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"Slow Roast" Rio 125

Day 8

Crypts melting and some CO2 changes and way of injection. I suspect I'll change CO2 to an inline when I can find one I like/trust. For now its going via a Rhinox 1000 under the inlet. Even this doesn't seem to be diffusing properly so an inline I suspect would work better.

Plants, the crypts are melting as mentioned above. I think they'll recover. Mini hair grass is anchoring down and opening up. Some are pearling. The anubis seems happy considering. The moss will kick off at some point and start growing. The gluing hasn't really worked in lots of places.

Water changes 25% every other day and 5ml TNC Complete every day.

Ended up doing a water change and a bunch of fry from the other tank came over so I fast matured the tank with filter media from Charlie Chi and added a bunch of immature endlers to test. They have been happy for days so added more each day, all happy. Moved a Snail over to see and it's good so ordered more snails and got a bunch of cherry shrimp on order.

Apart from some bacterial growth on the wood (now dead because of the mature filter media added five days ago) all I've got is a bit of brown spot growing on the glass and parts of the wood. The snails/shrimp combo should sort that along with the plants kicking into gear.

Lighting is the Chihiros on full power, 8 hours, 4pm-12am. CO2 running 2:30pm - 10pm.

Everything seems happy. Next challenge is to get the CO2 to diffuse properly and get the drop checker to drop :)

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Suffice to say the emergency evac of everything out of Charlie Chi along with continuing issues balancing CO2 levels and keep them stable has created a bit of a mess.

Plenty of algae or various kinds. Stressed fish from before the evac and after. Along with the issues with the wood early on have knocked the tank out of balance.

Now its to get things back on track.

CO2
The JBL has turned up so I'll install that at the weekend
I'm thinking of binning the DIY Citric acid jobber and going for a soda stream bottle and reg. Money isn't there yet though to do this.

Water Changes
Tank is smashing out nitrates faster than the plants can cope so water changes are now 30% every other day

Feeding
Got an auto feeder (its really rather good with flake, everything else its junk with) put in flake and a slow sinker. The grain size of the slow sinkers clogs it on the lowest setting and it basically gives out nothing. Next step up dumps loads in to the tank (hence tonights water change). Emptied and filled with just flake so should be good from now.

Filteration
Had the same KH drops to zero I had with Charlie Chi. Added a tablespoon of crushed coral to help buffer the CO2 injection against horrid pH drops. Tank was getting down to 6 pH. Had to stop that; suspect the wood is leaching :(
Added a nylon tight around the intake. Filter was swallowing way too many shrimp. This has dropped flow and caused the err skimmer to suck in a load of air as that became the preferred source for the filter. Removed the skimmer and capped it. Life is good again.

Plants
They are growing. Some are doing better than others. Pretty much all mosses are covered in brown algae right now.

Tank looked a mess but it'll correct over the coming weeks so water changes, get everything in balance and then it'll be good.

Not how I wanted this tank to start but thats life. It's all correctable right now so its just a case of keep up the discipline and crack on.
 
This really is becoming the start from hell.

Auto feeder issue caused a metric ton of food dumped into the tank this morning. Got home to dead shrimp. Massive amounts of nitrates and a co2 cock up.

Urgh.

So this was before the water change, clean up and reset. Stripped the filter from the Chi, removed most of the filter material and using this as a co2 reactor. Working well, will see tomorrow. Fish happier but damn this tank is a mess.

It'll settle over the next week and especially if i can get Co2 to settle then the plants will kick off and start sucking the mess out of the tank.

The start for this has been a real mess. Such is life...

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I am borderline ready to strip this tank, bin the plants and start again on saturday.

Its a real mess now, the big filter isn't pumping out anywhere near enough flow, co2 is now sorted but its a real clusterf**k.

I'm thinking, remove all the fauna. The wood and then substrate.

Re-attach the wood to the egg crate, put in, substrate back on top. Replant with new plants, mainly hair grass and mosses then re fill.

I dunno whether to leave it and see what happens now co2 is sorted or whether its beyond repair. Hmm
 
I feel for you! My plants arrive on Friday for my new tank so dreading the appearance of algae.
 
Oh its got loads worse!

The utterly terrible All Pond Solutions EF2+ won't seal. Thats why its flow is so bad.

The tank now is in a very sorry state. Lights are off, because the filter is off (I don't trust it not to dump the tank on the floor) that means the inline heater is off. I've got a small internal heater on at the minute but I'm not hopeful it will keep it warm enough.

I've got another 150l/h filter on the tank for now.

Urgh what a mess.

Fluval 306 is on order by I can't get that until sometime saturday so I'm going to have to grin it out for 2 days.

I'm thinking of getting some new plants on saturday when I go to pick up the filter and then rescape. No time tonight to move the fish into a bucket either so I'll just have to hope they are ok until tomorrow night.

All the best laid plans are just that until they meet the light of day.

:(
 
But other than that everything going OK? Well done for sticking that out mate, a lesser man would have stripped that down. It all gets better from here. I hope anyway.
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If shrimp had porn sites this tank would definitely be on it. Load it up with Amano and a couple of SAE. They'll make short work of that in no time if you don't feed them.

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If shrimp had porn sites this tank would definitely be on it. Load it up with Amano and a couple of SAE. They'll make short work of that in no time if you don't feed them.

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It's got six amanos (thinking fo adding more), a bunch of cherrys, two ottos and six nerterites. Its gradually coming back especially now the co2 is sorted and stable.

ProTip: baking soda, citric acid is bloody unstable at delivery rates on larger tanks... Who Knew??? (EVERYONE) :D
 
Haha they sure did pal. Amano are the most effective at chomping algae as long as they are hungry.

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