My tank

[Alan Fluxion]

So my thread was locked because it was a little OT so I'll do as ceg suggested...


So about my aquarium, I started it "dry" all my plants including grass rooted very nicely, I decided on a dry start since I'm new to aquatics and did not want to battle with algae from the begining since it would demotivate me from continuing. The dry start ran for 1,5mths at which point I became impatient and angry that my wife was getting impatient and nagging me "when will there be water", "why won't you pour in some water", "why isn't there water" so I added the water and watched the plants and algae grow.

I first started with a Aquael Fan 3 which wasn't optimal but I knew that I'd be looking for a external filter and would save the internal as a backup. I had everything almost stabilized, algae was under control I purchased 2 used filters (Tetratec ex700 and Aquael FZN-3), had everything for CO2 and installed it... first mistake I made in my learning process was ... I took out my external filter instead of leaving it to transfer the good bacteria to the new filter, the second mistake I made was installing the external filter.

The first 4 days the external filter was fantastic, it sucked in all the algae from my rocks and made my water clear but something just wasn't right... as soon as I added the filter and CO2 my plants went from beautiful to rotting and eventually falling off and being sucked into the filter. The 5th day the filter went from washing machine effect in my aquarium to not being able to move the water at all... no matter what I did the filter does not want to work properly, the fish were pissed off and floating at the top to get some air because the water was standing still... so after 2 days of fussing around and getting angry I took out the TetraTec and put in the cascading filter which I am 110% satisfied with. The water is moving, it's clear again the fish are coming out to play and hunt.

Now I'm hoping that my plants will come back to life, the roots and stems are there and they're releasing new leaves so I'll need to give it time.

Aquarium: 60L, 60x30x30
Lights: SunSun HDD-600B 2x24W T5 - Sylvania Luxline Plus + Sylvania Aquastar
Filtration: Temporarily Aquael FZN-3 Cascading filter with a backup Aqual Fan Filter 3 and a Tetratec ex700 which doesn't want to work right.
Background: Black self adhesive foil
Soil: JBL Mondo
Rocks: Lava
Temperature: 24c usingTetra HT 100
Flora: Eleocharis Acicularis, Eleocharis Parvula, Alternanther Sp. Red, Hygrophila difformis, Ludwigia repens
Co2: 1,5kg Co2 bottle
Fish: Cierniooczek Myersa, (there's one more, just do not recall the name)

I'll need to take some pictures of the current status of the aquarium, but it looks like blahblahblahblah and am disappointed in it, so I'll wait a bit

My aquarium in it's current state... not very good, I think I'm missing potassium and maybe something effected my ecosystem... filter

As you can tell my co2 is distributed very nicely and the bubbles are tiny

Meet Fred

[DOUBLEPOST=1397761435][/DOUBLEPOST]I will be buying some salts at the end of this month ...

KNO3 + MgSO4x7H2O + KH2PO4 + CSM+B+FE

and doing EI according to ceg... I have some Makro/Micro but since I'm not 100% sure what it is, I will be getting some new salts and doing EI the proper way... my only question would be how do I measure it off correctly ... 2 1/4 tsp... aren't tsp's different sizes?

 

[ceg4048]

my only question would be how do I measure it off correctly ... 2 1/4 tsp... aren't tsp's different sizes?

Hello,
You need to abandon this question completely because it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what size your teaspoon is. For any sized teaspoon, the amount of nutrition we are adding is very high. What we are hoping is that the plants consider the amount they see as being infinite from their perspective. Therefore, whether your version of infinity is 10% smaller or larger that someone else's version of infinity will make no difference.

Lights: SunSun HDD-600B 2x24W T5 - Sylvania Luxline Plus + Sylvania Aquastar

That is too much light to start a 15 gallon tank. That is the source of all your problems.

Cheers,

 

[tim]

Amen light, IS evil on tank start up.

 

[Alan Fluxion]

Hello,
You need to abandon this question completely because it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what size your teaspoon is. For any sized teaspoon, the amount of nutrition we are adding is very high. What we are hoping is that the plants consider the amount they see as being infinite from their perspective. Therefore, whether your version of infinity is 10% smaller or larger that someone else's version of infinity will make no difference.

I see, I wasn't sure since the 3/16ths is pretty precise... so as long as the measurements fit with a fault tolerence of a few % the dosing will be the same.

Now as I re-read your post about EI it clearly states it doesn't matter since we're dosing more than the plants need.

That is too much light to start a 15 gallon tank. That is the source of all your problems.

Cheers,

Really? I've never read or thought about it, I read when I was starting to have a good W/L of a minimum .50W/L depending on your plant species... but nowhere about it being too much light, to be honest I thought it was actually better to have more light. So what's the recommendation, turn off one bulb? will the Parvula suffer because of this?

I keep the light on from 9.30-18, so I was assuming that it was ok... :\

 

[Edvet]

Take your time and read the articles in the tutorial section, realy you can learn a lot there http://www.ukaps.org/forum/forums/tutorials.34/
You can learn about CO2, light, ferts.
Basicaly: start with low light, get CO2 working in correct fashion (on before lights, get sufficient pH drop), get enough flow, use EI, do water changes ( a lot of them).

 

[Alan Fluxion]

Thanks Edvet.

I have been reading quite a bit on PL and ENG forums but the funny part is that not all topics have the same opinions.

I will sort out the lighting problem today, take one bulb out and shorten time to 6,5hrs and at the end of the month I'll start with EI.[DOUBLEPOST=1397816858][/DOUBLEPOST]I just got home, removed 1 bulb and changed the time to 6hrs... the co2 just like before is swimming around in the tank.[DOUBLEPOST=1397817012][/DOUBLEPOST]I got the co2 to be spread around even better, I set the precision valve a micromilimiter less and set the tube to point up and around which is creating smaller bubbles and they're being forced down immedietly. so hopefully that'll help...

As I understand with the light being so much, the co2 is being wasted faster than it should.... and the plants are using up the ferts I give it faster than they should too.... correct?

 

[Edvet]

Not so much wasted. the plants are limited by CO2 the most in our tanks. Ferts are easy to dose plenty, it's (too) easy to give a lot of light, It's CO2 wich gives the most troubles, we can't see it, it's hard to measure, hard to distribute correctly, it is difficult to get a lot of it in the water and in high doses it can be toxic to fish. But it is very important to get it right .And the most misunderstood in many fora.

 

[Alan Fluxion]

how will I know when I've reached a well balanced light/co2/fert level? the dropchecker will tell me co2 and light... right?

 

[Edvet]

Dropchecker i wouldnt count on it to much. A pH profile would give the best info at the moment, than if you know what's going on you can use a dropchecker to see if you are still on track. The best proof of balance is in the plants. They grow according to your light level and are healthy and litle or no algea problems, That's the proof.

 

[Alan Fluxion]

so it had to be pretty bad since I have no plants :\ I understand... I'll get this stabilized then purchase some more plants... Pervular from what I know is very sensitive, if it starts growing like buckweed I'll know I'm on the right track.

By the way, thanks for the help... we'll see what happens

I cleaned up my aquarium again today, took a toothbrush and cleaned all the rocks, cleaned the glass, filter (floss is tossed, ceramic rings are cleaned in the water from the tank) and did a 50% water change (a lot of algae floating around.)

 

[Alan Fluxion]

I did another cleaning, and water change today (20%), I also cleaned up all the old decaying stems from the plants that died... about 1/4th of the plants is left unfortunately... but it needed to be done... this also helped with the algae that was building up behind the plants.

I did some planting today outside of the aquarium, took tiny pieces of my pervular and planted it in some small jars, the jars are on the windowsill now, hopefully I can make some nice fragments of carpet for future use

 

[ceg4048]

A 20% water change is too puny. You'll need to get into the habit of thinking in terms of larger water changes and of doing them more frequently. If there are no fish in the tank, and if the tank is only 15 USG then a 99% water change 2X-3X per week is not unreasonable. The tank must be kept spotless.

Cheers,

 

[Alan Fluxion]

Eh, wow 2-3x per week 99% that's a lot :\ didn't know it should be that much... unfortunately though I do have 2 creatures living in the aquarium so I don't think 99% would be possible but I could do 80 ish since they are bottom dwellers and usually are in their hiding spots somewhere by the rocks when I do the water changes..

.other part that sucks is I live in the area of Poland that has the most expensive water :\ 11zł for 1m2 of cold water which is quite a bit, but that's irrelevant

 

[ceg4048]

Well, you can always collect rain water in large water butts and use that to supplement your tap water.

When you have serious plant health issues such as you show in your opening post then you need to take extreme measures to get the tank back to health. Reducing light intensity is the first critical step. Improving CO2 is second. Keeping the tank clean is the next step. Nutrition the next.

Cheers,

 

[Alan Fluxion]

Bugger, we hada downpour last night, shame I didn't put the buckets out.

thanks, I will end up doing the 80% water changes, I cant do 99% since the fish wont be too happy about it :\ but 80% I'm sure I can pull off.

Light is set to 6 hrs with 1 bulb 24watt H5, so that should be good according to the few threads I read.

Co2 circulation should be better n the future, I just got my tetratec running right, so my reactor should be up and running at the end of this week... I will keep both filters running simultaneously to get the bacteria back in my external filter...

 

[Alan Fluxion]

Update-

The tetratec let me down again, the water it was pumping out with the inline reactor was terrible, the water was not moving so I'll need to buy a inline pump and put it between the reactor and filter to get the flow going... maybe a 800L/h will suffice.

I did get the co2 running better in the aquarium, I have to say that my cascade filter works wonders, and if it wasn't for the fact that I have to clean it often (2 a week to get the water clean) I would say fec* the tetratec...

Lighting is still the same, 6 hrs... from 15:00 when I get home to 21:00

My plants started looking healthy and growing again so I ended up getting a few more plants to fill in the gaps, a few days and the plants started growing nicely... but I seem to have a lack of something, the plant is supposed to be red but it's turning green... I added the other bulb and am now dosing EI according to the instructions... we'll see what happens...

I got a couple fish, one was a gift from my wife... A Betta.... Betta Super Black Half Moon Plakat, and Aplocheilus Lineatus and Corydoras habrosus... I gave the betta a few days to find his place in the aquarium and get it accustomed to the water/temp/quality and then added the other fish... but the betta doesn't like other fish and killed the Aplocheilus Lineatus... :\ shame, because I liked how they looked and swam around,... he doesn't seem to be attacking the other fish, so I think I'll give him another week and try adding another fish, if he behaves I'll add more if not... out the window he will go... maybe not literally

 

[Alan Fluxion]

So, Friday I got my hands on a Aquael Nano Shrimp Tank 27L for 100zł (about 20 gbp) with filter, light and heater... all in good condition, used for 6mths I figured this might be the right time to resolve a issue with my tank...

When I was starting my tank I made the mistake of being overconfident and put my soil down then mixed in fertilizer after which I read the instructions that it should be under the soil *facepalm* I tried cleaning up as much as I could but the damage was done... everytime I touched the soil I got a huge cloud of gray dust which then covered all my plants and fish and it probably had some negative side effects that I don't know... So I did a mini restart, I took some of the water from the 60L and poured it into the 27L and put the fish, shrimp and plants in the 27L, pulled out the soil and washed it a few times until the water was clear, cleaned up the glass and then put plant fertilizer (those sticks) and put down flower soil (pre washed) to cover up the fertilizer sticks, then a nice coat of my washed monado, made a hill and placed the rocks differenly... at the same time I got rid of the cascade filter... it looks like this ...

I decided that I'll plant most of the plants in one area and make it dense for the shrimp since they like those kinds of areas and the front to right will be a grassy area, one of the rocks has java moss on it, the other one will have something sooner or later...

I also have some new additions to the family since the last pictures...

I need to get some plants for the nano, it's very empty... I'll probably go with HC since its very low tech.

 

[aliclarke86]

Hc likes lots of light and co2 try mc

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[Alan Fluxion]

MC?

 

[aliclarke86]

hemianthus monte carlo

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