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Juwel Trigon 350 build

I've kept amano with discus with no issues. The LFS has amano's at 4 for £15 and they are of a fairly decent size was hoping to get some cheaper. Seen some on ebay which are a good price but once you add on postage it's not that much cheaper.
 
So it been nearly 2 weeks since I planted the tanks and all of the plants have picked up and are doing well, apart from the Eleocharis Sp it's all turned to mush :( I had bought 3 pots not quite sure why it happened to just the Eleocharis SP the dwarf variety of Eleocharis has picked up and is doing well.
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I still got a bit of browny slime in the tank but this seems to be slowly disappearing and I'm trying to remove as much as I can but it keep disintegrating when I go to grab it.
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I think the tank has picked up nicely and the plants do seem to be thriving, I've not had that much experience using other soils but the combination of JBL Volcano mineral plus Cal Aqua Labs Green Base XR as a base layer covered in Cal Aqua Labs Black earth premium soil seems to be doing a great job. I used Eco complete in my last planted tank and it seems to be much better.

I've to 3 gold rams, 6 cardinal tetra 8 oto's and 6 amano shrimp in the tank so far and my water parameter reading haven't budged. My sump looks like it doing a brilliant job. I'll be fitting a UV steriliser to the tank over the weekend I should have looked at the measurements before I bought it though. It's a 24 watt unit and it's massive, I think I'm going to need to rejig things a bit to get it to fit with the rest of my setup.
 
I've added more shrimp and fish to my tank now. So I now have 14 cardinal tetra, 5 golden rams, 8 oto, 3 discus, 3 emerald cory and about 16 amano shrimp. The sump is more than coping with the current stock level and the Nitrate level is less than 5. I'm still getting a brown alga bloom problem, I was hoping it would have gone away by now but it still there I bought the oto and amano shrimp to tackle the problem, the oto' are busy eating as much as they can, my shrimp however have decided to move to my sump!
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I'm working on a plan to stop them getting into the sump so they can start cleaning the brown algae.

Here's some images of the brown algae -
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I think I'm going to start a thread to see if anyone can suggest how to sort this problem out. I've read lots of contradictory info about the best way to get rid of this stuff.
 

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I put some plastic mesh over the wier to try and stop them getting into the sump, but two have still manager to get in. I guess they know I'm setting up a shrimp tank in one of the chambers but this was meant to be for cherry and / or CRB shrimp. The algae looks like is slowly disappearing from the hardscape but is blooming off the plants but at least now the amano in the tank look to be working on it. I also been told to shorten the time the lights are on to 5 hours till the blooms disappear. So have adjusted the light and co2 timers.
 
Since some of my amano shrimp keep getting into my sump I thought I'd make a home for them in my spare compartment :)

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In my main tank I'm having big issues with the brown algae blooms, I was late home last night so the light were off. When I looked today I found this :eek:-

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I've never had an issue like this before in any tank I've setup. I know this should sort itself out but does it always get this bad? I've physically removed as much as I can now but really want this stuff to go away.
 
Love your shrimp home ☺ That candyfloss algae is bad :( can't help thinking a floating raft of hygrophila difformis or hornwort or cabomba or egeria/elodea or something secured to the top left side might help use up some nutrients that would disadvantage the algae & not cause difficulties for your anubias planted there?!
 
In my experience algae like this is caused by ammonia due to improperly cycled tank and/or filters (though possibly could be due to exceptionally high light levels on for too long a time). I have seen algae like this where people have add ammonia (on purpose) and obtained the most fantastical hair mops like you have got.

You may not be able to measure the ammonia as ammonia test kits are notoriously unreliable due to interference of other chemicals in freshwater tanks, namely any trace of dechlorinator will tend to give a zero ammonia reading due to interfering with the test chemicals.

My suggestions are:
- Physically remove as much as possible using say a tooth brush.
- Frequent water changes (with dechlorinator).
- Add Prime (or AmQuel+) daily as this will remove ammonia.
- Remove affected plants and dip in diluted liquid carbon. This will kill algea.
- Run with lower light levels and shorter time for a while.
 
ian_m said:
In my experience algae like this is caused by ammonia due to improperly cycled tank and/or filters (though possibly could be due to exceptionally high light levels on for too long a time). I have seen algae like this where people have add ammonia (on purpose) and obtained the most fantastical hair mops like you have got.

You may not be able to measure the ammonia as ammonia test kits are notoriously unreliable due to interference of other chemicals in freshwater tanks, namely any trace of dechlorinator will tend to give a zero ammonia reading due to interfering with the test chemicals.

My suggestions are:
- Physically remove as much as possible using say a tooth brush.
- Frequent water changes (with dechlorinator).
- Add Prime (or AmQuel+) daily as this will remove ammonia.
- Remove affected plants and dip in diluted liquid carbon. This will kill algea.
- Run with lower light levels and shorter time for a while.
Click to expand...

I've tested for ammonia and it is reading zero, and when I was cycling the tank the ammonia steadily dropped from 4 to 0, I didn't add any ammonia to the tank to do the fishless cycle. I believe it was released from the soil I used. My fish are also really happy and have no signs of ammonia poisoning I have been adding fluval cycle when I was cycling the tank too and used some old media from my mature canister filter. I've been doing 100 litre water changes every couple of days and with water filtered through a HMA filter and when I've been doing the water changes I've also been hand removing as much of the algae as I can, The algae exploded into those blooms once I cut the light period from 8 hours to 5 hours which was the general consensus from my separate post on this.

I'm at a bit of a loss to what else to do, the only thing I have not tried is the dipping in liquid carbon. Would this be ok for the plants and is there a way to dose the entire tank with liquid carbon? Also worth mentioning I have CO2 levels of about 30 in my tank.
 
DavidW said:
I'm at a bit of a loss to what else to do, the only thing I have not tried is the dipping in liquid carbon. Would this be ok for the plants and is there a way to dose the entire tank with liquid carbon?
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Liquid carbon can be toxic to fish and especially shrimps, which is why you must take the plants out to dip. Try at say 50% strength liquid carbon solution first for say 1 minute then place back in the tank. This has worked well a couple of times on some of my plants when I suffer BBA due to over feeding and another time cocking up timer settings whilst on holiday. :(
 
After struggling with diatoms for the past few weeks I've finally got things under control. I ended up taking all the plants and most of the wood out of my tank and giving it a clean and I also cut all the infected leaves off the plants. I did try dipping some of my plants in a liquid carbon / water mixture but this went disastrously wrong and killed most of the plants I dipped!

I've now added a circulation pump and am in the process of setting up a constant water drip changer on the tank so the water is always fresh.

Here's the tank now -
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I've setup an continuous water changer on the tank now. I've got a HMA filter and have added 2 extra units to it, the first extra unit contains SilicatEx and the second has DI resin, this then feeds via a float switch to a 100 litre water butt that goes to the top of my tank and connects to another float switch to stop the water level rising above a set level. On my sump return I've fitted a t connector which feeds to the waste water pipe.

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There is also a powerhead in the water butt that keeps the water circulating and also helps feed the water to the main tank.
 
I've just bought the same water butt for the fish room except I won't be running a continuous water change.
Only my opinion butI'm sure fish enjoy a large water change, I know it can definitely lead to spawning.
Also a water change gives me chance to clean debris from the tanks.

My parlour tank is also the Trigon 350
 
I was finding I didn't have the time to do large water changes on the tank, It's about 430 litres with the sump capacity included so I was doing 200 litre water changes, I could only do 100 litre at a time and needed to heat the water for a day so was spending 2 evenings a week changing water, which I didn't mind but I was getting grief from my wife so I setup the continuous water changer. I'll still be doing maintenance every week and larger water changes probably 100 litres once a fortnight. As I said I was getting it in the neck from the other half.

I can set the system so it does a full water change of every 2 days or if I get a water timer I can set it to auto change large amounts at the moment it on trickle so will change about 50 litres a day.

My discus are spawning in the tank.
 
The diatoms have gone now. I took most of the wood and plants out and cleaned them off. They've not come back since. I do have some other types of algae now but I'm managing that situation. I didn't have enough co2 getting into the tank but was dosing the ferts as if I had 20mgl. I've changed to an in tank diffuser and have upped the co2.

I had a box of the silicatEX so thought as you have said it couldn't do any harm so have included it in the setup.

I've also changed the direction of the flow from the tank return so instead of going straight the nozzle is pointing to one side and I added a wave maker on the opposite side to the nozzle direction, I now have much better flow around my tank and the water and plants are already looking cleaner.
 
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It's been 2 days since I put the continuous water changer on and the fish and plants look really happy and the water is crystal clear. Very happy with the change so far :)
 
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