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Anyone with Sugar Land Water Keeping German Blue Rams Successfully?

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  • Anyone with Sugar Land Water Keeping German Blue Rams Successfully?

    I'm hoping to be successful in keeping them healthy and alive. I don't care about breeding, but I bought a gorgeous GBR at City Pets, and just love it and hope to get more.

    Thanks!

  • #2
    Just watch temps and parameters. They like a warm tank and low Nitrates and no Ammonia or Nitrites. Plants and wood can help give them more territories and breaks in line of sight. Mixing in some distilled water (50%) or more can help lower the hard water and essentially the Ph of the water. In an established tank with a solid water change schedule they are not too difficult and can even breed.
    In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
    Desiderius Erasmus
    GHAC President

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    • #3
      Thanks! The water in Sugar Land is very hard. ugh

      H-E-B has a machine where you can buy water ($1.75 for 5 gallons) and I believe it uses a reverse osmosis system. Since my tank is a 37G tank I could afford to buy the water and haul it home for this tank. IF I set up my 55 gallon tank, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to haul all that water every week. :(

      So, if I make a 5 gallon water change, are you saying that I should add half tap water and have distilled water? (The water in the tank would eventually be 50/50, but it would take a few weeks to get there.)

      And I would imagine that I don't want to make any drastic changes in the water quality, anyway?

      I've never kept cichlids before, and really like the little SA cichlids.

      I appreciate your help! Thanks.

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      • #4
        Yeah, a 50/50 mix should be a good start. Short of having a good range of test kits and meters it is the best way to move forward. Hard water and Ph go hand in hand. These are soft water low ph fish, but most can deal with harder water, but breeding and coloration can suffer. Going off our water here in Spring, ours is crazy hard. Ph - 8.2, TDS - 350+, can also list GH and Kh, but are not really needed for this. Minerals in the water (measured easiest with a TDS meter) buffer the Ph up (Alkaline). This is why driftwood and Indian Almond leaves do little to nothing to lower the Ph, its just liquid rock really. Great for African Rift lake species as its almost identical, but poor for South American Amazonian fish. To ease the minerals, mixing RO water (theoretically 0 TDS) in equal parts lowers the TDS in half. With regular testing and monitoring you can even do more and lower it very drastically. In their native environment it is mostly 50ppm or lower. The lower you get the TDS, the easier it is for the water to lower in Ph via tannins (driftwood/IAL/Peat) or to use a Ph lowering substrate (Aquasoil, Brightwell, Stratum). Your parameters get very wonky though once you get below a 6.5 Ph, so be careful and read up on that if that is our goal. I imagine even getting close to neutral (7.0) and lowering the TDS will dramatically make them easier to manage and have far happier fish that eat well and will likely successfully breed.
        In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
        Desiderius Erasmus
        GHAC President

        Comment


        • #5
          Thanks for the replies! I'm really not interested in breeding, since all I have going is a 5.5 gallon hospital tank. If I suddenly had fry, I don't know what I'd do with them. :)

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          • #6
            I wanted to add something: I stated that I got my GBR at City Pets, but that was in error. I actually got it at T&T Fish on Hwy 6.

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