"Richard Sexton" wrote in message
...
Exactly! That's why I said everyone's experience is different. I'm sure
somewhere out there someone bred neons in water even harder than 375ppm
softened and acidified by peat. I didn't soften the water or lower it's
PH

No. The calcium blocks the sperm receptor sites and the egg
cannot be fertilized in hard water. This is why for years and
years neons were considered difficult if not impossible to
breed until this was figured out. The McInnery book has the best
treatise on this.

I've kept neons and cardinals for years in hard water.

Lots of poeple have.

The thing about acid water is it keeps to a certain extent,
bacteria at bay. I always suspect clenliness, not pH or
hardness when people have trouble with blackwater fish.
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These terta deaths may well have something to do with bacteria, and the
bacteria these blackwater fish can and can't tolerate. But there is no way
to control which bacteria are growing in our tanks. All we can do is keep
the gravel and filters as clean (unclogged) as possible. I would assume an
alkaline hard water tank would indeed have different bacteria than a
blackwater tank. That makes perfect sense. Perhaps some blackwater fish
adapt to this bacteria, and some don't. There may be other unknown reasons
as well that some adapt and others don't.
--
KL....
Aquariums since 1952.
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
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