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lesley
05-08-2003, 05:23 AM
???

Hi guys,

I think that I probably should be adding "something" to the water when changing it (I was thinking along the lines of minerals etc). I am now using almost pure rainwater (before was a mixture of mainly dam with a little rainwater) and bought "Geo Liquid Mineral Magic" (for Discus). The shop where I bought it assured me that their impressive looking display tank with plants, etc and happy looking Discus was using this. When I got home and opened it and looked at the instructions it says that the water may go cloudy. I don't think I like the sound of that!
It also says that Geo Liquid "identifies every contaminant present and responds with the best solution for each one". Is this just advertising hype do you think or is it maybe going to be doing a lot more than I bargained for??

It gives a website www.flex-web.com/, however I can't see an English page there and I don't read/speak Japanese.

Any suggestions please?

skoda
05-08-2003, 06:39 AM
i did use this geo liquid once, was quite impressive as the water really turn to crystal clear ( although it cloud the water initially). i change 50% of water daily now and have stopped using it, i think with frequent water change the water should be of good quality. :D

nalah
05-10-2003, 07:59 AM
depends where you live ofcourse,but i dont use rain water. it accumulates (is that spelt correctly??) all the toxins on its way down.so in polluted area - YUK!

geoliquid - IMO. bit of a waste of cash since you change your water so frequently.
dam water - no idea on that one. but i see it this way - if you wouldn't drink it,then don't let your fish breath it.

Don_Lee
05-10-2003, 01:16 PM
IMO, best thing to do is test your ingoing water and see what you have to start with. Measure the GH, KH, etc...and try to get an idea of where you are starting out before you add anything. Most water additives are unnecessary for me persoanlly, having very hard water to start with. Once you know what you have, you dont have to test all of the time, IIME.

Don ;D

lesley
05-11-2003, 02:50 AM
Thanks for your replies;
Don, I know this is a dumb question, what is KH - the water I am using has a pH of 6.8, hardness appears to be about 80 ppm - I'm still trying to figure out if I'm reading it correctly ( using a kit which has TESTSET then JBL and Gesamtharte GH written on it, I'm using five drops to get colour).

Pascale, :cool:when you live in an area that is still in the worst drought on record - we never have had piped water anyway, and have to rely on rain or rainwater running into a dam, then you use the water that you have to use yourself. There have been a couple of occasions when I have wondered whether my shower would make me dirtier!! 8) The trout that came from the dam surely tasted nice, but my worry was that the dam water might have parasites that would affect the Discus, since it is certainly stagnant with the lack of rain over the last two years. :-\ It might be worth you considering that your tapped water comes from rainwater, collected into a dam and then treated with many chemicals before it reaches you! ??? Maybe our water may be less polluted? :D I take your point of adding stuff them emptying most of it out almost straight away, but am worried that the rainwater will have no minerals in it. I certainly don't need to throw money away - having the Discus bug certainly uses any spare money :funny:

The Discus seem happy, so I guess that is all I can go on at this stage.

Nightowl
05-11-2003, 03:59 AM
Hi Lesley! Am also new member(on 8th) . Don is right about testing water 1st to see where its at. KH is carbonate hardness, or overall alkalinity of water( carbonates & bicarbonates). It links to ph in that water with a high KH usually has a high (somewhat) ph. You have a test kit that says GH. This is general hardness or levels of calcium & magnesium in water. IMO this is a more important parameter when keeping discus. High gh = hard water; low gh = soft water. The test kit is probably based on German degrees of hardness: if so, 5 drops for a color change = 5 degrees. Multiply by 17.9 to get ppm( parts per million).... still with me?...... almost 90ppm. Great IMO for growing, too high for breeding. A rainwater/ tap water mix might be good. As far as additives, don't bother, unless your using 100% R.O. or D. I. water. Every week I see people buy blue this or brown that to squirt into their tanks(usually there's a beautiful discus on the bottle). I can't tell them don't(but sometimes I do).... don't want to lose my job. Save your money for something else.. Btw, not fam. w/ geo liquid.. Hope this helped! have fun. J(Nightowl)

nalah
05-11-2003, 08:45 AM
Lesley
my close friend and her husband live inGooloogong- also in drought. So i understand. They are very fortunate to have bore water. The only thing i know about dams is that their are vertually empty and they find dead sheep in there every day.....

If you have trout in yours,then i'd say thats a good sign.

Willie
05-11-2003, 09:32 AM
Lesley;

I've used GeoLiquid before and it appears to be crushed zeolite. This is a mineral with a charge on the surface and it behaves as a floculant. That is, it binds up tiny things which are suspended in the water. The larger clumps settle out to give you clear sparkling water. It works well if you run into a green water problem.

GeoLiquid does not add any minerals of its own to the water, since the zeolite is not soluble. I have soft water and add something called AF Cichlid Chemistry, which contains calcium and magnesium to my grow out tanks. The young discus really benefit from these minerals.

Hope that helps, Willie

lesley
05-11-2003, 05:00 PM
:DThanks guys, for your replies, it is great that you take the time to give helpful suggestions, My Discus and I thank you.

Thanks Nightowl, I've wondered about that for a bit. Since the rainwater is stored in concrete tanks (they are 10 and 25 years old), I guess I would be getting a certain amount of hardness from them.

Pascale, I think that you probably have a pretty good idea of dams, generally!!!! Thankfully ours doesn't have dead sheep, but with a lack of any real fresh water it is certainly murky and there isn't much of it any more. :( I think that we may be heading for back to back El Nino's :-[ since our autumn rains are very sparse.

Don_Lee
05-12-2003, 01:56 PM
Nightowl answered much better than I could have! Hope things are going well for you Leslie.

Don ;D