You probably wont have to put down the pen 😂
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Consistency Deficiency
- Thread starter Hufsa
- Start date
You certainly live to the journal name @Hufsa ! 😂
I can’t help but think that’s at the root of all the problems you’re having.
We dont deal in misleading advertising 'round these here parts 😎
I agree, in part. I think it would be easier to figure things out if there were less changes made.
But sometimes I almost get the impression that people think the tank would sort itself out entirely if just left completely to its own devices. Thats the part I dont really agree with.
High tech tanks do need a certain amount of "input". Especially in the maintenance, water change, plant care department. Probably less so in the hijinks department.
It makes me think of when you first learn how to drive a car. (I dont expect all of you to remember this part as some of you are pretty ancient 😘)
At first youre gripping the steering wheel like your life depends on it, and since you dont have a good feel at all for where the car is on the road, you make a ton of jerky adjustments to the left and right, left and right again, all the time.
You overadjust, so you then have to compensate by moving the steering wheel the other direction, but you overadjust that way too. It probably drove your parent insane.
You feel like the car is gonna go off the road at any moment, and since your eyes arent used to tracking the car in the lane, if you dont pay enough attention then you just might not turn when you were actually supposed to turn, and almost end up in the ditch.
This is pretty close to how I feel about the tank.
At some point in training the jerky adjustments to the steering wheel just stop. You know where the car is in the lane, and you know how much to turn the wheel without turning it too much.
Youre surprised how little turning is actually needed to keep the car on the road. You finally understand how your parent could drive for hours, because just minutes of the jerky overadjusting was exhausting.
Now that you have the feel, you know that the roads go more straight than not. You dont have to do much to keep the car in the center of the lane.
Its the overadjusting. I dont want to do it, im acutely aware that im doing it. The difficult bit is knowing how much of an adjustment is the right amount.
Because if there is actually a turn in the road coming up and you dont turn enough, you crash.
I dont want my tank to crash. I dont want to cause my livestock any harm. I dont want to lose plant species, because many of them cannot be easily replaced. But im not sure where the car is in the lane.
I think there are a few things that combined make the road that im trying to keep my car on slightly different to some of the roads others are driving.
Im running CO2 injection with the accelerated plant growth, but I have inert substrate. This is not super common. Likely for a reason, I think. Because of this, there is an added emphasis on getting things just right.
My tap water is a bit unusual. Its virtually void of anything except the carbonates the waterworks add. RO users have the void, but they dont have the carbonates.
Many tap water users have the carbonates and a lot of everything (especially many brits).
The water im using is in this weird norwegian purgatory between RO and average international tap water. We're not sure what the effects might be.
Ive been making custom ferts, including micros. This adds a lot of unknowns. Making custom micros is not very common, those who make their own macros mostly use a premade trace blend.
Then comes the big complication, the chronic inconsistency. Some of it is because im a cosmic milkshake fountain of ideas with all the calm of a blender that someone turned on without the lid.
Some of it is because of my health. I dont know when another bad period might come, and while I try to plan for them they usually affect the care and attention that I can give the tank. They are very frustrating for me.
I see the needs of the tank but I am unable to meet them. In a few ways high tech is not a great match for me.
But I have grown somewhat attached to the idea of being able to grow whatever I want in theory.
Dont laugh pls I said in theory
So yeah. Its a bit hard. Ive just got to keep trying to keep the car in the lane and hope that the feel kicks in at some point. Or maybe ill end up crashing into a tree. Dont really know, but hopefully it will be entertaining either way 😊
You'd probably be surprised! The thing with the constant changes is that the plants have to continually adapt to the those changes, which requires them to use energy they would otherwise redirect to healthy growth. They never get chance to reach a steady state where their environment has been largely the same for 3-4 months.
As long as you know they have enough nutrients, they have enough well distributed CO2, you're not pummelling them with too much light, and you're performing consistent maintenance and water changes, I genuinely believe the best thing the aquarist can do is sit on their hands and not change anything. Literally the worst tanks I have had, in terms of algae and plant growth, are those where I've been constantly messing with it - adjusting the CO2, tweaking the lighting, trying different fert mixes etc etc. Those tanks that have seen the most success have been those which I have set-up, set the auto doser and CO2 in the first couple of days, and largely done nothing else other than the standard maintenance. In those tanks I've witnessed initial blooms of algae just recede and disappear on their own.
You know I do love a good car analogy! . . but who are you calling ancient? 😂
Quote of the month! I love that! 🤣
Your KH is around 3 right, double digits TDS? There really aren't any issues with that - you have a good baseline, and almost a clean slate. I'd love that water! Try starting with 6dKH and 12dGH - there's no where to go without RO or rainwater! If the KH bothers you, you could add an RO unit, as with such low salts your membrane would last years!
I do feel for you with that aspect, that must be tough to live with. Perhaps all the more reason to get the tank on an even keel, and into cruise control. A mature tank with long run stability, is much more robust and able to cope with a couple of missed water changes etc.
I'm not trying to chew your ear off here, but I can see we're 1,100 posts and three years in, and things still aren't going as you hoped - so I'm exercising my right as a page 1 subscriber to the thread to offer some 'tough love'! 😘
I'll leave you with an image of a beautiful tank from that first page to remind you it 'can be done', so stick with it @Hufsa :
_Maq_
Member
Noooooo! Where would we be without Hufsa's thrilling journal???
I think we'd make brilliant co-authors Darrel 🥰 I assume the effects of random analogies are multiplicative rather than additive, so theres no telling what sort of magnificent nonsense we would come up with 😄
LightingBamboozled
Member
There seems to me like there'd be a bit of selection bias in that. Tanks that needed less fiddling with, you'd fiddle with less. I happen to agree with your conclusion but I'm not sure how supportive the experience is of the conclusion.
Not at all. There were plenty of things in this initial periods of some of those later tanks, including a hair algae outbreak, that would have historically led me to start tweaking inputs, but I didn't - experience told me to simply wait, and obtain some stability, and thats the only time I've seen hair algae actually reduce and disappear without manual removal in my tanks.
It's supportive enough for me generally 'set and forget' when I start up a new tank. The only thing I find I have to dial in is the light, as its the one thing I can't reliably measure, and the one thing I always seem to set too high 'by eye'.
That's not to say I don't change things over time, or try to make improvements - I like tweaking as much as the next person, but with my first tanks I used to fiddle with things all the time, week by week, regardless of the need to, and I ended up having the most issues with those tanks. I'm happy enough to take it as a given that the two are correlated based my own experiences.
_Maq_
Member
I have much the same feelings - but feelings are not the same as hard facts.
The hard fact is that I - as well as you, apparently - have set up many tanks in my life. There are myriads of possible mistakes, even likely mistakes, which I don't do without much (if any) thinking about it. Routine, experience.
It's reading on other hobbyists' difficulties which remind me of many situations which I haven't faced for many years. And only on such occasions I realize how much I have learnt through years. Not much to do (and speak about) when you just repeat steps which proved correct many times before. Then you may say: The less I do, the better. Yet in fact, you've done a lot, and the correct steps.
But then, there's another step. I often see other person's problems, and I'm unable to point exactly to the cause. Too little information, yes, too many variables, yes, but there's still much to learn: "THIS" works for me. WHY? Many times I have to admit that I don't know, that I can only guess.
An example. I'm running venturi in virtually all my tanks. I believe it's good for maintaining both O2 and CO2 at good levels. How important is it? How decisive a factor it is in preventing troubles? Frankly, I don't know. Precise measuring of dissolved O2 is an expensive undertaking, beyond my budget. Only if I collected many many data in standard as well as extreme situations I'd be able to tell.
Back to Hufsa. She's altering too many variables too often, that's true (and the funniest part). But her problems are real. No matter how detailed her journal is, the core of the trouble (or one of them) may remain hidden in something very obvious which she didn't bother to mention, I'm afraid. Unless I'm present personally and observing each step of her care, I can't tell for sure what part of her practice is to blame. I very much doubt that she can afford right now to follow your suggestion "just wait and see". Sometimes you may wait and see the tank just die.
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😁
Yea! You tell em Maq 😛 ..Wait what 😳
That settles it!
I'll start a gofundme immediately to raise the funds for Project "Strap a webcam to Hufsa's head to see what the heck she's doing wrong"!
Or PSWHHSWHSDW for short.
Ill stream live on Twitch 24/7 and if someone donates enough money to the stream they'll get to zap me with the electric collar ill also be wearing, so they can stop me when they think im doing wrong enough. The money raised from that will go towards a 500 dollar PH controller obviously 😃
Dont worry Maq, this is a flawless plan 😎
Ive been dosing my tank a ton with.. what is it they said it was called again.. 🤔 ah yes, "elbow grease". Actually sort of a gross term if you think about it...
And Tropica Specialized too of course
So far nothing has caught fire. Just dosing something premade and letting JesusTropica take the wheel is oddly relaxing. Is this how normal people live? 🤔
Im eager to see if anything changes now that the tank has had a 50% water change with no-nutrient-water.
Been really putting in the work with maintenance, pretty chuffed about that (a great british word btw).
Im cleaning the mesh intakes at least twice a week and this is really important because the thread algae clogs up the intakes and affects the flow. I think the thread algae thrives on the instability, which makes more thread algae which makes more instability because of clogging, so keeping them clean is essential to keeping my tank stable.
My health is overall a bit better, so im able to keep up with the tank to a certain degree, and maintenance doesnt feel quite has exhausting as it has used to 😊 Feels nice.
I still have bad periods where I cant do much, but I think going forward they will span days-week instead of weeks-months 😃
It got pretty late for sunday water change last night, but I got a bunch of things done and in addition to all the scraping and scrubbing I finally got around to pulling up the crypts to take a closer look at them.
Ive spoken about the substrate in private messages but I dont think I have written much in the journal about it yet, but ever since the sand snails died the substrate(sand) seems really off.
It didnt take long after the snails had left this mortal realm (rest in peace little beautiful snails), the sand started looking dirty and stale. It gave me a really bad feeling. And since then the roots of some plants have started rotting and going bad despite being in the exact same sand in the exact same place. Especially the crypts have been struggling a lot, and well over half a year later I could no longer put it off as stress from moving. The crypt spiralis red for instance, was once a boisterous huge plant that had roots halfway across the tank, massive leaves and I had my hands full trying to keep it from getting just too big. The roots used to be like huge white noodles and I would cut them down on every replant just to keep the plant in check. It didnt care, before. But these past months its just been pitiful.. Im not doing any trimming, the leaves arent gaining any size and they are melting regularly, not all the leaves just one or two constantly. The crypt purpurea group was seeming to be hanging in there until I accidentally pulled it out when trying to get some hair algae. Normally you wouldnt be able to accidentally pull out a healthy established crypt, the root system is far too solid for that. But they just came out of the sand, because most of their roots were rotten 😧
I used to be able to tuck bucephalandra roots into the sand to keep them anchored, but now when I do that the roots rot, immediately.
I think the burrowing activity of the sand snails may have had a far greater impact on my substrate than I gave them credit for.
So last night I took em out to inspect them, gently cleaned the rot off and placed them in clear pots so I can keep an eye on them.
I used a coarser sand in the pots, because if they are struggling to "breathe" without the snails then I want to give them a substrate that allows more water movement.
Rhizome from a mother plant, it has made daughters all around the old rhizome because the old rhizome is rotting.
This is the amount of roots that it had by the way, just a few white stumps left and the rest is rot.
But as you can see the daughter plants are struggling with the same rot.
The rotted bits smelled foul when I took it out of the tank and my nose wasnt even that close.
Ive never experienced roots this black before 😧
I dont really care if you guys say "oh no Hufsa is going crazy again" or whatever.
I strongly feel like theres something off with the substrate and im going to figure it out.
Im the one who sees the tank and sees the plants, sees their roots, how they respond and know how they used to be, and theres something not right with them.
(Since I can hear Maq twitching, I dont think its precipitate because the sand was recently rinsed, so my thinking is that any build up would have been washed off then (last fall)).
This is how roots looked in my tank before, they were pristine.
When I separated and cleaned the crypts last night most of the rhizomes just dissolved in my hands, they were done for.
Ive separated the crypt spiralis red plants into two pots, one with coarser sand and one with tropica aquasoil capped with coarser sand. (Stupid soil is already making its way up, I hate it so much
)
The purpurea got the same treatment, the two flowering ones and one bitty one thats just crying is sharing a pot of coarser sand. They've been throwing their leaves out massively twisted lately which is a huge sign of unhappiness, but I didnt really know what it meant.
I hope to see improvement with all of them. If im right then the upset from being moved will be far surpassed by the better conditions for the roots.
If the crypts do improve then I may change the substrate. If this is really something that my plants need then I will do it, even if its a big change and im not supposed to do those.
But ill wait to see if the cups of coarse sand help first. And if I do to change it, ill try my very best to do it at a time the tank is not in great upheaval.
I have tracked down a seller of the Thiara sand snails, so im just waiting for the weather to get warm enough for shipping. Then I will have the darling snails back 😊
I rearranged some plants in the tank, and the small surviving rare crypts (most likely Queen Vandom and Yujii), also got pulled up. Their roots were also a rotten lump.
It was getting super late last night so I ran out of time, but ill put those in a pot today.
Im gonna see about increasing the plantmass a bit using the Myriophyllum Guyana. I dont regret throwing out the stargrass because it just grew too dang fast, but I still think more plantmass in my tank (that grows at a reasonable rate) will be an overall benefit. The offshoots of Guyana I planted will need a little time to grow to the right size for their locations, but they will get there. I love that plant 😊
The old BBA continues to get wispy and thin, and is almost falling off. Ive been able to pull out clumps of BBA easily. With healthy BBA you cannot do this, so it seems to be dying somehow.
The light spreading of new BBA is more firmly attached though, but its not nearly as extensive in coverage as the old stuff. I know I said before that my CO2 injection was all over the place over winter, but I should also mention that so would organics have been. So whichever one it was it seems like just "being more present" is helping out, for what its worth.
(But dont argue about BBA in my journal, it is already enough pages long
)
Hardly any color on the filter floss after two weeks, I think the tank is closer to its previous cleanliness again.
Im still working on really nailing maintenance, flow, and CO2, and I also have a few handy helpers in the works that will help the tank with more consistency 😊
(Like an ATO to make sure the water level is consistent even in summer, and a holder for the spray bar that clips on the frame of the tank, that will keep the spray bar at the exact same position after every cleaning. When I have the CO2 dialled in I will also mark the bar and elbow with a notch, so that the bar is rotated the exact same amount every time too).
Like I said, dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
Ive been trying to think of things that my tank had before that it doesnt have now, that can be contributing a little bit to the algae levels. And I started a while ago to plan for more livestock.
Particularly more otos and snails. I only have one snail species left in my tank, the tiny Planorbis sp. (not ramshorns but the itty bitty ones). These have been ok but are very slow moving compared to my favorite Physella acuta snails, and just generally the amount of grazers in the tank is lower than what it used to be, and much lower overall than it probably should be. The Thiara sand snails also used to moonlight as plant snails if the other snails werent pulling their weight, and they did a good job crawling on the fine leaved plants and eating algae there when they werent rummaging around in the sand.
Now there is hardly anyone keeping the plants clean. So many snails gone, the shrimp are trying to survive and dont have shrimplets (but the deaths seem to have decreased lately which is good), and the two mere otos I have left from my original group are stuffed all of the time and simply cant keep up with it all. When I was doing maintenance last night it actually seemed like the Planorbis snails are reproducing more now, which I might interpret as a sign of better tank health. There were way more snails of all sizes than there used to be a couple of months ago. If the shrimp start breeding again too then we're really onto something
Im not sure how new snail additions will do in my tank with regard to the CO2 injection, but the Thiara snails did okay. They didnt grow to full size but they reproduced fast enough that there was new snails to replace the old ones that had their shell damaged from the acidic water. Some of the sand snails also seemed to have clued on to the CO2 and only came out of the sand at night when the PH was lower. Those snails always had better shells than the ones who were cleaning plants all day. I think Physa snails should be able to survive in my tank as well since they're so fast reproducing.
In addition to raiding the LFS for their Physa snails, I got a few cute little ramshorns, some brown leopard ones with red body, and lately a few blue leopard ones too.
I havent really kept Ramshorn snails before, so this is new to me.
I hope they might reproduce fast enough to survive in a CO2 injected tank, we will see. If they dont then maybe ill just keep a big vase of them around in the kitchen, they are quite beautiful.
For now they are in quarantine with a bunch of plant cuttings, where they can relax and build up their numbers a bit for a time.
Im planning to get more kuhlii loaches, primarily so that my existing ones will feel better in a bigger group. I think I will need quite a few noodles to make a dent in their shyness.
And then after the kuhliis are settled well in quarantine the plan is to get a good group of otos. Buying them last because a mature tank will give them the best odds.
And Tropica Specialized too of course
So far nothing has caught fire. Just dosing something premade and letting Im eager to see if anything changes now that the tank has had a 50% water change with no-nutrient-water.
Been really putting in the work with maintenance, pretty chuffed about that (a great british word btw).
Im cleaning the mesh intakes at least twice a week and this is really important because the thread algae clogs up the intakes and affects the flow. I think the thread algae thrives on the instability, which makes more thread algae which makes more instability because of clogging, so keeping them clean is essential to keeping my tank stable.
My health is overall a bit better, so im able to keep up with the tank to a certain degree, and maintenance doesnt feel quite has exhausting as it has used to 😊 Feels nice.
I still have bad periods where I cant do much, but I think going forward they will span days-week instead of weeks-months 😃
It got pretty late for sunday water change last night, but I got a bunch of things done and in addition to all the scraping and scrubbing I finally got around to pulling up the crypts to take a closer look at them.
Ive spoken about the substrate in private messages but I dont think I have written much in the journal about it yet, but ever since the sand snails died the substrate(sand) seems really off.
It didnt take long after the snails had left this mortal realm (rest in peace little beautiful snails), the sand started looking dirty and stale. It gave me a really bad feeling. And since then the roots of some plants have started rotting and going bad despite being in the exact same sand in the exact same place. Especially the crypts have been struggling a lot, and well over half a year later I could no longer put it off as stress from moving. The crypt spiralis red for instance, was once a boisterous huge plant that had roots halfway across the tank, massive leaves and I had my hands full trying to keep it from getting just too big. The roots used to be like huge white noodles and I would cut them down on every replant just to keep the plant in check. It didnt care, before. But these past months its just been pitiful.. Im not doing any trimming, the leaves arent gaining any size and they are melting regularly, not all the leaves just one or two constantly. The crypt purpurea group was seeming to be hanging in there until I accidentally pulled it out when trying to get some hair algae. Normally you wouldnt be able to accidentally pull out a healthy established crypt, the root system is far too solid for that. But they just came out of the sand, because most of their roots were rotten 😧
I used to be able to tuck bucephalandra roots into the sand to keep them anchored, but now when I do that the roots rot, immediately.
I think the burrowing activity of the sand snails may have had a far greater impact on my substrate than I gave them credit for.
So last night I took em out to inspect them, gently cleaned the rot off and placed them in clear pots so I can keep an eye on them.
I used a coarser sand in the pots, because if they are struggling to "breathe" without the snails then I want to give them a substrate that allows more water movement.
Rhizome from a mother plant, it has made daughters all around the old rhizome because the old rhizome is rotting.
This is the amount of roots that it had by the way, just a few white stumps left and the rest is rot.
But as you can see the daughter plants are struggling with the same rot.
The rotted bits smelled foul when I took it out of the tank and my nose wasnt even that close.
Ive never experienced roots this black before 😧
I dont really care if you guys say "oh no Hufsa is going crazy again" or whatever.
I strongly feel like theres something off with the substrate and im going to figure it out.
Im the one who sees the tank and sees the plants, sees their roots, how they respond and know how they used to be, and theres something not right with them.
(Since I can hear Maq twitching, I dont think its precipitate because the sand was recently rinsed, so my thinking is that any build up would have been washed off then (last fall)).
This is how roots looked in my tank before, they were pristine.
When I separated and cleaned the crypts last night most of the rhizomes just dissolved in my hands, they were done for.
Ive separated the crypt spiralis red plants into two pots, one with coarser sand and one with tropica aquasoil capped with coarser sand. (Stupid soil is already making its way up, I hate it so much
)The purpurea got the same treatment, the two flowering ones and one bitty one thats just crying is sharing a pot of coarser sand. They've been throwing their leaves out massively twisted lately which is a huge sign of unhappiness, but I didnt really know what it meant.
I hope to see improvement with all of them. If im right then the upset from being moved will be far surpassed by the better conditions for the roots.
If the crypts do improve then I may change the substrate. If this is really something that my plants need then I will do it, even if its a big change and im not supposed to do those.
But ill wait to see if the cups of coarse sand help first. And if I do to change it, ill try my very best to do it at a time the tank is not in great upheaval.
I have tracked down a seller of the Thiara sand snails, so im just waiting for the weather to get warm enough for shipping. Then I will have the darling snails back 😊
I rearranged some plants in the tank, and the small surviving rare crypts (most likely Queen Vandom and Yujii), also got pulled up. Their roots were also a rotten lump.
It was getting super late last night so I ran out of time, but ill put those in a pot today.
Im gonna see about increasing the plantmass a bit using the Myriophyllum Guyana. I dont regret throwing out the stargrass because it just grew too dang fast, but I still think more plantmass in my tank (that grows at a reasonable rate) will be an overall benefit. The offshoots of Guyana I planted will need a little time to grow to the right size for their locations, but they will get there. I love that plant 😊
The old BBA continues to get wispy and thin, and is almost falling off. Ive been able to pull out clumps of BBA easily. With healthy BBA you cannot do this, so it seems to be dying somehow.
The light spreading of new BBA is more firmly attached though, but its not nearly as extensive in coverage as the old stuff. I know I said before that my CO2 injection was all over the place over winter, but I should also mention that so would organics have been. So whichever one it was it seems like just "being more present" is helping out, for what its worth.
(But dont argue about BBA in my journal, it is already enough pages long
)Hardly any color on the filter floss after two weeks, I think the tank is closer to its previous cleanliness again.
Im still working on really nailing maintenance, flow, and CO2, and I also have a few handy helpers in the works that will help the tank with more consistency 😊
(Like an ATO to make sure the water level is consistent even in summer, and a holder for the spray bar that clips on the frame of the tank, that will keep the spray bar at the exact same position after every cleaning. When I have the CO2 dialled in I will also mark the bar and elbow with a notch, so that the bar is rotated the exact same amount every time too).
Like I said, dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
Ive been trying to think of things that my tank had before that it doesnt have now, that can be contributing a little bit to the algae levels. And I started a while ago to plan for more livestock.
Particularly more otos and snails. I only have one snail species left in my tank, the tiny Planorbis sp. (not ramshorns but the itty bitty ones). These have been ok but are very slow moving compared to my favorite Physella acuta snails, and just generally the amount of grazers in the tank is lower than what it used to be, and much lower overall than it probably should be. The Thiara sand snails also used to moonlight as plant snails if the other snails werent pulling their weight, and they did a good job crawling on the fine leaved plants and eating algae there when they werent rummaging around in the sand.
Now there is hardly anyone keeping the plants clean. So many snails gone, the shrimp are trying to survive and dont have shrimplets (but the deaths seem to have decreased lately which is good), and the two mere otos I have left from my original group are stuffed all of the time and simply cant keep up with it all. When I was doing maintenance last night it actually seemed like the Planorbis snails are reproducing more now, which I might interpret as a sign of better tank health. There were way more snails of all sizes than there used to be a couple of months ago. If the shrimp start breeding again too then we're really onto something
Im not sure how new snail additions will do in my tank with regard to the CO2 injection, but the Thiara snails did okay. They didnt grow to full size but they reproduced fast enough that there was new snails to replace the old ones that had their shell damaged from the acidic water. Some of the sand snails also seemed to have clued on to the CO2 and only came out of the sand at night when the PH was lower. Those snails always had better shells than the ones who were cleaning plants all day. I think Physa snails should be able to survive in my tank as well since they're so fast reproducing.
In addition to raiding the LFS for their Physa snails, I got a few cute little ramshorns, some brown leopard ones with red body, and lately a few blue leopard ones too.
I havent really kept Ramshorn snails before, so this is new to me.
I hope they might reproduce fast enough to survive in a CO2 injected tank, we will see. If they dont then maybe ill just keep a big vase of them around in the kitchen, they are quite beautiful.
For now they are in quarantine with a bunch of plant cuttings, where they can relax and build up their numbers a bit for a time.
Im planning to get more kuhlii loaches, primarily so that my existing ones will feel better in a bigger group. I think I will need quite a few noodles to make a dent in their shyness.
And then after the kuhliis are settled well in quarantine the plan is to get a good group of otos. Buying them last because a mature tank will give them the best odds.
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_Maq_
Member
Your observations concerning soft sand are very interesting, and perhaps of great importance. I refrain from comments since I've got nothing but speculations.
BBA aside, that full tank shot it looking pretty good!
What is your theory on the cause of the root issue?
I'd still be interested to read your speculations, what do you think might be causing the root issues @Hufsa is experiencing?
Can you specify if you mean literal roots issue or root as in main issue?
For the plant root issue my theory is fairly obvious, so ill assume you meant main issue.
Im not sure if the BBA and thread algae are entirely identical in the causes that will encourage their growth, but I think there is overlap in the causes.
For BBA and slimy green thread algae, I do not think the sand has anything to do with that. The sand is just a literal plant-root issue.
My best guess right now for causes of my BBA is fluctuations in flow, CO2 and organic waste.
I hope my understanding of BBA will expand in the future if/when I can get to a point where it is fairly minimal. Long time readers of the journal will know ive had BBA and non-slimy green thread algae as constant companions even in low tech.
For the slimy thread algae im a little bit more uncertain, but this also appears to enjoy fluctuations. I think the thread algae will disappear if I can get the plants growing healthy enough.
That algaecide (API) arrived safe and sound a while ago, but im not going to use it unless its an absolute last resort. As long as there is still improvement to be made with plant health then I dont see the point in using it. As far as I see it, algaecides will never fix the underlying cause, so they should only be used as a supplement to more major fixes in tank balance.
I stopped using salicylic acid a while ago too, not really on purpose, i forgot to dose it one week, didn't see any dramatic changes after that so I just continued without dosing.
Sorry, no, I did mean what you thought the cause of the rotting roots was? Are you thinking the sand is compacting too much or something else? Is this different sand to when you referenced previous 'healthy' roots? How deep is the sand?
