Help - Guppies always getting Tail Rot

[Martinspuddle]

Seconded that.

[Martinspuddle]

I don't really understand the results lol I used 20 drops for GH and 12 drops for KH.

General hardness of water, what you have there is the German scale working out acidity and alkalinity found within H2O. The German scale to my mind is the easiest to use. 1 dGH is defined as 10 milligrams (mg) of calcium oxide (CaO) per litre of water.
Water gets broken into different components but one of the major components regarding us fishkeepers is how hard or how soft water is.

Softwater, this is acidic and on the general hardness scale starts from 1 to round about 8. Soft acidic waters is where most of our tropical fish are found in these waters, this water is particular low in ions of calcium and magnesium. You find this in water that flows through tropical forested areas where there is large amounts of leaf and other decaying vegetation that breaks down into the water column, dissolving, then softening and causing the water to become acidic then giving the water a brown tint colour. So roughly in this category we will find Danios, Rasboras, Tetras, South American Cichlids and Catfishes to name a few.

Hard water is alkaline on the scale 8 to + 21 (no doubt someone will correct me) In yours and my case you'll notice the chalk in your kettle, that is hard alkaline water causing a build up of scale. This water is passed through various elements to cause it to be alkaline, in my case we have large amounts of chalk in the ground that the water passes through but it may also be Limestone and other harding elements such as Gypsum in the hardening process.
So again roughly categorising the families, Central American Cichlids, Livebearers including your Guppies and African Cichlids.

Carbonate hardness, dKH of how much temporary Calcium carbonate or Magnesium carbonate there is in the water. It is a measure of the water's buffering capacity; the higher the KH, the higher the pH in absence of other chemicals in the water, and the more resistant the water is to downward fluctuations when an acid is added thus causing difficulties for the fishkeeper trying to maintain soft water.

The problem for us fishkeepers is most water found in the United Kingdom is hard or very hard but there are some areas where the water is soft or moderately soft, some parts of northern Wales and Scotland.
Tropical fish you will find are found in our shops are kept in local hard waters but unfortunately it also means the fish will not have very good longevity and so as fishkeepers is our job to make sure the conditions are right for the welfare of the creatures that we like to keep.

[Speedfox]

Martinspuddle Wow that is super knowledge. Good to know. Yes my kettle is always full of scale haha