flushed away. Instead, to borrow a phrase from our venerable friend Ron Bowman, we put a glass fence around a small volume of that water and even if we start with identical water to their habitat (which it usually isn't) it doesn't take long before the c
onstituents of that water begin to change - metabolites are added and some elements are removed e.g.oxygen, calcium etc. Now some of these are in a constant state of equilibrium between removing and replacing factors e.g. oxygen but some are bound up e.g.
the calcium tied up in the bones of growing fry. If the water we started with is soft and has little calcium, removal of the amount necessary for skeletal development is significant. In nature even though they started with identical soft water there is a
constant resupply of more calcium with the new water flowing in to the area where the fry are growing.
This is in my opinion a common cause of skeletal deformity in aquarium bred fishes. When you compound this with inadequate dietary Vitamins D and C it can cause whole batches of fry to be deformed but does NOT represent genetic deterioration in the stock
and therefore they could be used to breed from if desired as long as the ensuing fry are given optimal conditions. If the fry from the second breeding are still deformed then one may have to rethink.
I started this posting to talk about the dilemma of what is the best conditions under which to keep our fish but got side-tracked - somehow it seemed luike a good side-track.
Regards
Bruce Hansen ANGFA
also usually advocate keeping bows in alkaline water. However, if you
want the most brilliant colours you need to drop the pH using something
that will leach tanic acid into the aquarium which the fish have more
natural tolerance to. Tanic acid also appears to suppress or prevent
bacterial diseases too I believe to a degree. The _type_ of acid is
important. Acids ain't acids.
Since you mentioned velvet..... I have found that to be another problem
that can be difficult to completely remove from a fish room. Rainbows
appear to be quite susceptible to it compared to most other fishes.
> Also if you maintain undergravel filters the pH of the water will naturally
> start to drop to highly organic/acidic conditions. Regardless of whether
> your water is hard or soft it pays to check your pH regularly and also keep
> up those water changes and vacuum the gravel at regular intervals.
I hate large undergravel filters and I don't recommend them for bows as
I've found them too difficult and too much work to keep really clean over
periods longer than a year or so. Irrespective of filtration type, I
still feel it's imprtant to regularly flush the filter out to remove the
organic solids.
Tootles
Peter