How essential is rainwater to breeding/spawning neons?

[mangolm]

Exactly what the title says.

I have set up a 40L tank with oak leaves, a little peat to try to breed neon tetras after doing a bunch of research online. I don't really have any way to collect rainwater since my apartment doesn't have an 'outside' as such. I'm really struggling to get the pH to go down.

Theres about 8 cups of oak leaves on the base of the tank and ~1/2 cup of peat in the filter but the pH is staying steady at 7.0 after 5days. Im just using Prime and tap water, I would prefer to lower the pH naturally rather than with chemicals so do I just need to be more patient or does anyone have any ideas?

Could i use part r/o water so that there are fewer minerals in the water - the softer water would be easier to lower pH?

I also don't have a hardness test kit, which I realise doesn't really help.

[alanmin4304]

We have people down here breeding neons in tap water that is about 45 mg/litre hardness expressed as calcium carbonate and pH 7.2 so I would say not at all.

[Adrienne]

Exactly what the title says.

I have set up a 40L tank with oak leaves, a little peat to try to breed neon tetras after doing a bunch of research online. I don't really have any way to collect rainwater since my apartment doesn't have an 'outside' as such. I'm really struggling to get the pH to go down.

Theres about 8 cups of oak leaves on the base of the tank and ~1/2 cup of peat in the filter but the pH is staying steady at 7.0 after 5days. Im just using Prime and tap water, I would prefer to lower the pH naturally rather than with chemicals so do I just need to be more patient or does anyone have any ideas?

Could i use part r/o water so that there are fewer minerals in the water - the softer water would be easier to lower pH?

I also don't have a hardness test kit, which I realise doesn't really help.

Did you look at the article on this website as well?

[mangolm]

Yes, I read the article on here as well. I was just wondering if my water was too hard and getting impatient. Ill just keep waiting.

[Adrienne]

Are you sure you have both sexes? I don't think they are that easy to breed and the eggs are very small so you may not know until some hatch. Given they are light sensitive looking at the tank is not that easy.

Good luck though. Keen to see if you can breed them.

[mangolm]

I'm pretty sure I have 4 females and two males in the tank based on the crookedness of the blue lateral line. The tank has no lighting atm, and with the peat/oak i'm hoping the eggs will be well enough protected by the darkened water and falling among the oak leaves that I wont need to actually cover the tank. We will see.

I just had a spare tank and thought I would see what happened.

[Adrienne]

Sounds a good project It would be nice to have someone breeding them up here

[alanmin4304]

I have bred them with oak leaves, oak bark, tea bags, peat, and brown water from west coast creeks so they are not that fussy. I found peat the best. The change of pH can bring on velvet so many people add a bit of acriflavine. They are best bred young and regularly and the fry are more sensitive to light than the eggs but best covered with newspaper for a week. The first lot of eggs are usually calcified and no good so be patient. They do best when bred frequently rather than trying to fill the females up with eggs. Live foods like lumbriculus work well for conditioning.

[Flosty]

A tds meter would be able to tell you the softness of your water

If your ph just bounces back up after trying to lower it, it does mean there is too much buffering capacity in the water

You could use a mixture of R/O water with your tap, if you have access to some

Some marine keepers just use that Pure Dew water you can buy, it will do the trick

Once you lower the buffering capacity the ph will definately be able to be lowered

But you will have to monitor it as with no buffering and very soft water it is easy to have a crash

[mangolm]

I haven't used any chemicals to lower it just thought it might happen using the peat and oak. Out of the tap my pH is about 7.6 which drops to 7 and stays there indefinitely. I might try half Pure Dew if this attempt doesnt produce any young

[Adrienne]

Where in Auckland are you?

[mangolm]

Im in the CBD/central auckland. A few months ago the pH out of tap was 8.6 so i test it regularly but it always drops to the same 7 (just changes whether or not I age it before doing a water change)

[danval]

As Flosty has said, you may struggle to keep PH stable due to buffering. Definitely source some rainwater as you will have success bringing your Ph down with the method you are trying. I had some success spawning and hatching Rummy Nose tetras with the advice of the article off here. (Same as per neons and Cardinal tetras).

Good luck.

[alanmin4304]

You will need to be patient as the first spawns are usually no good.