• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

'The Full Monty' Has Left The Building last photos

So you threw good money after bad and prayed at the Temple of Test Kits, and the results tell you nothing because it's a false God.

Very articulate Clive and obviously very good advice.
Steveo, from what I know (not much) this sounds like a classic co2/light/flow issue. With full EI dosing you never really get nutrient deficiencies, however the normal culprit is a case of not enough co2 for the light levels and often poor distribution. It seems your flow is good, your co2 either needs increasing ( at the risk of the fish) or your light decreased to 2 tubes ( as is recommended)
Best of luck mate I'm sure you can pull it back ;)
 
OOOooohh the wise one has spoken:nailbiting:

Hi Clive,;) I thought it wouldn't take long before you picked up on this, but even the speed this time around surprised me!

Your right of course, I succumbed to the devil and whimpered back to the test kits:bawling:

I got your message loud and clear, and as ever will follow your recommendations, just one question, when you say "total blackout for 3-4 days, turn down your light intensity, do plenty of water changes and carry on mate" By carry on, do you mean keep the Co2 going in and the ferts - CSM+ during the blackout?

Cheers,

Steve.

And don't worry about the vanished shrimp; they are incredible at hide and seek.

Either that or they are masters of der skies, sorry I meant disguise! I'll let you know if I see more than two in one day!
 
Either that or they are masters of der skies, sorry I meant disguise! I'll let you know if I see more than two in one day!

That was personal! LOL As a kid, I always thought that was what they said, didn't figure it out until those crappy movies came out a couple of years ago. Ow, the mind of a (Dutch speaking) child. ;)

Ow, and yeah, keep doing what you were doing, as far as CO2, ferts and flow, but cut down on the amount of light (as said, remove two tubes). I'd do a 4 day blackout, and after that, do 50% WC every other day for the next couple of weeks, then go back down to weekly WC. You could try upping the light after that, if all goes back to normal, but you would be wise to up the CO2 then as well. Might take some trial and error to see how far you can push it without stressing the fish too much, but if you want to have the full 4 tubes on eventually, you might have to.
 
when you say "total blackout for 3-4 days, turn down your light intensity, do plenty of water changes and carry on mate" By carry on, do you mean keep the Co2 going in and the ferts - CSM+ during the blackout?
No mate. What I mean is that after the blackout carry on with the good things such as high CO2 and nutrient dosing. You can dose during the blackout but this becomes an inconvenience if the the tank is wrapped correctly.
Blackout instructions are found in the post http://ukaps.org/forum/threads/converting-an-emersed-tank-to-a-submersed-tank.13204/#post-140493

Cheers,
 
Well folks, day two of the Blackout and nothing much to see here.

DSC_0380_zpsb5ed0dc0.jpg



Not much on tele either so I thought I would have look for something on my Sky Planner to watch that might cheer me up a bit while I'm waiting...found this so thought I'd share it...

DSC01723_zps9cd522d8.jpg
 
Last edited:
I had 7 of them in a 25 liter tank (40x25x25 cm), with no obvious hiding places. I managed to get 5 of them out, after 1,5 hours of work, before I moved in my CRS. I figured the others had escaped. Two days later, guess what? I find one, out in the open. Three days later, another one! And these were mature, fully grown ones, so hard to hide in such a small tank.

It gets worse, because after another week or so, there was another one. So... Huh? Now, I've seen them move from tank to tank before, but that was with two tanks on the same shelf. The closest Amano tank to this one, is a good 6 meters, plus 1 meter down, and another meter climbing back up. To be honest, I wouldn't even put it past them.
 
I have heard they can go into hiding when they are not happy with the water conditions. Years ago in another tank I thought I had lost all mine, couple of big water changes later and some Sera Mineral salts they were all out happy as Larry!

Never seen them move to another tank because they weren't keen on the water conditions though :)
 
I have this recurring thought, : that when steve pulls back the curtains on his tank, the lovely Debbie McGee Will be waiting inside
 
Day three of the Blackout, although I have to confess while almost in total darkness I made some technical adjustments to the outlet pipe work from the Eheim Professional 2 Filter that supplies the Co2.

I made my own spray bar using some black and clear plastic pipework that I had lying around in the garage. Its a sort of large U-Shape so that Co2 enriched water goes to the left, centre, and right of the tank. There are four holes to the left and right and six to the centre all pointing slightly downwards towards the substrate. I drilled the holes myself using only a 4 mm drill bit to try and maintain a decent level of pressure to keep the water moving around the substrate.

The only thing I still need to do is replace that awful grey Fluval tubing with some decent black stuff, the Fluval has gone a horrible white garish colour which spoils the background. Here are the pictures.

DSC_0400_zps55fbf61c.jpg


Obviously this pipework is below the water level normally I just lowered the water level while I was doing the work and maintenenance.

DSC_0403_zpse6705752.jpg


DSC_0404_zpsfba4314c.jpg


DSC_0405_zps1d59c2c7.jpg

As you can see the pipe is an extended U-Shape which fits nicely around the dry weir, as long as I can sort out the Fluval stuff for some black pipe I'll be sorted.

DSC_0406_zpse684080b.jpg


FINALLY, I have got my grandson Jake who is only 8 months old coming round today and he hasn't see the tank yet:(

Does anyone think Clive will mind if I whip the covers off and put one set of lights on for an hour or two:(

Cheers,

Steve.
 
Steve, you can play with the light short term and get away with it if you've fixed the problem. I'm more worried about the lack of muscle coming out of the spraybar. Looks like you need more ooph unless you had dialed the flow back on the filter. I can't keep track the various gimmicks on different filter models these days but if it has a lever to change the flow rate then it should be set to max. Flow should always be Legendary when possible. Only then can you dance to your hearts desire with megawatts.

Cheers,
 
Hi Clive, the Eheim Professional 2 Filter is turned up to the max, so the water that was coming out of the single 22/16mm outlet is now coming out of a total of 14 4mm holes, 6 front and 4 to left and right. I think the only way I could get a bit more oomph is by reducing the number of holes to build up the pressure, maybe reduce by one from each side, 2 in the middle? Less holes higher pressure = more oomph?

The other thing is the massive Eheim T3 Filter is set at max and could probably drain the tank in less than ten minutes, so I was kind of hoping that would keep the water moving around and help distribute the C02?

Cheers,

Steve.
 
Well, maybe you had the holes pointing down when you took those photos because it looks weak. If that's the case you should reorient the holes so that they are pointing at the horizontal.

Cheers,
 
Back
Top