|
Im looking to start a planted tank at work with a 3 gallon i have sitting around. Coming from saltwater tanks, are there any special things i need to know about filtration that are different? Ill be using a HOB filter with some floss in it for water movement and to catch big gunky things. Am i going to need anything else other than substrate to get decent biological filtration?
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2016 18:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 12:54 |
|
|
Vessel From Denny posted:Im looking to start a planted tank at work with a 3 gallon i have sitting around. Coming from saltwater tanks, are there any special things i need to know about filtration that are different? Ill be using a HOB filter with some floss in it for water movement and to catch big gunky things. Am i going to need anything else other than substrate to get decent biological filtration? Some sort of ceramic media to let the bacteria grow on (if it didn't come with the HOB already) like this http://www.amazon.com/Fluval-Biomax-Bio-Rings-ounces/dp/B000HHSG5M will probably help a bunch.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2016 18:39
|
|
|
Lord Kinbote posted:
There is a good chance the gouramis were carrying iridovirus. It doesn't sound like you quarantined them. Apistos are known (as far as I can tell) to be susceptible to iridovirus as well, while I don't think tetras are affected or maybe it affects them differently. The initial eye injury was quite possibly unrelated but it then provides a stressor or a path for infection. Popped eye is usually a symptom of a bacterial infection though. Using melafix was a mistake. You can't treat a virus with melafix (or anything, unless antivirals are available for fish now). Melafix will get into the labyrinth organ of a fish, damage it, and as you found, kill the fish. It's a terrible "medicine" to use and I don't know how it's still legal to sell it as a treatment for fish. The active ingredient is tea tree oil, which is an antiseptic and a poison and plant oils do not belong in or on a fish, unless you are using clove oil to euthanise. Honestly, depending on how many tetras you have your tank doesn't sound overcrowded or a stressful environment for your fish or anything, I think you just rolled the no quarantine dice and got unlucky, and then hurt your gouramis with melafix. It might not even have been specifically iridovirus that the gourami carried to your tank, or their weakened immune systems could have carried multiple diseases which were then passed on to your apistos. I don't know what you can do about restocking, I would suspect the virus is present in your tank now and I don't know what your options are to get rid of it. Have a read up on iridovirus and see if sounds like the symptoms match what you experienced. It might be complicated by the ill effects that melafix would have had. Maybe just run your tank as is with tetras only for a while to see what happens? If you have columnaris taking hold you might see a few more fish deaths yet, or it might settle down. Vessel From Denny posted:Im looking to start a planted tank at work with a 3 gallon i have sitting around. Coming from saltwater tanks, are there any special things i need to know about filtration that are different? Ill be using a HOB filter with some floss in it for water movement and to catch big gunky things. Am i going to need anything else other than substrate to get decent biological filtration? A mix of sponge/foam, floss, and ceramic is good to have, you want the water to flow to the largest weave/cell size first to catch chunks, then the finer floss or foam for finer debris particles then lastly you want mechanically cleaned water passing over your ceramics so the tiny pores don't get clogged. Don't forget, the plants themselves will act as part of the nitrogen cycle too, to some extent. The substrate contributes more surface area for bacteria, as does the surface of the plants. Plants that have access to the surface will do an even better job at sucking up nitrogen compounds than completely submerged plants (ie frogbit, duckweed, pothos with only its roots in the water) since they have free access to carbon dioxide in air. But 3 gallons is not very big, I hope you are not planning anything more than shrimps or a snail or maybe a betta (which would require a heater). Specifically for a planted tank though, the plants need water circulation to ensure good distribution of dissolved gasses essential for their growth. With careful planting and positioning of your HOB you are probably not going to have much trouble achieving this since the tank is so small, the moving water doesn't have to go very far. You don't need the water to be moving very fast since some plants really don't like that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2016 19:09
|
|
|
I'm two months from moving to another state. I had a nice community tank and I had just introduced some yo-yo loaches to help with t he snail problem. Well they apparently introduced Ich into the tank and killed everthing but one loach and two pepper cories are left. gently caress me this tank was running smooth for five years. Anyone near Fremont, CA want a 20g with lots of live plants, snails and possibly an Ich infection? Just PM me. You can have the tank and all the supplies. I'll start over from scratch when the time comes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2016 23:14
|
|
|
 So my Keyholes decided to spawn while I"m treating the tank for ick. This is their first spawn and only the third time I've had fish spawn before. Previous times were panda corys and a convict/firemouth hybrid (unintentional). I really hope the Ich Guard doesn't nuke the eggs but I figure the parents will spawn again and I don't want to lose any fish to the ick.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2016 02:13
|
|
|
peach moonshine posted:I'm picking up my new filter tonight, and I want to avoid a cycling disaster when I switch over from the old one. Is it enough to place media from the older filter into the new filter or do I need to run both filters for a week? I can run both if it's necessary, though I'd prefer not to because I'd have to hack up the old lid to make them both fit. I wrecked the nitrogen cycle and now my betta has fin rot. I'm doing near 100% water changes daily and adding aquarium salt and stress coat. There have been a lot of learning experiences with this small tank.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2016 16:14
|
|
|
Small aquariums are hard to fix when they go to poo poo. I had three bettas at one point and my routine was a weekly 50% water change with filtered water, had a small in tank filter and they were golden for years. One lived to be five which is really good for a betta.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2016 01:35
|
|
|
I didn't think keyholes could do much damage to each other but while I was at work my pair worked the third wheel over pretty good. I moved him to my quarantine tank but he is pretty shaken up. I think I'm going to move my breeding pair to a 20g by themselves after this batch does whatever it is going to do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2016 03:57
|
|
|
Hey all, I'm fairly new to this hobby but have been really enjoying it. Currently, I have a 5 gallon tank with a Betta fish and a snail, so my water changes just consist of about 50% change every week, and this small volume let's me refill with water that I pre-treated with Tetra 16837 BettaSafe Water Conditioner. I am planning to upgrade to a 50 gallon tank this summer. I'm not sure what kind of fish I want yet but definitely would like to get a lot of live plants growing. This is such a newbie question, but how do you treat the water going into larger tanks when doing water changes? I was looking at the '50 ft Aqueon Aquarium Water Changer' so I could drain water into my apartment's sink and fill directly from the same sink with one hose, but it seems like that method would let a bunch of chlorinated city water into my tank. Do you all just dump a bunch of water conditioner into the tank at the same time you're refilling? After? Am I being overly sensitive for the welfare of my tank's bacteria?
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 18:30
|
|
|
Went to south Florida last week and collected some ditch weeds, invasive plants. The bright red ones are already turning green but doing well. Aquarium actually looked better when I got back after being gone for 9 days. I think I was over dosing on ferts, so I have cut back on my dosing by half. 
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 19:01
|
|
|
sharkbomb posted:Hey all, I'm fairly new to this hobby but have been really enjoying it. Currently, I have a 5 gallon tank with a Betta fish and a snail, so my water changes just consist of about 50% change every week, and this small volume let's me refill with water that I pre-treated with Tetra 16837 BettaSafe Water Conditioner. I am planning to upgrade to a 50 gallon tank this summer. I'm not sure what kind of fish I want yet but definitely would like to get a lot of live plants growing. I'm in AZ with a Python system. I have two ways to change water depending on the season. Winter: water comes out of the tap under 80* cold. So I fill tanks directly and then use Seachem Prime to dechlor the tank when I'm done filling it. The other 10 months of the year, I have 30 gallon garbage totes I fill with tap water (about 95* out of tap) and let a powerhead circulate it for about 24 hours before it drops to about 82*. During that 24 hours I dose the water with Prime. Unless you have super high chlorinated water, it should not wipe out your good bacteria colonies or hurt your fish.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 20:06
|
|
|
I've always added about half my dose of prime as I'm adding tapwater to the tank, and the second half as it finishes up. Never had a problem this way. One consideration is if you are keeping fish that have pH or hardness requirements that are way off from your tap. In that case you'd want to store it in a Brute or something and get the parameters squared away first.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2016 20:21
|
|
|
I definitely recommend getting to know your local water supply, ie where does it come from and how is it treated. My water comes from a river, it travels through a 500km pipeline between the treatment plant and here. The chloramine dosage varies wildly, some days it smells like a swimming pool coming out of the tap. It's also pH 10+ coming out of the tap a lot of the time which meant trying to wrestle with the pH to get it low enough to use with fish and anyone can tell you that's a terrible idea. I don't trust this water and don't trust that I can dose dechlorinator correctly to keep my fish and shrimps safe, chloramine requires 4 times as much dechlorinator as is needed for chlorine and early on I nearly lost fish by trying to dose in-tank, following the directions on the bottle and trusting that it would be enough. Even with correct treatment for chloramines (since not every water conditioner is suitable I made sure I got the right one) it wasn't enough to handle the levels present in my water. After that, for me, it was the safest option for my fish to treat my own water using a RO filter unit then remineralising to known levels using seachem products. I have three 25lt plastic jerrycans that I fill and after dosing I usually manually agitate by rocking the jerrycans from side to side and let it stand for a day or two before doing water changes. It takes 1 hour 15 mins to fill each can so I set a timer and let it go, no need for float valves or other automatic shut offs. Once the water has stood long enough I gravel vac my tanks or if I'm feeling lazy, I hook a hose up to the in-tank pumps to pull water out into a flexible tub, which I use to rinse the filters in, then I put the change water back into the tanks using a long spouted bucket. One jerrycan worth is enough to be a 25-30% water change on my biggest tanks which works well enough since my tanks are planted - if I don't manage to keep up with water changes I find that the fish tank water gets a bit of a smell to it and that hasn't been happening since I started using a whole jerrycan worth each time. I've marked the side of each tank with a small piece of tape so that I can see when I've removed enough water, doing it by eye I found I would almost always underestimate. I really envy anyone with a stable and trustworthy water supply, I'm sure water changes would be a lot simpler. But there are a lot of tank wipe out stories from around the web, by people who found out the hard way that sometimes the water company doses the water differently and they have no obligation to inform you of these changes as long as it's still safe for human consumption. It might become unsafe for shrimp or sensitive fish and then once something dies unexpectedly in the tank it can all go downhill very quickly. If I was water changing and dosing directly into the tanks I'd want to test the water first before I started each time and that could add up to a lot of tests, but personally I haven't even seen a chlorine test available here let alone knowing how much they cost. At least with RO water I can be reasonably sure that I've got control of what is going in to my tanks; the unit I have does filtration, dechlorination and then demineralisation so I can adjust it for drinking water that doesn't taste bad like pure RO does - it gets more use than just using it for my fish so I feel like it has been definitely worth getting the unit. It has an inbuilt meter too and that lets me see when I need to replace the cartridges, which looks like it will be $70 every 12-18 months. An alternative to RO would be buying treated water from an LFS but there is nothing like that here and I don't know how much that would cost for bigger tanks. If you get to know your local water first, you'll know how much of any of this is necessary for you and you will avoid spending unnecessary money. You might live near somewhere with a pure pristine fresh water supply that needs no treatment at all, or your water might be hard enough to keep cichlids without needing extra dosing.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 02:43
|
|
|
Made a video of feeding time in my 180g Frontosa tank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsohKayzoJ8
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 14:52
|
|
|
Man, never getting an angel again. Established tank, everything else doing wonderfully for years, angels just up and die with no warning after about a year or so. Every. drat. Time. Never again.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 18:08
|
|
|
Slugworth posted:Man, never getting an angel again. Established tank, everything else doing wonderfully for years, angels just up and die with no warning after about a year or so. Every. drat. Time. Never again. I kept having the same issue, though I finally was able to figure out they were getting hole in the head (the internet is a really terrible resource for this disease, unfortunately), and nothing I tried for any of them was ever able to stop it before they died from it, so I've just given up since that poo poo's probably gonna be in my tank forever now. Sucks because angels are my favorite fish to keep for their personalities, but I can't subject any more of them to the deathtrap that is my aquarium, I guess, unless anyone knows how to get rid of it in a planted tank without messing it up.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 18:47
|
|
|
What's a good way to get rid of pond goldfish? We have some beautiful fish that made more beautiful fish, and now we're over the capacity of our pond. They're too big for our LFS to take. I live in South-Central Indiana, if that helps.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 20:01
|
|
|
Bonster posted:What's a good way to get rid of pond goldfish? We have some beautiful fish that made more beautiful fish, and now we're over the capacity of our pond. They're too big for our LFS to take. I live in South-Central Indiana, if that helps. take them to the local lake and set them free.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 22:55
|
|
|
r0ck0 posted:take them to the local lake and set them free. Somehow I think no.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2016 23:24
|
|
|
Craigslist? For some reason 'goldfish recipe' just keeps giving recipes for goldfish crackers
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2016 00:37
|
|
|
SynthOrange posted:Craigslist? Try carp recipes.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2016 00:40
|
|
|
Too many small bones. Otherwise they'd make a couple servings each.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2016 16:35
|
|
|
My keyholes wasted no time and spawned again. This time the eggs hatched and they have a little pile of wiggling fry in a pit in the sand that they dug out. 
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2016 20:09
|
|
|
I never thought I would see a neon tetra eat a cichlid whole, but well, I just did.  Neons 1 - Keyhole Fry 0. Poor little bastard strayed too far from mom and dad.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2016 03:04
|
|
|
Are tetras micropredators? Rip baby fry  I was checking this thread to say congrats on your new babies and ask you how you were going to feed them. Sorry that you've lost one already.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2016 05:16
|
|
|
Thanks. I felt bad for the little guy but with fish it goes with the turf. As soon as the fry are a little bigger and the new tank I set up is cycled I will be moving the parents to their own tank. I will post some pictures after work.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2016 13:38
|
|
|
 We had a good storm blow through yesterday and found these neat item walking the beach this morning. Does anybody have any experience with cleaning these to make then fresh water tank safe? I'm going to do some research on Google but I wanted to check here for some personal experience or if this is even a good idea.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2016 14:23
|
|
|
I've got some pieces like item 3 that put in my guppy/shrimp tanks with the intention that its made of calcium carbonate and will help with buffering - they're small tanks and I wasn't sure about pH crashes. I found that algae grew on it well which was nice for the shrimp to pick at. All I did to prepare it was rinse it in old tank water to get sandy bits off, then soak it in old tank water for a week or so to give a chance for any salt to dilute out. I think item 2 and 4 would work pretty much the same although I'd be a bit worried about what could be stuck in the worm tubes, might be difficult to rinse out. If they don't smell bad/weird there probably isn't anything rotting in them. I can't tell whether item 5 is dead coral or not but it looks a little like industrial slag (we have a lot of that wash up here) and I would never want to put that anywhere near my fish tanks due to unknown mineral content. It could be stone or dead coral, not slag but I'm suspicious of it due to it's colour. Items 2 and 3 will definitely dissolve in water and raise your hardness; not sure whether wormtubes dissolve in the same way, you can vinegar test to see if it fizzes to confirm this. You could probably vinegar test item 5 too, any bubbles are likely to indicate the presence of carbonates. I don't know how you'd make sure you got all the salt out of that wood, boiling it might work? Wood is a lot more porous and absorbent than hard coral skeletons so I'd be wary of using it without a lot of soaking, boiling, testing it in a bucket and measuring the water in the bucket to see if anything is leeching out etc. Honestly it depends on your fish, some fish like salt and hardness and would probably be fine with it, others do not want salt or hardness at all so you want to avoid using things you found on the beach for those kind of fish.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2016 15:47
|
|
|
Bulky Bartokomous posted:I never thought I would see a neon tetra eat a cichlid whole, but well, I just did. People forget that the tetra family includes both piranha and the neon. Think of the latter as very tiny and more colorful versions of the former. It might only take 1 redbelly piranha to strip a cocktail shrimp to nothing, but 100 neons would tear it apart the same.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2016 22:58
|
|
|
Here's mom with the kids.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 04:19
|
|
|
OMG they are so super cute, their markings are so clear already! The only egg layer fry I've seen myself are rosy barbs and danios, which are just unidentifiable eyeballs on sticks for so long.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 08:50
|
|
|
Craigslisted my extra goldfish, and a lovely lady just came by with a big tote and took them away. I'm pleased - no need to break out the tartar souce. Now the pond looks so empty, but the remaining fish will be a lot happier after a good 30% water change to lower the ammonia.
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2016 21:30
|
|
|
I've been having a cycling issue with my 20 gallon. I've got an Aquaclear 50 running on a tank with a pair of kribensis cichlids, a few danios, and a good assortment of plants. The tank is in a window, which I'm aware is kind of a no-no, but it was running very smoothly. Until about a month ago, the tank was cycled and beautiful, but suddenly the water turned totally green with algae and my chemistry dropped to 0 across the board. I think what happened is that I added some floating plants and they ate all the nitrate and then started eating ammonia, killing off the filter bacteria. With the plants faltering, the algae took advantage and has been feeding off what nutrients remain. I removed the floating plants, blacked out the tank with a heavy curtain to kill the algae in the water (this is working) and started dosing Seachem Stability to get the bacteria running again. I've been trying to resolve the filter issue for a few weeks, and the blackout has been going for a week, though I don't think that should affect the cycle. The fish seem alright; the cichlids actually spawned again, and the plants are surprisingly cool with no light. So far, all I'm getting results for is ammonia. In principle, I would think this is no different from getting a tank cycled when you're first starting one. Do I just have to be patient? Could the algae bloom be slowing down the recovery of the filter? Is there anything I can do to make sure the cycle progresses well? The tank worked for a couple months in a sunny window, but it's been heating up as we approach summer and maybe the light is getting more intense; could it be that I just have to move the tank? The algae bloom was so precipitous that it didn't seem like an issue of simply too much light....
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 16:21
|
|
|
Some floating plants preferentially consume ammonia over nitrate probably for the same reasons filter bacteria consume it (more biologically useful, less processing required). Floating plants do a great job of nutrient export since they have access to atmospheric co2. I could imagine your submerged plants struggling a little to keep up with floating plants, especially if they are the sort that take in nutrients through their leaves or if you haven't given them root tabs etc. But on the other hand slow growing lowlight plants probably wouldn't be affected much at all. I don't think that plants could totally starve filter bacteria, as there would always be some trace of ammonia passing through since your fish are constantly producing. Some bacteria should have remained. Any cycled tank should show zero ammonia, and it doesn't mean your filter will starve, it just means everything has reached equilibrium. My guess is that removing all the floating plants at once would have unbalanced everything. The filter hadn't been working as hard prior to that, and without the plants helping out, it can't keep up so you get a mini cycle. Your tank doesn't sound heavily stocked anyway so I think if you put some of the floating plants back and keep an eye on your levels, do water changes to protect your fish, you should get back to some equilibrium point sooner or later. All of this is assuming you didn't do any of the filter mistakes like changing all your media at once, rinsing it in tap water instead of old tank water, outright not cleaning your filter and now the media is clogged and can't work properly, etc. So where did the algae come from? If you have managed not to have any before, most likely algae spores hitchhiked into your tank on the floating plants, and it was just bad timing with the time of year and amount of sunlight giving it all the conditions it needed to take off. I would blame sunlight entirely since it gives the right wavelengths of light for algae to outstrip the growth of your other plants. One way you can give your submerged plants a bit of help is by making sure they have enough nutrients and trace minerals so that they can outstrip algaes growth. It sounds counterintuitive but I have tested adding seasol fertiliser to a gunky green plant tank that I have outside. I had eelgrass, random Java moss and hornwort and adding more nutrients resulted in better plant growth and pretty much cleared the green water. Blocking light sources that favour algae is the other way I've read about and is probably the easiest way that won't mess with your water chemistry or your fish. Keep in mind you have to remove the dead algae so it doesn't foul up your water and clog your filter, I think algae can deoxygenate the water when it breaks down. In a way I think you're lucky that you ended up with green water algae instead of hair or filament algae or cladophora. They're all really messy and invasive to clean up. Get a plant light and don't let sunlight into your tank or the algae will just come back!
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2016 18:41
|
|
|
Stoca Zola posted:Some floating plants preferentially consume ammonia over nitrate probably for the same reasons filter bacteria consume it (more biologically useful, less processing required). Floating plants do a great job of nutrient export since they have access to atmospheric co2. I could imagine your submerged plants struggling a little to keep up with floating plants, especially if they are the sort that take in nutrients through their leaves or if you haven't given them root tabs etc. But on the other hand slow growing lowlight plants probably wouldn't be affected much at all. Thanks for the response! The filter hasn't been hosed with, so I just need to get the bacteria back up. My plan for now is to unblack the tank, add some water sprite for fast growth, and pump it up with flourish, excel, and nitrogen while monitoring levels and doing large water changes. It's not very convenient to move the tank, so I'm going to see if I can get things balanced out where it is, first. I placed it in the window originally to experiment with sun-lighting a planted tank, after all.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2016 03:49
|
|
|
I'm going to be setting up a 10 gallon tropical aquarium, and I'm shopping around for a cannister filter. I have an eheim 2213 going spare, but I'm thinking it would probably be a serious case of overkill for something this small. I can pick up a Fluval 106 locally, but was wondering if there are any other (possibly cheaper) options.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2016 09:07
|
|
|
There's nothing wrong with overkill for filtration though.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2016 09:39
|
|
|
I was more concerned with the current it would generate being excessive. I could probably come up with a workaround for that, though.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2016 10:37
|
|
|
Soylent Yellow posted:I was more concerned with the current it would generate being excessive. I could probably come up with a workaround for that, though. The quick release can be used to control the flow. I believe it is the output line you would adjust.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2016 12:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 11, 2024 12:54 |
|
|
I bought some black poret foam to try setting up mattenfilters in my little tanks, it finally arrived in the post today! I had planned to take pictures while I was setting up but I got distracted by a sick guppy. She progressed downhill so rapidly that I ended up euthanising her, probably not too uncommon for an elderly guppy to have issues with prolapses I'm guessing? She just looked boxy and ready to drop fry this morning but pineconing, red streaks and bulges coming from places they don't belong by this evening. It didn't look like something she was going to recover from, anyway. So I forgot to take any pictures of my mattenfilter progress so far but I guess I can always post the finished product. I've not been able to find anything to use as side supports to set up a corner filter so instead I am going with the traditional method of ramming the sponge all the way across one end of the tank. I don't think the black foam will look too bad at all. I didn't much like the look of the blue foam although apparently it goes a brownish olive colour pretty quickly. Anyway if you aren't adverse to the idea of having a sponge taking up one end, or one corner if you want to get tricky, then a mattenfilter might work for you instead of a canister. On that note, I've got a Fluval 206, and can confirm that the grey "no leaks when disconnected" lever works just fine as a flow restrictor if you don't crank it all the way closed. I got it second hand from a turtle guy along with his old turtle tank after the turtle died, it probably would have been a good amount of flow to keep the muck stirred up in a turtle tank so that the filter could pick up the mess. In the container I've had it running in, it seems a bit much and I would expect any small fish to disappear up the filter inlet in no time.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2016 16:42
|
|