PlanetCatfish.com

To all:

After attending last months Catfish Convention I am fired up and enthused to get on with attempt to breed L260s.

This is my second attempt at trying to induce L260s to spawn. My last attempt introduced RO water over a period of 1 week with out any spawning activity.

This time around I have provided a better diet (frozen mysis, daphnia, brine shrimp, NLS formula) I have also provided the correct size caves based on recommendations found in this forum. I think I have done everything right but I am concerned with my conductivity.

The L260s reside in a 40 gal tank that initially had a TDS of 84 PPM. After several skipped water changes it has only increased to 119 PPM. I would like to see it at around 200 PPM but I am not sure if it can be reached safely by missing water changes.

I have two questions:

1) At 119 PPM, Is that a high enough TDS to start my RO water changes?
2) IF not, how can I safely increase the TDS?

Happy hobbying,
Vriesea

The levels of nitrate would be the best indication of whether you need to do water changes (well, that and the "look and health of the fish" that is - no matter what a test-kit says, if the fish look unhappy, it's time to change the water). Unfortunately, TDS changes from one week to the next, if you don't have hardness-affecting content in the tank (e.g. calciferous gravel or rocks) is most likely purely nitrate changes - which would mean that your nitrate is about 25 ppm more than at the beginning of the week - that's quite a bit).

Increasing the conductivity/TDS is relatively easy. You can use just about any of the products that are intended for "add to RO water to make it better for the fish", e.g. SeaChem Equilibrium, Kent RO Right to give a couple of examples. Or simply bicarbonate of soda will work (that's the key ingredient in baking soda, but beware that baking soda can contain other ingredients, so it'd be better to get it in "chemically pure" form - and do not confuse baking soda with baking powder, the latter has a lot more ingredients that you certainly would not want in your aquarium - partiuclarly phosphates).

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Mats