, depending on local conditions it may be too high or too low for your purposes.

MatsP wrote:Bas,

Of coruse, collecting rain-water, as long as you live in an area and house where that is possible, would of course be a solution. However, rain-water is a little bit tricky in the sense that you have to make sure that:
1. You haven't also collected a bunch of exhaust-fumes and other pollution.
2. It's not "instant access" - some days it rains, other times it doesn't. So you need a way to store up volumes of water so that you can do water changes when it's not raining too. When trying to breed fish, we often need to perform a "dry season/wet season" cycle. If you happen to get a lot of rain during the "dry season" and then no rain for the "wet season", you've just got a problem.

RO units are a lot more predictable - the water comes at a rate of however many liters per day the unit is rated at (it varies a bit depending on temperature, newness of the filter, etc, but it's not going to take 4 weeks to collect 200 liters, and then four hours to collect the next 200 liters).

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Mats

Apparently my earlier posting sounded as a suggestion to collect rainwater.

Thank you, Mats, for pointing out the disadvantages of rainwater - in fact I intended to explain why an RO unit would be needed, as I know how little rain can be trusted.

I am, however thinking of a greenhouse on 1 side of my house, which could also serve to collect rain , but this thinking is far from any planning, let alone deciding

update

ro water unit is up and running takes abt 4hours & 30 mins to do a 25ltrs of pure water start the finished so will tank me long time to do my tanks water changes but i onlt got 3 water buckets that hold 25ltrs in each so going to buy couple 20ltrs ones of flebay

If you have room for a new 33 gal garbage can you can accumulate and prepare a more usable amount of water.
It is a good idea to heat the storage container reasonably close to your aquarium temperature and provide some circulation to evenly dissolve the mineral make up chemicals plus avoid temperature stratification in the storage container.
My RO Unit is only able to produce 60 gpd which is too slow for me. I replacing it with at least one that can produce 200 gpd.
I use a water pump and hose to fill my tanks from my 2-55 gal barrels.
If your tanks are at a fairly typical stand of 34 inches or so it doesn't take an expensive pump. I use a MagDrive 9.5 and it is able to pump water to my top tier tanks that are nearly 7 feet off the ground at their tops through 50 feet of Recreational Vehicle potable water hose.

my ro water unit 50gpd (189ltrs)not much really shld be enough to run my tanks (x6)as i only do 25ltrs in each tank wky i have a booster pump on it but seems thats only to fill up the tank that s hold abt 12.5 ltrs i am going to fill up my water containers x3 so will have to go with the flow it is slow but ill get used to it i think not

As I've mentioned before, it makes life easier for everyone to keep discussions on a particular subject in one place, as I see that Larry has already answered approximately the same thing that I answered in the other thread.

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Mats

update

today we have change the tank corner 252ltr tank from gravel to sand and added caves and bogwood and some plants
plus i taken nearly all the water part from abt 10% i am at the moment putting in ro water to full it up then i will be adding the fish bk in as they are at the moment in a holding tank 3ft then on friday will be putting the L182 bristlenose bk in just found a female traped found her dead dont know how ong she been there for
so now i have 3x male and 8x females going bk in tank i am hoping to put a trio in there own tank just after xmas
will add a photo of the tank was before the change and a photo after when i can in the next couple days

AGAIN: Please do not continue talking about the same thing in two different threads. Nearly every regular member of this forum reads ALL sections. It just confuses people if you give the same information in two different places. Please, stop it!

If not, I will lock this thread so that no one can post in this thread.

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Mats