Question about my water parameters

[dce21b]

I have a few questions about my water parameters and the best solution to what I should do moving forward.

I have well water at the house, we also have a water softner but I am able to bypass that and use my well water directly.

Straight from the well I get:

PH 7.4
TDS 200
GH 12
KH 10

After I age the well water my PH climbs to 7.8

When I mix in RO/DI to well water at a 3:1 ratio I get:

PH 7.4
TDS 70
GH 3
KH 4

There a lot of conflicting information out there and I have done a lot of reading on the forums. I currently have a 65 gallon aquarium cycling and plan on getting 6-8 3" sized Discus in the hopes of getting some pairs.

From what I gather, I should be OK to use my well water to grow them out. With that being said, I would like to start a small breeding project in my basement. I have read that my water will be too hard for the eggs to be able to get fertilized at my current hardness. Will my best course of action be to use RO mixed with my well water for the pairs tank and then grow out the fry with my well water?

Will the change in PH and hardness be too much from 7.4 to 7.8 for the fry to handle?

Ideally I would just like to be able to use the same water for consistency through my breeding setup, but I dont think I will be able to due to the hardness.

And while on the subject of breeding. What will it take tank wise to handle 1 breeding pair. As in how many and sizes of tanks to rais fry to 2"-3". Say 1, 20 gallon tank for a pair, to maybe a 40 gallon to 120, for say 100-150 fry?

[danotaylor]

You water parameters look good. As you mentioned the WW/RO mix would be best for your breeding tank to get the best hatch rates, and your straight WW will work for your growouts.
I would recommend a 29gal min for your pair/s though.
Providing you age your water before wc's and you acclimate your fry slowly when you move them to the growout tanks they will be fine. For instance if you fill your fry tank with the WW/RO mix initially and throughout the 1st day do a series of 10% wc's and hour or 2 apart throughout the day, by the day's end you should have them at 7.8. With your subsequent larger daily/bi-daily wc's your aged water will match the water you're replacing.

[LizStreithorst]

With a TDS of 70 your water should be fine for successful breeding. But the kH of 4 makes in iffy. There is only one way to find out for sure and that's to try it and see what happens.

The size of grow out space required is a function of how heavily you cull, at what age you start selling, and how many you sell.

[dce21b]

125277

I was hoping to setup a system like this. Where I would have some tanks for some breeding pairs and then some tanks to grow them out, a quarantine tank, and room for a sump.

I have room for as many aging/mixing barrels as I would need. Im just trying to get a better Idea of the most efficent way to set it up.

Obviously the quarantine tank would be on its on filtration. But for ease of maintenance do i want to plumb the rest of the tanks into a central filtration. But then I run the risk of if one tanks crashing they all crash. And then also having to provide seperate water for breeding pairs and the grow out tanks.

Is plumbing all the tanks for central filtration a viable option? Where as I can run the whole system through one sump and have the ability to isolate tanks individually, and use sponge filters. I mean it would be better to have the option, then wanting it later and having to tear it all down right?

So much to think about