I am not sure what is happening here, I wrote a reply and it disappeared SO I will start another.
I have 3 tanks, one up, two on the way. The 29
gal is up with a good fish load of Platys, Swordtails, and some Zebra Danios. The reason I want to raise the
KH and pH is because someone told me that to breed properly these live bearers needed a pH of 7.0 or higher and the low Carbonate hardness D 2.5, sometimes it drifts down to 1.5 should be a
KH of 5 as the lower figure 2.5 would or could cause swings in the pH. So one reason I came here is to get some good advice.
I do have
hob which could contain the
cc along with Ammo Chips, Silicate remover and Phosphate remove. I do not like to use carbon unless there is something toxic that needs to be removed from the water.
Now the 20
gal tank is to be a planted tank with a few Tetras in it to supply the necessary ammonia. No filtering is planned on. The plants will take care of that. I will use the pump in an under water canister, perhaps a Duetto 100 just to push the water with the ammonia around through the plants. I want to have a hardness the plants will need along with a pH that they like. I will be using between 20 and 40 lbs of Eco Complete Aquarium Substrate. Some say you can get by with 20 lbs others say use 40 lbs. It is expensive, I would like to get by with the 20 lbs. Also I have a Hagen Nutrafin
CO2 Natural Plant system standing by if needed along with a Penguin 30 or 60 should a filter become necessary along with some increased lighting wattage. But I really do not want to use a filter.
The 90 gallon, I am not sure what fish I want, perhaps if I can find them some Kribes, or even maybe Angelfish, but I have not had much luck getting good angelfish in this area. They all die with good water parameters in a few months. Perhaps poor fish from the dealers, perhaps the wrong food or something else that I am doing wrong. Kribes or other small colorful and somewhat peaceful Cichlids would be good.
I just lost a Blood Red Parrot Cichlid that was about 10 years old who lived in the 90. I think that I had too much nitrate in the tank and almost by the time I noticed he was not eating, very unusual for this fish, it was dead. This tank will have a large Filstar Canister and a Emperor 400 with Bio Wheels and a Marineland Magnum 350 canister with Bio Wheels and it will be used mostly for cleaning and polishing the water and providing a wet-dry bio-converter.
Caudelfin