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Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

It is possible to remove all duckweed if you are patient, since it floats, netting it out isnt too arduous - it's checking to make sure you didnt net out a shrimp that is the hard part. I've heard of people microwaving or baking it before tossing it out to stop it from being viable as a pest. My shrimp seem to like hanging around in floating plants too, the biofilm must be extra delicious up there.

I still haven't organised lifting the new tank on to it's stand, but I did get the film installed on the back and it looks pretty good. My sister has already tried to arrange with my dad to come and lift it, I wasn't going to bother him with it until my mum's current health issues are over (she's getting eye surgery for cataracts) but my sister is a nagger who can't leave things alone, just like mum. I've got almost everything planned for that tank although I think I'm a little short on substrate so I want to buy one more bag before I start. It's pretty much just going to be making the same tank again only bigger and I'm not planning to add any extra fish, leaving room for loach growth and in case I need to move across some platydoras when they're older if they get too big for their current tank. Going to wait and see how empty it looks anyway! Maybe if it's too bare I will add a small group of rainbowfish.

My mind has started wandering to thinking ahead about what I will do with the cube tank. I think I am going to reseal it just to make sure, and give the stand a very thorough checking over in case it needs extra supports glued/screwed in, or more varnish or whatever. I came across what I thought was a great idea, someone screwed a rubber sheet water barrier thing into the bottom of their stand to prevent minor leaks from going directly on to the floor, I'd love to do something like that since most likely I'll have a canister in the bottom of the stand and I seem to always slop those on the carpet. I'm also thinking about replacing the lid doors with something lighter - they're extremely thick and unnecessarily heavy which makes it hard to close the lid without slamming. Maybe just some rubber stoppers would do. Once I have seals and structure sorted the next problem is working out where to fit it in the lounge room, and then how to stock it.

I already decided I wanted to move the sterbai corydoras to the cube and probably get a few more, so I'm thinking a sandy bottom and some kind of vertical structure with caves or nooks at the bottom for cover, and rhizome plants attached higher up, with floating plants providing cover at the surface. Not sure if I want to cover the back wall of the tank or have something columnar in the middle (how cool would something like this be?). I've seen lots of tutorials for building these kind of things but invariably they paint their styrene carved columns with concrete or cement which I'm worried could affect water chemistry. Last possible idea is a cluster of vertical straight logs, something like this maybe but without worrying about the depth of field illusion or the rocky ground. Other fish I have been thinking about for a while are bolivian rams and pencil fish, and they seem to match the region reasonably well. I'm worried about getting too many rams due to possible territory disputes but if I get 4, they would have a corner of the tank each and I think there would be still plenty of floorspace for the corys. Aqadvisor seems to think 12 sterbai corys, 4 bolivian rams and 15 pencilfish would fill a 2 foot cube to 100% so I think that would give enough movement and variety while still keeping it pretty simple to care for. I have heard that cube tanks sometimes have problems with flow so maybe a gentle bubblewall at the back would work to keep it circulating nicely. It's all daydreaming for now, I have so much other stuff I need to get done before I even start any of this!

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Dr. Garbanzo
Sep 14, 2010
Only downside is it keeps occasionally drifting in the flow and is then in the bottom of the tank on the filter side. I nearly got the honey gouramis to finish the stocking this week but one fish shop just does mixed gouramis and I don’t trust them to sec them correctly and the othe had two males and no more. I like the look of some of the other types but they’re a little aggressive from what I’ve read. Any plant I remove from the tank goes into the tumbling compost bin so that I can use it on the garden later.

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

I managed to catch sight of a tiny fat fry, apparently still with egg sack, struggling against the flow near my filter inlet on my rosy barb tank. However: I only have rosy barbs, guppies and raphael catfish in this tank. This fry is bigger than a guppy fry or rosy barb fry by far. I reckon a little over 6mm long




It's either a rosy barb fry with dropsy, a really deformed guppy fry, or a platydoras fry. As far as I know striped raphaels are really hard to get to breed so I am blown away if they've bred for me. I couldn't see any others so who knows if there are more to come or if they were eaten already. His little eyes reflect bright blue which doesn't match what I've seen from guppys OR rosy barb fry.

Edit to add: The fish lord giveth, the fish lord taketh away. One of my plague panda corys died today after 18 weeks of whatever illness he had. That's 10 weeks after I ran out of medication, if I recall correctly. Yesterday I noticed this one looking rough but chasing food that had landed in some moss that I'd put in their tank for cover. He wasn't swimming too well but he ate the food when he got to it - so as with every other time, his appetite was good right to the end. This makes me think that despite how awful it looks, they aren't suffering. That was yesterday, tonight at feeding time I found him laying peacefully on his side. He had thickened white patches on his body that had just worsened slowly over time.

The remaining two panda cories have no white on their bodies. One still only has the one thickened white patch at the top of his caudal fin that he had right from the start, and no other marks, the other has thickened pink pectoral fins and some whiteness to his dorsal fin. I think this one had some on his face and that has cleared away. I hope that one day they will recover although I still don't plan to ever put them in with other corydoras. The risk of them carrying the disease and spreading it is too great, although perhaps I will try them in with some peacock gudgeons since the illness seems only to affect panda corys. I do want that tank back so I can bleach it, bleach the filter, etc and reuse for something else.

Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Feb 12, 2018

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

I'm 22 days into my 28 day fishless cycle. I added the second prepackaged thing last Monday and I'm set to add the last one next Monday. I've been testing the water every couple of days but I'm not seeing any real change. My pH remains high. I have no nitrites or nitrates. A week ago the ammonia dropped from 2.0 ppm to 1.0 ppm and has stayed there. I was kind of expecting it to drop to 0 and then for nitrites to appear from what I've read, but I probably read it wrong. Should I be adding ammonia to bring it back up to 2.0 or higher to try and feed this nitrites? Should I just leave it alone and wait?

I pulled the sponge out of the filter today and squeezed it out. It was really, really gross and icky. Can I assume that's the point? Its growing bacteria?

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

You should feed back up to 2ppm ammonia I think. High pH won’t hurt while you’re cycling (but how high? 8 or below is fine), filter bacteria doesn’t cope well lower than around 6.5. The first population to grow will be the one that makes the nitrites, and the second population can’t even start growing until there are nitrites to eat, and they grow slower I believe. You’re now seeing why you can’t just cycle for an amount of time, since no one can predict how long it will take for the two bacteria populations to establish. You have to do it based on results not based on time elapsed, but for now keep using the product you have as per directions. Something must be happening since you did see a drop in ammonia, and maybe if your filter media is clogged you might need to rinse it a little. Squeezing it like you describe is fine. How does the filter smell? I seem to find mine can be covered in black muck but the smell isn’t really too gross. Bad smells like swamp or farts usually mean something has gone wrong, I would say my filters smell more like wet dirt. But yeah, the filter needs to have good flow of oxygenated water for the bacteria to do well.

I found a nice looking dead branch on the way home from work today and decided to take it home and soak it to see if any tannins came out. According to the internet many native trees here are fine for aquarium use due to being hard wood. I tried to clear away some of the smaller twigs, maybe pencil thick and I wasn’t able to snap the wood or mark it with my fingernail and it has been dead long enough that all the bark has come off and the wood itself is grey. So I think it could work well. Sadly if’s about 10 feet long so I will need to it chop up into interesting pieces to use.

Unknown fish fry is still alive today, his egg sac looks much smaller. I’ve put some moss, susswassertang and a tiny java fern in his net for cover, as well as a flat pebble for him to rest on. He seems to behave a lot like a catfish, lots of laying about with occasional bursts of swimming. I have been putting micro worms in his net and hopefully some will still be around when he is big enough to eat them. I think they last a fairly long time underwater. I’ve been thinking I should reclaim a breeder box though for him to live in so that he has a solid surface to live on rather than a net. Maybe I should buy a new one just for him?

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

The pH has been sitting around 7.4-7.6 ppm the entire time. I was just assuming that was bad since it was at the high end of the graph.

The sponge wasn't TOO gross. It was slimy and had black stuff but there was no real smell. I mean, a slight one but I'm very sensitive. "Wet dirt" would be the right description. Like a plotted pant that's been overwatered or something. Nothing alarming, just moist and grimey.

I figured I should add ammonia but I just wanted to do the sounding board thing to make sure my logic made sense. Thanks.

Yeah, I'm just going to do the packaged 28 days and then see where I'm at. If it doesn't look like the cycle is done (which right now it doesn't seem like it will) I'll just keep going week by week until it gets somewhere I feel comfortable getting a fish or two.

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

That pH is fine, it’s pretty good in fact. Most domestic bred fish do fine from 6 to 8 and to me it’s better to be a little above 7 because that means you’ve got a bit of buffering, as once you start keeping fish there will be a tendency for it to acidify over time. This is kept in check by any buffering capacity of the water (kH), which is replenished when you do a water change. I guess it’s also in that region which can be hard to measure since it’s the high end of the low range pH test, and the low end of the high range pH test.

If you’re measuring it right, you should be able to keep almost any fish in that water depending on your gH (hardness), except maybe not some of the gouramis (chocolate and licorice gourami like softer acidic water) or not some livebearers and cichlids that require harder water. Needing harder water is no big deal either as there are lots of ways to add more gH and kH. If you’ve got a hardness test you can check what is going on there, pretty much the important thing is that some hardness is required and higher kH usually results in higher pH. But not worth worrying about trying to correct your hardness unless you are trying to keep fish with special requirements.

Cowslips Warren
Oct 29, 2005

What use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?

Grimey Drawer
Help me figure this out.

My friend wants to do a 3 gallon planted shrimp tank. Easy. So he grabs a bunch of sand from another tank (that has been set up for a few months) plus a seeded sponge filter plus a ton of plants. Sets tank up. Does a water test a day or two later. Ammonia is lethal levels. My guess? There is nothing else but the plants in the tank, so the good bacteria died off, and the tank is doing a mini cycle. But would htat happen in just a few days?

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Did he do any additives? Was there much mulm in the sand?

Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013
I'm thinking about getting a 65 gallon tank once I get a job, but I have no real way of getting such a thing out of a store and into my room. Any recommendations for someone who doesn't have access to a pickup or friends in town?

Kibbles n Shits
Apr 8, 2006

burgerpug.png


Fun Shoe
Got a local U-Haul? You can usually rent a pickup truck for like $20 a day plus gas.

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

Cowslips Warren posted:

Help me figure this out.

My friend wants to do a 3 gallon planted shrimp tank. Easy. So he grabs a bunch of sand from another tank (that has been set up for a few months) plus a seeded sponge filter plus a ton of plants. Sets tank up. Does a water test a day or two later. Ammonia is lethal levels. My guess? There is nothing else but the plants in the tank, so the good bacteria died off, and the tank is doing a mini cycle. But would htat happen in just a few days?

Mulm by itself doesn't necessarily create ammonia, so I'd wonder what the source of it was. But if there's ammonia now, it was coming from somewhere all along, so the filter shouldn't have died. Could be the seeded sponge filter wasn't actually seeded at all? But pre-used sand would have bacteria on it anyway. Shrimp don't produce enough waste to nuke a tank, not even a small one like that. Plants eat ammonia, and many plants even prefer it to nitrate since it needs less processing to be bioavailable to them.

I would guess dead snail buried in the sand somewhere.

Dogwood Fleet posted:

I'm thinking about getting a 65 gallon tank once I get a job, but I have no real way of getting such a thing out of a store and into my room. Any recommendations for someone who doesn't have access to a pickup or friends in town?
Glad it's not just me having logistic issues with transporting tanks. The guy who delivered my Rio (around 100g) just upended it and carried it end on with a sacktruck, so that's definitely doable for a 65. The tank was boxed and inside the box was enough styrofoam that there was no damage but an empty tank is pretty strong anyway. If you need to work out how heavy the empty tank is this could help: https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/TankWeight.php - to me, that looks like a 2 person lifting job to get it on a stand but it might be possible to lift one end at a time.

Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Feb 14, 2018

Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013

Stoca Zola posted:

Mulm by itself doesn't necessarily create ammonia, so I'd wonder what the source of it was. But if there's ammonia now, it was coming from somewhere all along, so the filter shouldn't have died. Could be the seeded sponge filter wasn't actually seeded at all? But pre-used sand would have bacteria on it anyway. Shrimp don't produce enough waste to nuke a tank, not even a small one like that. Plants eat ammonia, and many plants even prefer it to nitrate since it needs less processing to be bioavailable to them.

I would guess dead snail buried in the sand somewhere.

Glad it's not just me having logistic issues with transporting tanks. The guy who delivered my Rio (around 100g) just upended it and carried it end on with a sacktruck, so that's definitely doable for a 65. The tank was boxed and inside the box was enough styrofoam that there was no damage but an empty tank is pretty strong anyway. If you need to work out how heavy the empty tank is this could help: https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/TankWeight.php - to me, that looks like a 2 person lifting job to get it on a stand but it might be possible to lift one end at a time.

Tempted to get a much more portable 20 hex and just have a betta, cherry shrimp/betta snacks, and some plants. Not that exciting, but upkeep would be a breeze.

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

That’s a good stocking idea for a hex tank, betta probably doesn’t need a ton of horizontal swim space and the shrimp won’t care at all, that’s plenty of room for a shrimp colony. Avoid stem plants for easier maintenance, get a decent pair of long tweezers, keep your eye out for areas of poor circulation (maybe could stick a slow bubbling air stone if needed). I’d normally recommend to avoid a tank taller than it is wide but it could work really well with the right plants.

Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013

Stoca Zola posted:

That’s a good stocking idea for a hex tank, betta probably doesn’t need a ton of horizontal swim space and the shrimp won’t care at all, that’s plenty of room for a shrimp colony. Avoid stem plants for easier maintenance, get a decent pair of long tweezers, keep your eye out for areas of poor circulation (maybe could stick a slow bubbling air stone if needed). I’d normally recommend to avoid a tank taller than it is wide but it could work really well with the right plants.

I'm going to go all out on plants regardless of what I get. I have a CO2 setup already, I just need a different sized light if I get the 20. Actually...when I think about stocking/costs I REALLY should do the 20.

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

Lighting could be a real issue, for a hood less tank with a pendant light it could work really well and look amazing and then the betta jumps out. Probably doable with a glass lid? That would keep a layer of moist air for the betta too.

Edit to add: Made a video of the unknown fish fry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgJ1m8fQ2BM

Super blurry but you can see what he acts like anyway.

Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Feb 15, 2018

w00tmonger
Mar 9, 2011

F-F-FRIDAY NIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS

feels like its taking ages for any cycling to happen in my big 55g. Its been 14 days as of today and Im not seeing any nitrites apearing yet. Have I missed something?

sitting 2-4ppm ammonia, planted tank, got a seed sponge about a week ago, and dosed bacteria in a bottle first 3 days.

dosing c02 if thats something I should stop as well

E:vvvvvv not seeing nitrates either

w00tmonger fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Feb 15, 2018

Dr. Garbanzo
Sep 14, 2010
My tank skipped nitrites and had nitrates appear at some point during cycling the tank.

snoo
Jul 5, 2007




cool nice my filter loving died while i was at work :shepicide:

i can't get a replacement until tomorrow at the earliest. my catfish have dealt with no-filter during power outages for a day+ before, but i'm worried about my tetras and betta. manually aerating it should be okay for now? i won't feed them until i get a new filter, too.

i'm so loving mad bc the one that came with my kit died immediately, and this was the replacement petsmart gave me, and it died like 8 months in. i had a two separate filters last me 5+ and like 2+ years and i only stopped using them because i upgraded tanks.

i remembered i have the filter from my 10 gallon, would that do anything for my 20 gallon tank temporarily? at least aerate it?

also can anyone recommend me something i can get from petsmart (my price limit rn is like $25) in a hang-on-back style? mine's on the side of the tank and i had to cut a hole in the hood to fit it since they replaced the filter with a completely different one. https://www.petsmart.com/search/filters/?q=aquarium%20filter&srule=relevance&pmin=0 are the marineland ones any good? this one looks okay. i've used aqueon and tetra ones and they've both been good to me. ty

snoo fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 16, 2018

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

w00tmonger posted:

feels like its taking ages for any cycling to happen in my big 55g. Its been 14 days as of today and Im not seeing any nitrites apearing yet. Have I missed something?

sitting 2-4ppm ammonia, planted tank, got a seed sponge about a week ago, and dosed bacteria in a bottle first 3 days.

dosing c02 if thats something I should stop as well

If you have plants that need the CO2 it’s probably better to keep it going but just make sure your pH doesn’t swing too low, don’t run it at night, etc. A planted cycle can run differently to a no plants cycle since some of the plants will consume ammonia, nitrites and/or nitrates, making it harder to see what’s going on. I’d say 2 weeks is still early days, if you don’t dose ammonia and your levels drop then something *is* happening and you are on the right track.

The Snoo posted:

cool nice my filter loving died while i was at work :shepicide:

i can't get a replacement until tomorrow at the earliest. my catfish have dealt with no-filter during power outages for a day+ before, but i'm worried about my tetras and betta. manually aerating it should be okay for now? i won't feed them until i get a new filter, too.

i'm so loving mad bc the one that came with my kit died immediately, and this was the replacement petsmart gave me, and it died like 8 months in. i had a two separate filters last me 5+ and like 2+ years and i only stopped using them because i upgraded tanks.

i remembered i have the filter from my 10 gallon, would that do anything for my 20 gallon tank temporarily? at least aerate it?

also can anyone recommend me something i can get from petsmart (my price limit rn is like $25) in a hang-on-back style? mine's on the side of the tank and i had to cut a hole in the hood to fit it since they replaced the filter with a completely different one. https://www.petsmart.com/search/filters/?q=aquarium%20filter&srule=relevance&pmin=0 are the marineland ones any good? this one looks okay. i've used aqueon and tetra ones and they've both been good to me. ty

The filter from the 10 should help if you can move cycled media across from your dead filter or even if you have a new cartridge to use in it. I would say the main concern is lack of circulation/oxygenation since you can deal with mini cycles just by increasing your frequency of water changing until it settles down, a mature tank won’t crash straight away anyway due to all the beneficial bacteria all over everything inside the tank. If you have an air stone/air pump that can be enough to keep things moving too. I believe from tests people have done that the biowheel filters are a bit of a gimmick and don’t do anything significantly better than a regular HOB, but anything that has a big enough chamber for you to pile in media is fine. I have a HOB filter that leaks air from the adjustment valve and was going to tell you to avoid that brand but I don’t see it on your list there, so any of those look pretty good.

snoo
Jul 5, 2007




the 10 gallon filter I put in for now is a tetra-brand one and I forgot how much I loved it (quiet and not ugly) so I might look for one in a 20 gallon size actually!! I didn't look hard but I only saw a 30 gallon one, would that still be alright for my tank? I don't know if there can be a little too much filtration :v:

the HOB filters make me anxious and it's another thing to worry about someone accidentally bumping but that's all I could get at the time

my filters have all been charcoal/spongey thing + something for extra bacteria to grow onto, which has worked fine for me so far, so I'm not necessarily looking for that extra biowheel kinda stuff right now anyway. if it's all I can get then :shrug:

a lot of my plants have done really well and my tetras and betta are growing and I'm so happy 😊 I just hope I can find a good filter now. I kept the filter media wet and re-added it to that 10gal filter so it should keep going til I need to seed the new filter media for whatever I get

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

Sounds all good! You can't really over filter, it's more that the flow might be too strong for some fish and lots of HOB filters have adjustable flow anyway so you can turn it down if you need to, usually an issue for long finned Betta. Plants like a bit of flow for nutrient distribution too.

Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013

Stoca Zola posted:

Lighting could be a real issue, for a hood less tank with a pendant light it could work really well and look amazing and then the betta jumps out. Probably doable with a glass lid? That would keep a layer of moist air for the betta too.

Edit to add: Made a video of the unknown fish fry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgJ1m8fQ2BM

Super blurry but you can see what he acts like anyway.

Should I go with a 20H? I really just want to slap a Finnex light on and be done with it. I just liked the look and footprint of the hex. The idea eventually is to have the 20 and the 65.

Enos Cabell
Nov 3, 2004


Dogwood Fleet posted:

Should I go with a 20H? I really just want to slap a Finnex light on and be done with it. I just liked the look and footprint of the hex. The idea eventually is to have the 20 and the 65.

I say go for the hex and throw something like this Kessil on it http://a.co/6NBZ0S2

Stoca Zola
Jun 28, 2008

Dogwood Fleet posted:

Should I go with a 20H? I really just want to slap a Finnex light on and be done with it. I just liked the look and footprint of the hex. The idea eventually is to have the 20 and the 65.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the hex, it's just any tall planted tank can have issues with light penetration, and any betta tank can have issues with jumpers. I'm sure there's a way to fit both requirements together. A 20h would take up a lot more real estate, mine is 60cm long (24") but with that footprint it's easier to fit a few more plants and design a layout and you get a great unbroken view of the tank contents. But if you're planning on a 65 at some point you will get that experience eventually anyway. I reckon get what appeals to you the most and what best suits your current situation and don't worry too much about doing something wrong. There's plenty of right ways to keep fish and plants.

w00tmonger
Mar 9, 2011

F-F-FRIDAY NIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS

Should I have an intake sponge on my sunsun 302 canister filter? Have some extra foam from the canister and I'm not sure how necessary it is. I do plan on putting a bunch of shrimp in my 55g with it

DeadlyMuffin
Jul 3, 2007

w00tmonger posted:

Should I have an intake sponge on my sunsun 302 canister filter? Have some extra foam from the canister and I'm not sure how necessary it is. I do plan on putting a bunch of shrimp in my 55g with it

I started putting a sponge on my intake a while back, and I sure have a lot more Endler fry than I normally do.

I'm going to have to start giving more away or start making tiny fish sticks.

Dr. Garbanzo
Sep 14, 2010
I think the plants I added in last week have made a massive difference to the tank. After weeks of murky water I came out yesterday morning to a perfectly clear tank which is a very nice thing to see. It’s also possible that the sun has moved enough in the sky that it’s no longer beaming it’s full power into the room which helps. It was a little green on Friday though so I didn’t expect it to clear overnight

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

That's been one of the things I'm a little surprised with my fishless cycle. I haven't noticed any algae or crap or anything. I guess the filter does the job, and there's no fish in there pooping and stuff, and it doesn't get any real direct sunlight. I don't really know. But for the first week before i had the moss balls in there the water seemed to be getting cloudy and kind of dirty and ever since its been fine. I don't know if that means anything or what, but its been a surprise since I was expecting to have to be scrubbing muck or something.

President Evil
Oct 10, 2012
I currently have two tanks (15L & 30L) in my office here at work which I keep ghost shrimp in and after coming in this morning, after the weekend, several of my shrimp are dead.

I think I can safely assume that temperature was the main cause as it gets hot as gently caress in the office without aircon on and the temperature of my room was 35°C (95°F) when I came in.

Any tips on how I can cool my tanks down over the weekends when the aircon is off?

DeadlyMuffin
Jul 3, 2007

President Evil posted:

I currently have two tanks (15L & 30L) in my office here at work which I keep ghost shrimp in and after coming in this morning, after the weekend, several of my shrimp are dead.

I think I can safely assume that temperature was the main cause as it gets hot as gently caress in the office without aircon on and the temperature of my room was 35°C (95°F) when I came in.

Any tips on how I can cool my tanks down over the weekends when the aircon is off?

A fan to encourage evaporation along the top might help

w00tmonger
Mar 9, 2011

F-F-FRIDAY NIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS

Starting to get some meeting on the edges of 1 of my plants that's been doing fine otherwise. 10 hours of light, 1 bubble of c02 a second while lights are on, dosing a cap of flourish Excel occasionally.

Is it too much light? Too little c02?

E: still cycling, just started getting nitrates, no fish yet

Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013

w00tmonger posted:

Starting to get some meeting on the edges of 1 of my plants that's been doing fine otherwise. 10 hours of light, 1 bubble of c02 a second while lights are on, dosing a cap of flourish Excel occasionally.

Is it too much light? Too little c02?

E: still cycling, just started getting nitrates, no fish yet

This is for your new 55, right? What kind of plant is it, what does "occasionally" mean with Excel dosing, and how strong is your water flow? Are there other nutrients that you're using in addition to the Excel? Excel will melt some plants. You started cycling a little over two weeks ago, when did you add the plants? What's your lighting setup? I think that's it for questions.

w00tmonger
Mar 9, 2011

F-F-FRIDAY NIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS

Dogwood Fleet posted:

This is for your new 55, right? What kind of plant is it, what does "occasionally" mean with Excel dosing, and how strong is your water flow? Are there other nutrients that you're using in addition to the Excel? Excel will melt some plants. You started cycling a little over two weeks ago, when did you add the plants? What's your lighting setup? I think that's it for questions.

Excel has been a few time a weak. That and a bit of excel iron but less often.
D
Plants were planted when the tank had water put in it. The plant that's melting is a lily of some sort and I'll attach a picture. Little bit of brown algae in the tank which should go away apparently.

Lighting is 2 LEDs (Hagen 208L?), just reduced from 10hrs to 9 a day.



Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013

w00tmonger posted:

Excel has been a few time a weak. That and a bit of excel iron but less often.
D
Plants were planted when the tank had water put in it. The plant that's melting is a lily of some sort and I'll attach a picture. Little bit of brown algae in the tank which should go away apparently.

Lighting is 2 LEDs (Hagen 208L?), just reduced from 10hrs to 9 a day.





Hm. Alright, since it's a lily, did you plant it as a bulb or did you buy it partially grown? Also, is that Aqua Soil? It looks like Aqua Soil.

w00tmonger
Mar 9, 2011

F-F-FRIDAY NIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS

Dogwood Fleet posted:

Hm. Alright, since it's a lily, did you plant it as a bulb or did you buy it partially grown? Also, is that Aqua Soil? It looks like Aqua Soil.

Partially grown. Ada Amazonia

E: looked up the led. 1890 Lumens and 8,000K each

Pretty tank picture

w00tmonger fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Feb 19, 2018

w00tmonger
Mar 9, 2011

F-F-FRIDAY NIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS

I don't have a way to measure c02 on hand as I'm still waiting for my AliExpress drop checker to come in, but this seems to indicate c02 or nitrogen defeciency?

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

If you bought it grown, it might have been grown enmersed like a lot of plants. If that's the case the leaf will die off while fully aquatic ones grown to replace it.

Dr. Garbanzo
Sep 14, 2010
A couple of pictures because its still weirding me out a little that the tank is so completely crystal clear and I hope I can keep it there.

At close to it's worst:


And today:



The plants changed a little but only the ones in the background the rest I kept the same.

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Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013
Thinking about combining my ideas and getting a heavily planted 65 gallon stocked with the most expensive betta I can find on aquabid.

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