PlanetCatfish.com

Do fish shops generally make an effort to keep their Corydoras for sale in soft water or do they just acclimate them to local water conditions? Im aware they do quite well in hard water although I’d rather not use it. I’m just wondering what conditions to aim for in my own tank when I set it up.

I can only tell about Dutch shops: some treat their water in case the receive wild cought fishes, but even these will only sell from tap water tanks.

A fish shop uses a lot of water (high denisty implies lots of waterchanges, mostly done automatically) and any other water than tap water would be extremely more expensive.

Still, the business model of said shops is to sell the fishes quickly, they aim at selling 50 % or more within a month. That is, a fish shop keeping a fish in tapwater is, to me, not a strong argument for continuing doing so.

Ah yes, good point about the cost of treated water. One of my local fish shops has loads of large containers of ROA water lined up in the shop but I don’t suppose they use much if any in most of the stock tanks.