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‘ello all! I am going to be getting a pair of Parosphromenus sp ‘sentang’ in a few weeks, so I thought I would start a journal documenting my progress. I have no pics yet, sadly (that will have to wait until I have a micro SD card), but here are the tank specs:
Tank size: Standard 10 gallon (45 by 25 by 30cm H), half filled
PH: about 6.1 (don’t know why it won’t go lower…)
TDS: 19 ppm or 30 microsiemens
Light: a 10 wt, 6500 k bulb producing 600 lumens of light
Filtration: Plants (lots of emersed water sprite and submerged java moss, just added some java fern today. There’s duckweed right now from the java fern introduction, but duckweed has tended to die quickly in this tank from the sparse nutrients). An air line provides a small amount of aeration (most of the line is directed towards a BBS hatchery)
Temperature: 78 fahrenheit or about 25.5 celcius
Water changes: 1 gallon/3.78 litres a week. Rainwater/distilled water is prepared a week before by soaking with 1/2 cup peat moss.
Food: BBS. Will be establishing microworm cultures within a week. Will try to ‘culture’ mosquito larvae.
Other: The sides are covered with black paper and the back has a hand drawn foam board background with 5 inch walls behind it (to hide the microworm cultures).
Pics: None yet (will need to acquire a micro SD card first)
Any suggestions on improvements?Try using some alder cones and/or catappa or oak leaves to get the pH down. That will also stain the water nicely.
If the pH buffers back up, you probably have too high KH in your water, even if you use rain water. Or, there is something else in your tank that is leaching carbonates into your water, like sand/gravel or rocks ?[quote=”AlmightyJoshaeus” post=5528]’
PH: about 6.1 (don’t know why it won’t go lower…)
TDS: 19 ppm or 30 microsiemensWater changes: 1 gallon/3.78 litres a week. Rainwater/distilled water is prepared a week before by soaking with 1/2 cup peat moss.
[/quote]If the pH will go any lower easily depends on the buffering capacity of the water. That 30μS comes from something and in the best scenario, you would like these ions to not interfere with your lowering attempts.
Soaking peat in soft water is very inefficient. What Ghia suggest is the best way to prepare the water. Soak alder cones and different leaves in soft water, but that water must contain no alcalinity (or what is wrongly called carbonate hardness). From your description, I am worried that is not the case and therefore the process of lowering the pH will take time. If you already bought peat, at least use it efficiently. Take a PET bottle and remove the bottom. Stuff it with peat (not to densely). Put some filtration foam in to the bottle neck. Turn it upside down. Put some prepared clear container under the bottle neck to catch the prepared water.
Using this kind of device (it is called torfkanone in German :D) Leave a little space in the bottle at the top, where you will be able to pour like bigger glass of water. Start adding water glass after glass, untill you soak the peat abundantly and then leave it alone to drop in to the container. You may either use your 19 ppm water and drop the whole volume of water over the peat or better drop some tapwater over it. Dropping tap is much more efficinet, as peat is a ion echanger so if you have more kations to exchange for H+, what you will get, will be extremely acidic concentrate, that you may use to prepare the water for the tank. You simply use like 1/2 liter in to 10 liters of pure RO or rain water. You may use the peat this way for many months and you are able to prepare the water over night. However, it is best not to use peat and support such destruction of nature like peat mining.
Hi A.J.!
You write that the only filtration shall be some plants? Perhaps it would be good to include at least a small inside filter?In a normal aquarium tank filtration by growing plants is possible, in a blackwater tank the idea is nonsense. The best “filtration” is frequent water change. Small “filters” bring movement into the still water, they cannot “clean” the water. Especially for beginners they are useful for consolidation of the mind, nearly nothing else. I would always say people should use a small sponge filter, but the decisive thing is frequent water change.
I have bred all Paro species in small 10 liter-tanks without any filter and water movement, but frequent water change, twice a week is good. And floating Ceratopteris is good for consuming the small amounts of N that build up in the water from the little feeding of the fish.Thankx for the replies thus far! I decided to start the tank over…this time, it will chiefly use distilled water, with the only rainwater that I use being directly caught from the sky. The tank was going to have water changes all along in case anyone was worried (would 20 percent a week be good?).
Almost forgot…will be using peat moss and tiny amount of distilled white vinegar to acidify the water
When I put the aforementioned prepared water (with a conductivity of about 17 microsiemens and a PH of 4.1) in the almost empty 10 gallon, it subsequently rose to 23 microsiemens and 6 ph! This makes no sense…the tank has no substrate nor nothing else that would obviously cause such a spectacular rise in either TDS or PH. Any suggestions on what is going wrong? (PS…this tank is bare bottom and its only decor is its leaves, sticks, and plants)
I wouldn’t say a rise from 17 ms to 23 is spectular, when the water that was left in the tank held 30ms.
And it does sound like you have some carbonates in there, acting as a buffer and dragging your pH back up. It doesn’t take much when you operate at these low TDS levels.
I totally agree with Ghia. That is what buffers do. They are able to maintain the pH at certain value even at very low concentrations. Use the “aforementioned water” for the further partial changes and the pH should decrease sooner or later.
Good news! I found what the problem was…my dechlorinator :O You see, I use seachem prime as my dechlorinator, but a ml of prime treats 10 gallons…thus, I dilute it with tap water so that 1 ml treats 1 gallon. Doing some tests over the past two days reveals that this prime/tap mixture has a VERY high TDS…high enough that a single ml can single handedly increase the TDS/conductivity of a gallon of water by the observed amount, and presumably play havoc on the PH as well. I have started adding vinegar to this dechlorinator mix to counter that…will have to see how it works.
Hello Josh,
It is nice that you are becoming observant and you have identified the problem. 🙂
However, if you are using RO or rain water, there is no need to use any dechlorinator. RO has a patron with activated carbon that will do the job (Make sure it is in the system and replace it properly otherwise your RO membrane is at serious risk). If you prefere to use tapwater to prepare the acidifying concentrate for the RO water, dependent on your tap you should be able to use it after like 1/2 hour if it is chlorinated by gaseous chlorine or it is better to not use it at all if there are some chloramines in it for example as they could create some harmful substances together with the peat, that could stay in the water. In such case, for small volume of “normal” water, you could use RO and remineralize it with for example Sachem Equlibrium. You can drop such water over peat to get similar kind of acidifying concentrate too. I hope my explanation is clear 😀 You only need to dechlorinate big volumes of tapwater for normal tanks, if you are dealing with some badly chlorinated water or you have no space and time to let it sit for a while.You’re right about rainwater…no need to dechlorinate something that should never have chlorine in the first place! However, I also use a water distiller to produce some of my water, and I am unsure whether this device would allow any chlorine/chloramines to remain in the distilled water that remains. In any case, failing to notice this flaw with my dechlorinator seems to be what undid all my prior efforts to make good licorice gourami water…I think I will switch back to using chiefly rainwater as long as the TDS meter shows it to be fairly clean (my prior attempt came after a long dry spell and captured an incredible amount of pollutants that hiked the TDS up)
Consider this ordeal practice if I ever go to ornaticauda or parvulus…
Just a little update on the tank…or, more accurately, on what will be feeding the tank 🙂 My microworm culture arrived monday the 13th of June, and yesterday (the 17th, 2016) I harvested it for the first time…they’re doing VERY well. By the way, before I got the culture, I found a harvesting technique online that would be good to share here. I found it on the website of a certain Wayne Schmidt, a betta breeder who, in turn, got this from another hobbyist: just put a damp paper towel on top of part of the microworm culture. In large cultures, you can simply scrape numerous microworms off with a teaspoon…otherwise put another damp paper towel on top of that, and when you go to harvest, remove the top towel and use a turkey baster to rinse the microworms into water.
Another small update! I bought my paros yesterday…they will be shipping next week and hopefully arriving thursday 🙂 They are a trio of Parosphromenus ‘sentang’…obviously one of the females will need to be moved when I try to spawn them.
That all assumes the shipper is capable of sexing the fish. My success rate was not very good in that area. I eventually went to purchasing a total of 6 each time.In those numbers, statistically you stand a very good change of having at least one pair. Depending on the tank size, in most cases I found no reason to remove the remaining Paros from the aquarium. Of course you need good cover and places for the pair to hide.
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