Water Hardness Neon Tetras

[CR45]

Hi,

I'm in the process of switching over my tank from goldfish to tropical fish. I have been planning on getting some neon tetras as part of a community tank but not sure if my water hardness would be too much.

Hardness - 269 mg/l
16dH

I have looked at RO water but ideally don't want to go down this route.

[Colin_T]

Neon tetras naturally occur in very soft water with a general hardness (GH) below 100ppm and usually below 50ppm. If your GH is 269ppm then it is way too high for any tetras and is suitable for livebearers (mollies, guppies, swordtails), rainbowfish and goldfish, or Lake Victorian cichlids. If you want to keep tetras, either use a reverse osmosis (r/o) unit or make a solar still.

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SOLAR STILL
Get a large plastic storage container and put it outside in the sun.
Pour a bucket of water into the storage container.
Put a clean bucket in the middle of the storage container. Have a rock in the bucket to stop it floating around.
Put the lid on the storage container.
Put a rock or small weight on the lid in the middle, so the lid sags above the bucket.

As the sun heats up the container, water will evaporate and condense on the underside of the lid. The water will run towards the centre and drip into the bucket. When the bucket is full of water, you put it into a holding container and put the bucket back in the storage container with another bucket of tap water.

You get pure water with a pH of 7.0, 0 GH, 0KH and no wasted water, no power used and it's cheap to set up.

Use part r/o or distilled water with part tap water to get a more desirable GH.

[CR45]

Thanks for your reply, I thought that would be the answer.
Would cardinal tetras have the same requirements as well or can they tolerate harder water?

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by CR45

Thanks for your reply, I thought that would be the answer.
Would cardinal tetras have the same requirements as well or can they tolerate harder water?

It would be the same for the Cardinals. In fact, most cardinals are wild caught so they really would do poorly in that hard a water.
If you are dead set on keeping Tetras in general, you are going to have to alter your water and prepare water for water changes in advance as well so that you don't add too many minerals to the tank water.