Fishfur
Aquarium Advice Addict
Excellent discussion.. well worth the reading. I too struggle to understand water chemistry properly.
Interesting comments on TDS. I'm into shrimp and some of the guys locally have gotten into keeping some pretty high end shrimp, like the Taiwan Bees, King Kong and so on. TDS became a hot topic some time ago, as shrimp keepers learned that matching the TDS of new water to what the shrimp were already in resulted in much higher survival rates for many quite expensive shrimp, who had a rep for being difficult to acclimate.
Certainly having soft acidic water matters greatly to keeping these shrimp successfully too, along with some specialized substrates, but TDS seems to be extremely important as well. It was speculated that drip acclimation worked because it helped to mitigate the effect of differences in TDS, more so than differences in pH or other parameters.
So if TDS is so important to shrimp, why wouldn't it be as important to fish as well ? I think so many people get into the hobby with the idea they wish to keep certain fish. Maybe they've seen them and fell in love with their appearance. Then they find out that the fish in question does not do well for them. Maybe, if they look into it, they find out it's because the fish they want needs vastly different water conditions than those that the local tap water provides. Maybe they invest in the equipment and supplies needed to keep the fish properly, and if so, have success, where other folks simply do not want to hear that they can't have what they want without the investment.
I figured out very early on when I got back into fish keeping, after decades away from it, that I simply wasn't going to try to keep fish that needed conditions I can't offer them. Water here is hard and alkaline. I live in an apartment, so I can't put in an RO system, and I can't lug huge bottles of water up here all the time, not with my health issues. So I try to stick to fish that can live in the local water and at least appear to do well.
I do think that spawning, more often than not, indicates good general health and well being, but aside from live bearers, many fish don't spawn unless you make a bit of an effort to provide the right triggers. So many species spawn during the rainy season, or monsoon season, when their water conditions change pretty dramatically in a very short space of time. So if we can more or less replicate that, we may have more success in spawning, but the lack of spawning, when natural triggers for it are absent, wouldn't necessarily mean the fish are not doing well.
If they are eating well and appear to have normal behaviours, I think that's about as much as you can expect in many cases. It pays to observe the fish you keep and try to learn as much about each species as you can, so that you might have some idea of what normal behaviour should be for them. Too often, to me anyway, it seems people are seeking to decorate a tank they way they would their living room. The right colours, sizes, shapes, but not much attention is paid to what the fish need or like, so long as they 'fit'.
Reasonably healthy plants may be a fair indication of reasonably decent water conditions, but truly, plants would flourish at nitrate levels that fish would find unbearable. There has to be a balance between having lush and lovely plants and healthy fish.. and since the fish will suffer much more if it's wrong, I think the balance should favour them.
One thing I did not see mentioned that I also think can have a big impact on fish health is what is fed to them. I happen to think that feeding them live or at the very least, frozen live foods, is very important too. So many fish ARE wild caught, and sure, many will learn to recognize man made food and eat it. But that doesn't mean it's the best food for them. Kibble is simple to feed dogs and cats but it's not that good for them. I feed my cats a raw, prey model diet. I culture as much live food as I possibly can for my fish and inverts too. I think live food can make a critical difference to the health and well being of fish.
Just one example, with Betta fish. I adopted some that had been privately imported from Thailand. One of them won't eat pellets unless he is starving. I thought he was going to fade away until I got him some blackworms, and now he's eating pretty well. All of them had suffered fin rot before I got them, and with live food their fins are doing better too. And they chase the worms they miss at first later on, which is something I think makes a difference to their general well being.
Another Betta I got recently at auction also refused food when I brought him home. He even turned down black worms and fly larvae, which the others were happy to eat. I put him in a tank that has a population of scuds in it and he is now scouring the bottom hunting scuds. I've never seen a Betta so active before, but he's apparently a avid hunter.
I get that it's more expensive to feed frozen and not as easy. Culturing live foods isn't always easy either and may not be popular with the folks you live with, but I think it makes a dramatic difference to the health and wellbeing of fish and other pets too. I've noticed that my shrimp actively go after microworms any time I feed those to fish, and I've even seen them tugging on blackworms, so it's not just fish that benefit from live food. Along with the nutritional value of such food, fish also can utilize their natural hunting behaviours, and I think that's worth quite a bit as well. Zoos do 'enrichment' for their captive animals for these kinds of reasons.. let's face it, a tank, no matter the size, is nothing like where most fish came from, where they can swim anywhere and must hunt to feed themselves, whether it's for critters or algae on the rocks.
Interesting comments on TDS. I'm into shrimp and some of the guys locally have gotten into keeping some pretty high end shrimp, like the Taiwan Bees, King Kong and so on. TDS became a hot topic some time ago, as shrimp keepers learned that matching the TDS of new water to what the shrimp were already in resulted in much higher survival rates for many quite expensive shrimp, who had a rep for being difficult to acclimate.
Certainly having soft acidic water matters greatly to keeping these shrimp successfully too, along with some specialized substrates, but TDS seems to be extremely important as well. It was speculated that drip acclimation worked because it helped to mitigate the effect of differences in TDS, more so than differences in pH or other parameters.
So if TDS is so important to shrimp, why wouldn't it be as important to fish as well ? I think so many people get into the hobby with the idea they wish to keep certain fish. Maybe they've seen them and fell in love with their appearance. Then they find out that the fish in question does not do well for them. Maybe, if they look into it, they find out it's because the fish they want needs vastly different water conditions than those that the local tap water provides. Maybe they invest in the equipment and supplies needed to keep the fish properly, and if so, have success, where other folks simply do not want to hear that they can't have what they want without the investment.
I figured out very early on when I got back into fish keeping, after decades away from it, that I simply wasn't going to try to keep fish that needed conditions I can't offer them. Water here is hard and alkaline. I live in an apartment, so I can't put in an RO system, and I can't lug huge bottles of water up here all the time, not with my health issues. So I try to stick to fish that can live in the local water and at least appear to do well.
I do think that spawning, more often than not, indicates good general health and well being, but aside from live bearers, many fish don't spawn unless you make a bit of an effort to provide the right triggers. So many species spawn during the rainy season, or monsoon season, when their water conditions change pretty dramatically in a very short space of time. So if we can more or less replicate that, we may have more success in spawning, but the lack of spawning, when natural triggers for it are absent, wouldn't necessarily mean the fish are not doing well.
If they are eating well and appear to have normal behaviours, I think that's about as much as you can expect in many cases. It pays to observe the fish you keep and try to learn as much about each species as you can, so that you might have some idea of what normal behaviour should be for them. Too often, to me anyway, it seems people are seeking to decorate a tank they way they would their living room. The right colours, sizes, shapes, but not much attention is paid to what the fish need or like, so long as they 'fit'.
Reasonably healthy plants may be a fair indication of reasonably decent water conditions, but truly, plants would flourish at nitrate levels that fish would find unbearable. There has to be a balance between having lush and lovely plants and healthy fish.. and since the fish will suffer much more if it's wrong, I think the balance should favour them.
One thing I did not see mentioned that I also think can have a big impact on fish health is what is fed to them. I happen to think that feeding them live or at the very least, frozen live foods, is very important too. So many fish ARE wild caught, and sure, many will learn to recognize man made food and eat it. But that doesn't mean it's the best food for them. Kibble is simple to feed dogs and cats but it's not that good for them. I feed my cats a raw, prey model diet. I culture as much live food as I possibly can for my fish and inverts too. I think live food can make a critical difference to the health and well being of fish.
Just one example, with Betta fish. I adopted some that had been privately imported from Thailand. One of them won't eat pellets unless he is starving. I thought he was going to fade away until I got him some blackworms, and now he's eating pretty well. All of them had suffered fin rot before I got them, and with live food their fins are doing better too. And they chase the worms they miss at first later on, which is something I think makes a difference to their general well being.
Another Betta I got recently at auction also refused food when I brought him home. He even turned down black worms and fly larvae, which the others were happy to eat. I put him in a tank that has a population of scuds in it and he is now scouring the bottom hunting scuds. I've never seen a Betta so active before, but he's apparently a avid hunter.
I get that it's more expensive to feed frozen and not as easy. Culturing live foods isn't always easy either and may not be popular with the folks you live with, but I think it makes a dramatic difference to the health and wellbeing of fish and other pets too. I've noticed that my shrimp actively go after microworms any time I feed those to fish, and I've even seen them tugging on blackworms, so it's not just fish that benefit from live food. Along with the nutritional value of such food, fish also can utilize their natural hunting behaviours, and I think that's worth quite a bit as well. Zoos do 'enrichment' for their captive animals for these kinds of reasons.. let's face it, a tank, no matter the size, is nothing like where most fish came from, where they can swim anywhere and must hunt to feed themselves, whether it's for critters or algae on the rocks.
