Maintenance day today, I’ve been slowly tweaking co2 up again also over the past few days to a point where I think I have a good balance.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve always struggled with the co2 balance, perhaps this is down to my plant choices, more often than not utilising slow growers and lower lighting. I can get the dc to light/lime green for the start photoperiod, but it seems to escalate to an uncomfortable level during the day without intervention. The co2 builds rather than reaching a plateau of off gassing and plant uptake. Low lighting tends to slow the pace of the plants and slow growers maybe tend to use less co2 hence the gradual build. To combat this for many years I have utilised the timer on the solenoid to switch the gas on and off during the photoperiod to maintain a level. About 3 hrs into the photoperiod I begin to turn the gas off for 15minutes every hour so it doesn’t go beyond a comfortable level for the fish. This seems to work pretty well for me.
I can immediately tell the difference within the tank of tweaking and upping my co2 as the plants have began pearling as the oxygen content of the water becomes saturated. Due to these changes I have upped the light intensity 5% also to a maximum of 55% for the right light, I will continue to monitor and increase again if I feel the need. The fissidens hasn’t recovered from its heavy trim as fast this time and I feel it may be down to the reduction in light intensity I implemented to battle the bba outbreak.
Bba has certainly been halted, there are a few small areas but I can monitor and react if necessary.
Anyway, I took a short video and several during and after maintenance photos which I’ll share as I’m feeling better about the tank again
😀
Shrimp hunting
And a quick phone video look around the tank, if you have the option, choose the highest resolution.......
cheerio, stay safe,
Ady.
... I’ve had some small Stiphodon gobies and they’ve not done any real digging (but also in bigger tanks)
