Authors

Dan Mercer writes Lagonia. He keeps freshwater tanks on very hard, alkaline tap water, mostly shell-dwellers, Rift Lake cichlids and livebearers. He has killed a few fish learning what actually works, and writes Lagonia to help people work with their water instead of fighting it. I did not set out to specialise in hard water. I ended up there because that is what comes out of my taps: somewhere around 22 to 23 degrees of German hardness, calcium-heavy, pH about 7.2, with a little nitrate in it before it ever reaches a tank. For a long time I fought it. I bought the pH-down bottles, read about peat and RO, and generally treated my own water as a defect. It was a waste of money and it stressed the fish. The turning point was giving up and picking species that actually come from hard, alkaline water. My shell-dwellers bred, the snails grew glossy shells, and water changes went back to being just water changes. ...