Ornamental aquarium > Equipments for fancy guppy aquarium > Water quality for fancy guppy fish aquarium
Good clean aquarium water with ideal quality of Ph and alkalinity is most important criterion for growing large fancy guppy fish with colorful, long and flowing tail fins.
Conditioning of aquarium water by removing chlorine
Urban location of most of the fancy guppy fish hobbyists limits their water source to city supply. Local companies have very different quality criteria focused on making it pathogen free for human use.
They treat it with chlorine and more often with chloramine (combination of ammonia and chlorine). Chlorine released from bleaching powder or chloramine is highly corrosive to living cells and is toxic to fancy guppy fish and can kill them.
Hence the chlorine in the aquarium water must be completely removed before introducing fancy guppy fish. Depending upon the type of disinfectant used there are different methods to improve the water quality of the aquarium.
Chlorine removal
To improve the quality wherein only chlorine is used just leave it to age for 48 hours or aerate it for 24 hours. The chlorine will escape from the system into atmosphere.
Chloramine removal
To remove chloramine you have to treat the water with sodium thiosulphate (contained in commercial water conditioners). The chemical separates chlorine from ammonia, eliminates chlorine. The ammonia can be removed by using ammo-chips in a box filter.
You can make your storage water chlorine free by adding sodium thiosulphate and ammonia free by running ammo-chips in a box filter. Ammo-chips can be reused by soaking them in salt solution for about two hours and rinsing.
Fancy guppy fish aquarium water quality criteria
Having tropical and subtropical origins, fancy guppy fish have aquarium water quality requirements like, slight salinity, pH on the alkaline side (not more than 8.0), alkalinity on the hard side and temperature between 75° F to 82° F.
If your water source is a local company, it is most likely that the pH will be slightly on the alkaline side and hardness may vary between 20 -400 ppm (of total hardness) which is very much acceptable quality for raising fancy guppy fish in aquarium.
In rare cases the supplied water quality may be less than 7 pH in alkalinity. In such cases it may be a continuous struggle to manipulate the pH of tank water with chemicals for the sake of fancy guppy fish.
In such case it will be better to put fish varieties which stand lower pH like angels in the aquarium. If your source is a open well or a underground well, then it will be better to analyse it completely before taking up this hobby.
Excess of metals like iron and copper can be toxic to guppy. In some cases pH of the underground water may be very high and its hardness may also be very high and not suitable for the fish.
In some cases it may also contain high ammonia, nitrite and nitrate reducing the quality. Alternatively you can use bottled water for your guppy tank; however it may turn out to be expensive on the long run.
Keep checking the quality of your water source now and then so that there are no sudden unannounced quality changes and treatments which may harm your fancy guppy fish in the aquarium.