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I know this is old now, but I wanted to update it with something that might be valuable to other people.
First of all, I have since stopped using activated carbon in all of my tanks, paros and otherwise. It’s too difficult to find a brand that actually will not raise pH and sponge filtration seems to be working better all around anyway.
Second, the rainwater was dirty for a few reasons. We had a very dry and hot summer, which meant that more debris and air pollution ended up sticking to the roof, and then the rain washed it down; I have since found that keeping the roof clean (or at least keeping the surfaces and gutters that contribute to one’s collection apparatus clean) by simply rinsing them with tap water from a garden hose (i.e. standing on the roof and spraying it down) goes a long way towards keep the collected water clean. I usually wait to set up the collection apparatus until the rain has had a chance to rinse away any minerals from the tap, but this does not take long under sustained moderate to heavy rainfall.
Just to throw in my thoughts…
Phosphoric acid should be safe for this, but if I were doing that I would actually put the water in a container outside, with some plants (Water hyacinth would work very well here), and leave it alone while testing the pH at regular intervals.
Plants will also remove chelated metals from water (especially iron and magnesium), and reducing the pH will improve the ability of the plants to absorb them. The only thing that I would say (especially if somebody reads this thread and doesn’t have much knowledge of chemistry) is that one either needs to use the equation to determine the change in pH (not too hard if you have a digital probe)and add the amount called for via the calculations or add a small amount at a time and check the pH intermittently.
Well, I think I may have answered my own question.
After searching for other instances of this problem, numerous threads and online conversations came up; other people have had problems with this as well, and it is indeed linked to the activated carbon.
Finally, one thread on a marine fishkeeping forum detailed that activated carbon can raise the pH of the water it is used on if it was not acid-washed first. At some point during the production process, ash is produced or acquired as a contaminant. Some brands/grades of activated carbon are treated with an acid wash, which dissolves the ash (ash is often composed of metal oxides), but it seems that there was also some backlash against this practice, since it could alter the pH in the “wrong direction” for certain applications and since phosphoric acid was often used, which meant that phosphates were left in the carbon and contributed to algae problems in aquaria.
The only real solution appears to be finding a brand of activated carbon that is acid-washed, or to use an acid/acidic solution to wash/rinse the carbon with prior to using it on the rainwater.
[quote=”Jacob” post=4743]What about pistia, water lettuce? It has leaves in the air and no need to root in the substrate.
How does it compare to submerged water sprite for keeping the water clean?
And is it a plant that could alter the water chemistry too much like “normal” plants will?[/quote]I have loads of Pistia stratiodes. I’m actually thinking of getting rid of all of it, because it seems to look pretty for a while and then eventually either make a big mess or take over a tank.
It is also extremely iron-hungry. I have to fertilize the tanks it grows in fairly often or they become chlorotic and die (not parosphromenus tanks), and rob the other plants of iron in the process. As Zwerge said, Salvinia works very well. I have so much salvinia now that I have given fistfuls of it away to other hobbyists and even people who have small fountains and ponds outside their homes. I have never had a problem growing salvinia, and while it does respond to fertilization (as one would expect), mine does very well without it.
I have also had great success with frogbit; it seems to take some time to get used to the lower pH, but after that it just goes right back to making glossy, round leaves.
As for the topic at hand, the tank photo that started this thread certainly looks nice (and Finke is absolutely right about aquariums here in the US; people always seem to want to engineer problems away instead of looking to the inspiration of why we have glass boxes of fish in the first place; natural ecosystems.
And, the natural ecosystem for southeast asian blackwater fish is very acidic, with very low concentrations of important plant micronutrients such as magnesium, potassium, iron, and calcium. In order to correctly mimic the ecotope of Parosphromenus in captivity, we need to keep the levels of these micronutrients low, and because of that many plants simply will not survive in a proper Parosphromenus tank.
The tank in the photo at the start of this thread looks nice, but it’s probably not going to be the best for Parosphromenus.
[quote=”helene” post=4845]I also keep small boraras in some of my parotanks, – mostly boraras maculatus, – and I had in one instance a terrible outbreak of something which maybe resembles what you describe. The boraras was infected with lots of small cysts, – I actually thought it was ‘ick’, – and I remember it came after a change in temperature as well.
It was a small tank, – in fact I had one paro in it and 3 boraras. I didnt medicate at all, mostly because I had no idea how to treat tiny fish like boraras, – I have not a lot of faith in medication for so tiny fishes, and I was worried about affecting the paro with medication.
So I didnt treat, – and I did loose the boraras, – but the paro was totally unaffected even the outbreak was very bad. The paro survived and lived long after and it didnt affect any other tanks later.
It was not of course ideal not to treat, but this is the only time I have had any experience of this kind involving both paros and boraras. Normally I do not see this kind of sickness with any of the species.
The paros can get odinium, this happens now and again, – but other sicknesses, – it seems very rare.[/quote]How interesting.
I went on a long hiking trip not long after making this thread, which is why I have not replied until now.
I separated all of the infected B. uropthalmoides and treated them with the typical (at least in the US) formalin/malachite green solution so often used against protozoan parasites. All of them made a complete recovery by the time I left for my hiking trip, and when I returned, there was still no sign whatsoever of the cysts; they were also put into a tank already housing a few Oryzias fry, and none of the fry became infected either.
I wish my microscope was the kind with a camera, but it is not, and it is also very old (manufactured in 1946-48). Even with some of the upgrades I have given it, it cannot compete with a newer scope. The organisms I viewed under the microscope were very similar to “ich” in appearance, and did not have the golden-brown color associated with dinoflagellates. The cysts on the fish were also much smaller than those of ich; so small that at first I thought that I was seeing a piscinoodinium (“velvet”) infection.
The Paros were not infected, although they did not take kindly to the disturbances caused by my attempts to capture the boraras. I have moved the rest of the B. uropthalmoides into a different tank, and I am moving my B brigittae into that tank instead. I also bought some more ketapang leaves before I left and added them to the tank to help restore the correct water conditions.
So far, everyone seems fine. Also, no worries Deepin Peat: I’m fairly new to blackwater fish still (compared to the rest of you), so I appreciate the extra information.
So, you were the one who bought the Nagyi?
I live very close to Portland, and I use The Wet Spot as my local fish store, because I can visit it in person and it’s easily the best aquarium store on the west coast, if not the western half of the entire continent.
I was thinking of buying some more Paros from them, but I’m moving to Corvallis for school soon, and I don’t have the space for another tank at the moment.
