Severums?

[nellyboy2115]

Will different types of Severums tolerate each other in a community aquarium?

[plankton]

Usually, yes.

[Stephen]

Severums will not do well in hard, alkaline water though.

[nellyboy2115]

My Ph level is 7.43 from bristol water. What's a good way to get the Ph down?

[plankton]

You need to get the hardness down, and the best way is RO (reverse osmosis) water mixed with the tapwater.

[nellyboy2115]

Ok, I've never really considered water hardness before and it seems there are several scales it's measured in i.e French , German and British. And then we have Total Hardness. Wow! Where to start ?

I don't think I'm going have the time to do RO water, so I'm going to try something less time consuming. Any ideas? And when you say they will not do well, does this mean that they will become sick or do you mean that it's not ideal for breeding?

My total water hardness is 260 mg/l CaCO3, UK degrees 18, French 26 and German 16. Calcium 89 mg/l Ca, Magnesium 9.1 mg/l Mg, Fluoride 0.12 mg/l. Alkalinity 186 mg/l CaCO3, Alkalinity mg/l HCO3.

Thanks

[Stephen]

You need soft and acidic water for severums.
Soft means below 8dGH German (2-4dGH would be better) and acidic means below pH7.0.

[nellyboy2115]

I would refer you to a You Tube video which is not contradictory to your statement but also not quite so cautious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnUJKMhr_nU&t=333s

It seems my total water hardness is higher than they have in the video. So I am looking for any easier methods other than RO water.

Thanks

[Martinspuddle]

Ok, I've never really considered water hardness before and it seems there are several scales it's measured in i.e French , German and British. And then we have Total Hardness. Wow! Where to start ?

I don't think I'm going have the time to do RO water, so I'm going to try something less time consuming. Any ideas? And when you say they will not do well, does this mean that they will become sick or do you mean that it's not ideal for breeding?

My total water hardness is 260 mg/l CaCO3, UK degrees 18, French 26 and German 16. Calcium 89 mg/l Ca, Magnesium 9.1 mg/l Mg, Fluoride 0.12 mg/l. Alkalinity 186 mg/l CaCO3, Alkalinity mg/l HCO3.

I copied part of this answer over from another of my posts, bedtime soon you see.

General hardness of water. 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 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.

Severums are native to the upper Orinoco and upper Rio Negro basins in South America, where the water hardness is 1-8°GH and the pH 5.5-6.5 although they will tolerate a pH of 7 in captivity.

Options; RO water, Rainwater, filtering with peat.

RO water, is the only safe, reliable source for fishkeepers.

Rainwater, if you can collect enough of it (which might seem a silly thing to say at the moment) but care must be taken because the risk of pollution, i.e. living near a factories, industries etc.

Peat, great way of soften hardwater but there are issues. Maintaining pH can be problematic, it only lasts four to six weeks and while the general hardness (GH) will drop, the carbon hardness (KH) will sometime stay stubbornly high.

There is one other option, Distilled water. I used it mixed with tapwater and does work but the issue here is getting enough of the stuff without the expense.

You can buffer water up easily (soft to hard), buffering down is somewhat harder and I don't advise anyone to try unless you know what your doing. Goodnight.

[mikeyw64]

hmmm wonder If I could start selling my soft water (GH3 , KH2, PH7) and shipping it around the country ;o)