# Indigo's 75 Gallon AGA [56K]



## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

*Death and Algae*

...almost as certain as death and taxes.

I had not been able to find all of the bodies from the CO2 incident and this appears to have ignited a flare up of hair/thread algae. I was expecting this, even though I still hoped it wouldn't happen. Ammonia was not detected in a water test, but I put little faith in hobby test kits.

I have begun to trim away effected plants and have also started the 3X daily dose of Flourish Excel. 

I've also taken a more bold step and added 160ml of H2O2 to the tank this evening. 

I want to hit the algae as hard as possible in order to avoid a full outbreak. I had a severe algae outbreak mid-last-year and I do not particularly look forward to trench warfare.

I'm unsure if I should reduce the light in half at this point or not. 

I had recently removed a significant portion of moss in an effort to get the aesthetics back into line and also suffered from a timer failure which allowed a bank of lights to be on for many more hours than it should have. All of these factors combined with unrecovered dead fish bring me to fighting algae again.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Lots of lush plants growing! I agree that with some rearranging, you can have a great scape. You definitely can grow plants!

I think the main thing you need is some definition between plants. Adding hardscape that's not covered with plants (dw and/or rocks), trimming the mid-ground plants so the background plants can be seen, and adding some color variety, such as red and/or yellow plants, would make a huge difference.

As far as the hair algae battle, I'd definitely cut the lights. The only time I had hair algae was when I left bright lights on my little nano while not dosing anything or doing water changes. Not a good mix. I fully believe that raised lighting is the very last thing to do when starting a new tank and the first thing to cut when any tank starts having algae issues. Unless you have a ton of plants that require very bright light, cutting it back won't hurt anything and will slow down the growth of algae which helps the fight in killing it out.

This is a great time to kill out the algae while rescaping the tank. You can pull up plants and spray them with Excel, then replant. So if you move any plants around, be sure to spray them before replanting.

Tidy the plants up a bit and posts some more pictures. If you find tanks with scapes you like, post a link so we can see what kind of design you'd like. I was completely lost until Ingg helped me with my scape. Once you get the basic scape in mind, it's easy from there.


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## Gatekeeper (Feb 20, 2007)

risen from the dead... welcome back!!! Good to see your still at it!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Complexity said:


> I think the main thing you need is some definition between plants. Adding hardscape that's not covered with plants (dw and/or rocks), trimming the mid-ground plants so the background plants can be seen, and adding some color variety, such as red and/or yellow plants, would make a huge difference.


I agree, those are basically the things I want to work toward. Over time the moss has completely covered all of my hardscaping. I do have a box full of fantastic petrified wood I had bought for hardscaping an ADA 60p, but I never got around to it. 

I did turn off the second bank of lights last night, so today has been the first day of 50% lighting. 

The H2O2 treatment seems to have been initially successful. A good majority of the algae has turned white, but not all. I decided to go ahead and hit it again, though using only 80ml this time. If I had a fully stocked aquarium I'd not be so cavalier about it, but having lost so much I really don't feel I have much left to lose. 

I did lower the working pressure on the CO2 regulator to around 10 PSI, in theory it'll allow more room for error in needle valve adjustment. I need to fine-tune the bubble rate again though as a result of that. I also find myself somewhat regretting the purchase of the Swagelok when I could have bought the Ideal instead.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Hey, I have Milwaukee brand! Works fine for me. I rely a lot on my pH controller. Maybe too much. If it goes out, I very well may OD my fish.

Sounds like you're on a good start with killing out the hair algae. Of all the algae there is to get, I think hair algae is one of the easiest to kill and easiest to correct environmentally.

Killing out the algae, trimming up the plants and then adding your rocks should make a huge difference.

Be sure to take lots of pictures as you go. It'll be fun to watch the transformation!


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## cah925 (May 18, 2007)

Overall I like the plants you have, but I agree with Complexity on the trimming. Keep the middle plants trimmed at most about 1/2 the height of the tank to allow the background plants to shine.  A few pieces of driftwood and maybe a few rocks would also help.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Here's a shot of the equipment side of the tank stand. 










The blue peristaltic pump is currently unused, but is still connected in-line with the CO2 reactor. The fertilizer pumps had previously been connected in that way also, but several months ago I noticed the check valves were clogging, so they now simply drip into the aquarium from above. You can still see the Flourish splatter from the 'explosion' that lead to that discovery.

Someday I need to put different connectors on the UVS and CO2 reactor, all those elbows are, without doubt, bad for flow rate.

In other news, my two Gouramis, now that they've had time undisturbed, have made babies. The male's bubble nest activity has been unparalleled since the CO2 incident. I saw eggs flying around Sunday when I did the water change (which lead to a D'oh moment), but this evening I noticed the near microscopic fry. The mother did gobble up a few while I was watching too, heh.

I mentioned previously that I was redoing the drop checker, etc. It turns out that my 4 degree reference water evaporated a bit... it's now more like perhaps 6 degrees... the two different brands of tests don't seem to agree, one says 5, the other 7. Granted, I made it per the math, not a cheapie KH test. I was wondering why presumably the right bubble count (not that it's really countable) wasn't turning the indicator a lighter green, well, now I know why. It looks like I'll be making some more reference water soon. In a way I kind of like it, 30ish ppm is a nice bold green color -- judging based on the pH/KH chart, which has always worked for me.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I found this photo from February 2007, it shows some of the driftwood that is now hidden by moss and plants. It isn't arranged in that way presently, though without tearing everything apart I couldn't say how it is now anyway. When I bought that driftwood on Ebay I was under the impression it was quite a bit larger.


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## jinx© (Oct 17, 2007)

Good luck with the rebirth.

Good to have you back BTW. roud:


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

jinx© said:


> Good to have you back BTW. roud:


Thanks. 

So here's a photo of the larger pieces of petrified wood. I realized as soon as I went to resize the photo that I provided no reference for size, d'oh. My camera locked the shutter release due to low battery immediately after I took that photo, so a size reference will have to wait. The two pieces in the back are fairly large though, the left one being 8" long and 7" tall, the right being 7" long and about 6" tall. Each being about as wide as they are long.


















I really wish I could get my glosso to grow quicker... I tore out the glosso and sag a while back trying to make it look a bit less... intertwined, but the glosso has been stubborn to grow ever since. Maybe I should put one of those substrate fertilizer nuggets under it?

I'm trying to imagine some of those pieces of petrified wood sort of holding back the driftwood with the glosso in the crevices and riccia as the foreground.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Wow, your petrified wood is gorgeous! I really wish I had some for my tanks. It has such character and the perfect color. Where did you get it?

I have to admit, I'm not that nuts about the wood. As you already said, it's just too small for the tank. Maybe if you prop it up, but what I find is that a lot of rocks and driftwood gets hidden behind the plants. Your petrified wood is definitely large enough to not get hidden, but I don't know about the driftwood. I guess I'll have to see how you do it.

Your auto ferts intrigues me. Do you have any idea about how much you spent to set it all up (excluding price of ferts). It would be great to have a tank automatically fertilized, but I've never found anything that would work the way I want without being overly expensive.

Where did you get your petrified wood? So pretty!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

If there was confusion, the driftwood is in there already... while not particularly showy, it does work well to anchor moss and provide nooks and crannies for fish to call home. I think the angle of the photo makes it all look even smaller than it is, though it is still disappointingly small for how much it cost.

I bought the petrified wood on ebay, I'm definitely quite fond of it. As I mentioned before it was originally meant for an ADA 60P, I had some intention of an iwagumi type layout. I suppose I decided that one tank was enough to worry about... after buying everything except the ADA stuff. In any case it was quite reasonable, much more so than the driftwood.

As for the autodosing system, here's the link to where I posted about it:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/diy/59768-indigos-fertilizer-autodosing-system-56k.html

The pumps are around $80 or so each, so those plus timers (I'm currently using a $5 '15 minute interval' analog cheapie from Target), a couple bottles of peroxide and the various fittings and tubings. I wasted a good bit of money ($60) on Grasslin timers which appear to be wholly incompatible with the pumps -- they would constantly reset. I say in that thread I've never added it up, heh, still haven't. 

I will say that the autodosing system made an incredible improvement, as my sleep schedule constantly varies doing it manually resulted in extremely inconsistent fertilizing.









Blah... nasty algae and melting crypt. 

The algae is now also in my riccia, which I dare not squirt Excel onto of course. The heavy hit of the H2O2 does seem to have helped elsewhere, so I'll probably repeat that again tonight, again not at the riccia though.

I'm also going to give putting my CO2 on a separate timer a shot. It's always been on the same timer as the first bank of lights, but since I have a spare timer I figured I'd try turning it on an hour before the lights, turning it off an hour before lights out. 

There are quite a few Gourami fry swimming around, much to my surprise.

I'm hesitant to disturb the aquarium by pulling out the stem plants for rearrangement. I think I'll probably wait until I feel I have the algae better under control, though I might get antsy about that this weekend.


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## soundtweakers (Oct 12, 2005)

good luck man, I'm fighting BBA at the moment myself. But with the tank of fish I have in there I could only do it the natural way. Trying to out plant the algae and using SAEs. 

awesome looking petrified wood btw.

billy


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Today's interesting development is that I have some brown diatom algae forming on the gravel. I've not seen diatoms since I've first set the tank up. The hair algae is still forming, though slowly. I've been adding 20ml Excel daily and plant growth is quite good, especially when considering I'm only running half the lighting. I'll need to do a trim this weekend.

The CO2 adjustment has been odd though. I made new 4 degree KH solution the other night, very carefully using my .00 gram scale and graduated cylinder. It's still taking more CO2 to shift the color toward the lighter green than I expected. I suppose this could be an artifact of the aquarium having so few fish. I could have also botched the KH solution, though it tests at 4 degrees and I took great care in the process. It's also possible that I made a mistake way back when I made the first KH solution and ever since I had been injecting less CO2 than I thought. 

The concern comes in because according to the KH/pH chart I'm injecting significantly more than 30ppm. The chart has always agreed with the drop checker in the past. It's entirely possible that the biological processes due to the deaths are effecting the pH. It still feels like I'm fumbling in the dark, since nothing seems to agree, not even the two KH tests. I am only making slight adjustments each day as a precaution. I can't really do the 'fish gasping at the surface' test, as Gourami do that anyway, heh. The three mollies seem fine, whenever I can see them. I have not seen the two cories in a couple of days though.

I've scooped some water out and will let it sit for 24 hours to do a baseline test. Hopefully that will help narrow down where the possible error is.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Keep in mind that the more plant growth you have, the more those plants will "eat up" the CO2 in the tank; therefore, the more CO2 you must add in order to maintain 30ppm. Think of how much a child eats as compared to an adult. If you want X amount of food left over at the dinner table, then you need to put more food out to start with because the adult will eat more than the child.

How about shifting gears. What do your plants need in order to grow their very best? More light? Give it to them. Ferts? Let them have plenty. And definitely work out your CO2 issue.

You should be able to get your plants to pearling so much that you end up with a snowstorm of oxygen bubbles everywhere. If you're not getting that, then your plants aren't growing to their full potential. And that can spur on algae.

What I'm thinking is to go ahead and spot treat the algae with Excel, H2O2, cutting it out, etc.; however, do it while giving your plants everything they need to grow without an limitations. The plants will use up the ammonia in the tank if there's any left from the dead fish. Keep up with your water changes, of course.

But how about trying to get the plants to out compete the algae? You have enough plant mass already so it's just a matter of making sure they have everything they need so they can grow unimpeded.

You can also throw in some nutrient sponges, such as hornwort, to ensure that you have lots of fast growing plants to rob the algae of nutrients. Don't cut down on your ferts. Increase your plant mass (although, you have a good plant mass already).

Something I noticed as I reread your first post is that you are dosing your macros and micros every day. I don't know how it works with Flourish Comprehensive, but I know that the main reason the macros and micros are not dosed on the same day is because they can interact with each other (can't give you specifics, but I think you're familiar with this). I wonder if that's a problem in your tank?

This all goes back to what I've read from Tom Barr. And while I'm the last to follow anyone blindly, I have to admit that I've had good success with the basic premise of focusing on growing the plants and not killing the algae. When I was withholding things from my plants because I was afraid it would only cause the algae to get worse, I continued to have algae problems. But when I got to the point in which I focused on growing the plants, the algae problems died out.

So while I wouldn't stop killing the algae that's already there, I think it might be best to ensure that your plants have everything they need to grow unrestricted. And you'll know when that happens when you have a zillion oxygen bubbles blowing all over your tank from photosynthesis. Then let's see if the algae stops growing and dies out from your Excel/H2O2 treatments.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

The fertilization program I'm using is fine, growth is good, the tank pearls like sprite when I have both banks of lights on. The plants still pearl, though in a much more limited way, with only one bank of lights on. The tank was fine until the CO2 incident. I've not lost focus on the plants and I'm putting no limitations on them other than halving the light, which was your suggestion.

Just for the record, dosing both micros and macros on the same day is perfectly acceptable. Many dosing regimes do just that, including a version of EI that uses liquid solutions. I've done both daily and 'every other day' and there really is no difference, if anything things are better now that I dose both daily.

Your advice is good and I'm sure it'll benefit those that find this thread while looking for algae help.

Oh, and here's today's photo:









Exposure is different, I underexposed last week's photo and didn't really notice until I took this one. This one is a tad overexposed though, heh. Just too much dynamic range I guess. One can tell the gravel is a bit brown looking, and I have dusty green algae on the right side glass, both are abnormal for the tank.

Algae appears to be steadily growing, but plants are growing too. Once I have the CO2 weirdness figured out to satisfaction I'll turn the second bank of lights on. I'm still worried about having not seen the cory cats.

I did mix up another batch of 4 degree KH solution using billionzz's instructions and put that into the drop checker. Interestingly the other solution was indeed yellow when I took the drop checker out of the aquarium. It looks like I'll have to keep fiddling with it.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

I think the pearling is your CO2 gauge. If the plants are pearling like Sprite (love that description), then they must have ample CO2. Having them pearl even more with both banks of lights fits, too. This is why I was rethinking my original idea of cutting the lights.

Do have any tests for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates? I'd like to know what those levels are. The GDA on the glass is normal for me so I'm of no help there. Diatoms are self correcting. But they make me think of a new tank which makes me wonder just how much of a mini-cycle your tank may be going through, if any.

I'm certainly no expert of any kind, but to the best of my knowledge, the two things that bring about hair/thread algae are excess nutrients in the water (usually ammonia due to neglect of water changes) combined with too much light. Your situation isn't caused by neglect, of course, but I'm wondering if your tank is having to handle excess nutrients from ammonia, nitrites and nitrates as it handles the overload of ammonia from the dead fish. Wouldn't that create a mini-cycle of sorts?

What I'm beginning to rethink is that if your tank is having issues with a mini-cycle due to the dead fish, then the more the plants grow, the better they can assist with cleaning the water of those excess nutrients. Therefore, my first thought of cutting the lights would not be a good idea. Instead, doing everything to promote plant growth would be better which means keeping the bright lights on.

Your situation is different from what I usually see when someone has problems with hair algae. You had a tank with good plant growth and no algae. That means you had a balanced tank. It's not the same as someone new who's tank has not found the balance so they have too much light for their plants which creates the hair algae. That means the approach to handling your algae issues may not be best served by the usual methods.

Obviously, take what ever I say and mull it in your own mind as to what to use and what to toss out. I'm just trying to offer ideas. You know your tank. But my thoughts are beginning to change to doing everything you can to let those plants grow unimpeded while nuking the algae with Excel/H2O2. The plants would help clean the water of any excess ammonia or whatever may be in the tank from the catastrophe, starving out the algae (not to mention shading it out) while you chemically attacked the algae. I don't think the algae could survive that long term.

It's just a different line of thought to consider.

I really would like to know what the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings are. That may offer a clue as to what's going on with the water.


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## Chrisinator (Jun 5, 2008)

Awesome tank! I like the leaves of your Crypts!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Having enough CO2 isn't so much my concern, it's having too much that I'm worried about. 

I think I've pretty much lost all faith in the drop checker. The newly mixed solution after five hours has still not changed from blue to green even though there's enough to drop the pH to 6 (or lower) from the baseline of 7.2 according to the water I had sitting out overnight. 

I can check parameters again, but a couple of days ago the ammonia read as zero, nitrates were 10ppm, but I didn't test nitrite. I doubt any mini-cycle that might be going on is registrable on this level of test. In the big picture the tank has had a significant decrease in bioload from the vast majority of the fish being removed, so it's a different scenario from the typical tank where fish have died and been unrecovered.

I'm downright disgusted with the tank and all aspects of fiddling with CO2 at this point.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

So, I decided to pull out the stem plants and arrange them in groups. I also added some of the petrified wood. 


















Please excuse the junk still floating around, I didn't really want to wait until I could get all of that cleared away. In a somewhat automatic move after the trimming I immediately started a water change. It completely skipped my mind to grab water to test for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate as that's non-standard activity for me.

Taking photos of my tank so often has me noticing how my camera lens loses focus at the edges when it's set to the wide angle necessary to get the entire aquarium in the shot. Of course, the narrow depth of field provided by wide open aperture is very evident in that second photo.

Oh, and the drop checker situation... I dumped out the solution that was in there overnight, rinsed the drop checker with some new solution, then refilled with solution and indicator. Almost immediately it started turning green, started turning blue during the water change. *Shrug* It's the same solution, using the same pH indicator, so I'm at a loss to explain why it wasn't working and now is. I feel a bit better about the CO2 now, given the baseline reading from having the water sit overnight. If the drop checker is going to work more reliably then perhaps there is some hope to getting this ironed out again.

I think a lot of the problem stems from not having all those fish expelling CO2 24/7. It's perfectly reasonable that I need to inject more, it just seems like so much more that I was growing very concerned.

I didn't find any bodies when I was tearing the plants out. I did find several globs of a gelatinous substance, likely to be formerly fish. I still haven't see the cory cats, I believe I may have to consider them lost. 

Oh, and I won a RAOK, yay!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Re: Testing
I tested the water I had sat out overnight. It registered .5ppm ammonia, 0ppm nitrite, 40ppm nitrate, and 5ppm PO4. They're all a bit higher than I would normally expect, but I can't account for any biological process that may have occurred in the water overnight either. 

Those results did prompt me to repeat the tests on the tank after the water change. The ammonia test was clearly yellow for 0ppm, again 0ppm nitrite, 20ppm nitrate, and 2ppm PO4.

It looks like the ammonia may have been a false positive resulting from the water sitting out, as I would have expected there to be at least some green to the ammonia test to indicate .25ppm, but there wasn't. The other results look to be a correct reading, seeing as how after a 50% water change the results are all approximately half of what they were. 

I test very rarely and subscribe fully to the idea that more than enough is better than not enough, so higher than expected readings for NO3 and PO4 do not worry me. Actually, I should have expected that, as the plants were only receiving half their normal light and thus growing less quickly and using fewer nutrients.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

The photo is essentially the same, but at least the water is more free of floating junk. The white dots floating in the water are the Gourami fry. 

I saw both of my cory cats alive and presumably well, so yay for that. I'm back on running both banks of lights.

I'm still fiddling with CO2, trying to fine tune. I think I probably ought to get some Otos... I would rather not get any livestock until the plants and hardscape are how I want them though. 

With that said, I fully welcome suggestions on hardscaping, plants, and placement thereof.


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

The tank looks like it has improved a lot. Congrats on the cories


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

I agree, this is a nice improvement! There's more definition between the different plants so you can appreciate them more.

The only thing I can think of to suggest is to flip your very front plants so the plants on the left are on the right and visa-versa. It would help separate the strappy plants on the left while adding balance between them (large one on the left/back with smaller one on the right/front).

You could also work on a focal point so the eye knows where to go first, and then spread out to the other plants in the tank. Where the large rock is on the left side would be a good place. How about adding a Red Tiger Lily just in front of the rock, a little to the right so the base of the RTL would be even with the right edge of the rock?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yes, I can move the dwarf sag over to the right and plop the riccia clumps over on the left. I agree with you, it'll probably look better that way. Thanks for the suggestion, I doubt it would have occurred to me. 

I'm not fond of riccia as a ground cover, so it's really only there to keep it from floating around on the top. I suppose I have a bit of a love/hate with it, it's pretty and looks lovely as a ground cover, but also so difficult to control and keep looking nice. 

I may try tying the riccia to pebbles again, I've always liked that look. The pebbles are already there holding it down anyway.

I think, ideally, the larger rock on the left would be even larger. I think that would solidify it as a focal point. I've been casually looking for another piece, but adding a more unusual and attention grabbing plant may work too. I do like the looks of the lily in your aquarium. 

Along the lines of focal point, perhaps moving the larger piece of driftwood to the left behind the rock would be a good thing too. While it may not be so clear from a photograph, I think in the driftwood and rock are fighting for prominence. That way the smaller bits of driftwood and rocks are together scaling up to the larger driftwood and rock on the left where the red rubin sword creates the highest point, well, sort of anyway.

I was also thinking of moving the stargrass or perhaps some other green plant behind the crypt. I think the ludwigia behind it isn't providing enough contrast and thus the brown/red of the crypt is being lost. Though, if I moved the stargrass and the dwarg sag then then I'd be moving two of the more strappy plants, sort of defeating part of the point of moving the dwarf sag, eh? I think I need some other larger leaved green stem plant. Perhaps the answer is to simply move the crypt over by the rock.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

I have a love/hate relationship with riccia, as well. The hate part finally won out. It grows beautifully for me, but it's messy and requires more maintenance than I like.

I'm not certain of the names, but it seems to me you have 3 strappy plants on the left side. Maybe a crypt balansae, a sword, and dwarf sag in the front. While they're all strappy, they're also different in their height, color and leaf thickness.

Put the crypt (or whatever that long, thin, green strappy plant it) in the back/left. Move the sword to the centerpiece (golden spot), and move the dwarf sag to the front/right.

That would create a balance of the three, showing off each one independently so none of them interfere with the other.

Put green behind the sword to show off the red tones. Red in front of the crypt. And red/whatever on the right.

I think you need to decide if the rocks or driftwood are the main show with the other being the complimentary extras for contrast. If you have the rocks and driftwood competing, then neither win.

If you use my tank as an example, it's very clear that the driftwood is the centerpiece with the RTL being the main focal point while the rocks work as accessories. They are not the main show at all. So when you look at the tank, the big, bold red leaves from the RTL grab your eyes first, the wood behind it bolsters the centerpiece while the rocks help to break up the rest of the tank so it's not too monotonous. I hope that made some sense.

Just keep playing with it until you get it to where you like it. One of the fun things about all of our tanks is that they are all different.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

you know, Excel is a great thing..
I didn't want to bump up my CO2 just for the sake of my oxygen loving fish. So, I'm doing CO2 & excel.. Excel is also wiping out the hair, dust, diatoms algae.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yes, Excel is a great thing. I'm dosing 20ml per day, 40ml after water changes. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be killing this nastiness:









I've come to some conclusions in regards to CO2 also. There's no possible way I messed up mixing the 4 degree KH solution, at least not the second time around. My API test kit reads it as 4 even though my Hagen kit says it's 6. That same Hagen kit reads my tank water as 5 even though it _should_ only be 3, and my tap water as 2, even though I know it's really less than 1. So, all of that to say that my confidence is higher in the drop checker solution now.

The drop checker is extremely light green, perhaps yellow. While the tank isn't "pearling like sprite" right now, I did take out a significant portion of moss the other night. 

As for the plants. Perhaps this chart will help:


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Do you think that algea is spyrogrya?

"Description Fine strands of green algae sometimes very long in length. Slimy to the touch. Under a microscope the chloroplasts are aligned in a spiral - hence the name. 
Cause Often appears a couple of weeks after a disturbance that causes a spike in ammonia. This can be anything from a disturbance of the substrate to a dead fish gone unnoticed. Likes high light levels and high nutrient levels. 
Removal Once it has appeared it can be very hard to clear as it thrives in the same conditions as plants. Pick out as much as possible and do a three day blackout with CO2 turned off and doing large daily water changes. Dose back with macros after the water change. Afterwards I found normal dosing Excel also helped. Rosy barbs will eat it if made hungry. Also try reducing the lighting.
Another method to try is to try lean dosing at around 1/4 to 1/8 Estimative Index levels for a few weeks. I had good success doing this."


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I don't know, perhaps could be spirogyra. It does seem slimey to the touch and does mat together. In looking at photos of it elsewhere I think you're correct in the identification. 

I really don't know what to do. Cutting down nutrients is probably the worst thing I could do though. I also don't think I'm at the desperation level to do a black out, if it would even help anyway. Both of those things hurt plants and that's the opposite of what I want to do.

I've had this algae before and correcting my lighting and dosing to the levels that they are now, and were prior to this outbreak, was how I fixed it, along with black mollies and excel. That's why 'staying the course' seems, or at least had seemed, like a good idea.

If I don't see improvement within the week I'll strongly consider a blackout. I have to admit this post provided some of the motivation for that decision.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Have you tried using H2O2 on the algae? Spot dose it with filters turned off just like you do with excel, but also turn the lights off (since H2O2 is light sensitive).

That's some nasty looking algae.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yes. The H202 has been the most effective between it and the Excel. It has mostly cleared the stargrass and ludwigia of the algae. Judging by the areas dosed with H2O2 turning white and disappearing the next morning. 

It hasn't helped much on the Red Rubin sword, causing significant damage instead. The Excel and/or H2O2 has caused significant damage to the bronze crypt also. The worst of the algae is on the didiplis diandra (of which I have only two stems, both infected) and the riccia. I may just toss the riccia out. I dosed 40ml of H2O2 tonight using the spot treatment technique.


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## mpodolan (Mar 27, 2007)

imeridian said:


> If I don't see improvement within the week I'll strongly consider a blackout. I have to admit this post provided some of the motivation for that decision.


This stuff is a PITA. I've had it a couple times over the past few years. The method Tom describes is effective. Getting after it manually, followed by excel and blackout is by far the most effective treatment that I've used for spiro.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

another indestructible algae is clado.. it's still in my 10G for over a year but I don't mind it as long it doesn't take over. The only way to manage it is to remove and even cut off the leaf it's growing on. Your plant will grow new ones.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Now you know why I finally tossed my riccia. Not only did it keep growing to the point of releasing itself from its anchor, but it's fast to catch algae and hard to get rid of it. I finally tossed my riccia. You cannot use H2O2 on riccia, btw. It kills it.

I'm surprised the H2O2 is causing harm to the bronze crypt. I guess different crypts have different sensitivities? I direct dosed H2O2 on my C. lucens without any adverse affects at all.

The good thing about the crypts is that you can cut all the leaves off and they'll grow back. You may need to do this to get rid of the algae.

If all that's left is the didiplis diandra, you may have to toss it and get fresh once you know the algae is gone. Or as a last ditch to save them, pull them up for a black out of their own in another container. If it works and they survive, plant them back. Otherwise, it's a small price to pay when attacking a difficult algae.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I wish it was as easy as sacrificing a particular species of plant, but unfortunately this algae is fairly well spread out. It is a bit like a game of whack-a-mole, hit it one place and it pops up somewhere else. I lost numerous species of plants to this algae 18 months ago when it first appeared, the thought of losing even more is very unappealing.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Good news today. The tank was pearling like sprite this evening, drop checker was the green color I was looking for and didn't turn to yellow, and the three little mollies were out munching on the algae. I also later saw the cories frolicking and eating some pellets. With the fish finally behaving normally, plants behaving normally, and drop checker looking normal, I claim success in setting the proper CO2 levels, finally. Oh, and the Gouramis did their thing again. The bubble nest is much more impressive this time.

I forgot to mention, but yesterday I found the micro nutrient line somewhat clogged. The tip where it drips into the water is prone to clogging so I do routine maintenance with a toothpick to keep it clear. I also occasionally squeeze both lines to make sure they drip correctly, about once a week. In that routine testing I noticed the drip from the micro line was, shall we say, sluggish. The line appeared to be more turgid than it should also. The normal toothpick cleaning didn't fix it. I grabbed a coil of picture frame hanging wire and did a little roto-router action on it, all better. It's good I caught that, those pumps can produce enough pressure to blow the tubing off the connectors, splattering the contents like a packet of ketchup hit with a hammer (aside from the obvious problem of underdosing the micros). Thankfully it was only about two days and it wasn't fully clogged, but it may explain why pearling decreased recently and was back to blizzard today. I plan to replace the tubing on a scheduled basis now.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

The Blyxa Japonica I bought from gmccreedy arrived today. I am really impressed with the size and quality. I put the majority of it in the open space formed form moving back the small pieces of driftwood, with a smaller portion down in my 10g utility tank.

I've decided that my hardscaping is completely inadequate, especially considering the Blyxa is taller than most of it!

I didn't have a snowstorm of pearling bubbles today, unlike yesterday. I have to conclude it was the leftover H2O2 (rather the O2) from the night before last that caused yesterday's super pearling.

Algae is worse, a blackout is looking likely. 

I also collected a few links to aquariums of similar size that I'm particularly fond of.
Complexity's: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/711418-post302.html
SuRje1976's: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/688601-post502.html
Helgymatt's: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/735022-post31.html
and some others I've temporary lost track of, must be on my laptop.

Given my hardscaping deficiencies and that the above aquariums have large branchy driftwood in common, I think I ought to head in that direction.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I started the first blackout I've ever done tonight. I manually removed as much of the algae as I could. The CO2, autodosing, and lights are all turned off, the UVS has been turned on. The tank is wrapped in black plastic garbage bags. I'll do a 50% water change each day and will turn the lights back on Tuesday. Am I missing anything, suggestions?


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Maybe try dosing some excel during the black out.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Hmm, yes, that may be a good idea.

So, here we are at water change number one, of four. I figured I'd be better off to do a water change before I enter into the first day. When the water change was complete I added my AC 20 powerhead as a precaution and I dosed the tank for the 'water change' with ~40ml Excel.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Today is the end of the blackout. 

I did a water change and dosed 40ml of Excel every day for the last four days.

Unfortunately, I don't think the blackout helped, the algae looks worse now than it did before the blackout started!


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

No ferts or anything the whole time, just WC's and Excel?


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## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

I don't know exactly how Excel works- can it be expected to do anything in the absence of light?


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

I soaked my bba infested purple bamboo stems in ~500ml of water and ~3ml of excel of an hour and after two days the bba was gone. Excel does not use light as a catalyst in algea killing but the plant uses light as a catalyst with excel when growing.



lauraleellbp said:


> I don't know exactly how Excel works- can it be expected to do anything in the absence of light?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

bsmith782 said:


> No ferts or anything the whole time, just WC's and Excel?


Yes, just water changes & Excel. No ferts, no CO2, no feeding, no light.

I mentioned in an earlier post about having the UVS turned on, but when I decided to dose Excel during the blackout I turned the UVS off.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I dug out my old toy microscope. That's the best photo I could manage to take through the eyepiece with my camera. The optics of the microscope are unquestionably poor, but it doesn't really look like spirogyra to me.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

So, should I have both banks of lights on or just one? I can think of perfectly reasonable arguments either way. 

It's been just one bank of lights since the blackout ended, but I'm considering turning on the second bank.

I did another pass of H2O2 last night. Continuing to dose 20ml per day of Excel, with 40ml at water changes.

While it's not an infestation, it's still sort of everywhere, only a few strands in each area. It's also becoming difficult to remove, seems the individual filaments are somewhat firmly attached to the plant leaves. I continue to trim away infected leaves where possible. This is trench warfare.

Oh, and, bugger, I just noticed a 1mm chip of barely perceptible depth in the front of the glass. It must have happened when I put that big piece of petrified wood in the tank. :eek5:


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

A few new plants have been added as the result of two RAOKs over the past couple of weeks. 

Algae continues to grow worse with every day. Manual removal is still difficult, I'm nearly out of Excel, less than 250ml left of the 2L jug purchased earlier this year. Perhaps, even though Seachem says there's no expiration date, the Excel is less effective than it would be if new. 









Another poor quality shot of the evil hairy mess.

Nothing appears to be working to combat the algae. My tank is pearling like sprite toward the end of the day, and light pearling starts within perhaps a half hour of lights on, the plants are obviously growing, but so is the algae. The diatom algae went away once I went back to having both banks of lights running. 




























Perhaps I should purchase a small army of Amano shrimp. With the temperature "warming" to 14 degrees F, that'll have to wait. The three juvenile mollies (one being pregnant) are eating a little of the algae, but the population is far too small to make any real impact.

I did buy a half dozen platies the other day, hoping that perhaps they might supplement the mollies. Unfortunately under the quarantine tank's lighting I noticed several little white spots on each of the fish, suspected to be Ich, so back they went and now the quarantine tank is under quarantine. I'll be waiting at least a week to see if my "canary fish" becomes infected before considering additional livestock to help with the algae, but given the state of the disease on the new fish and the brief period they were in the q-tank, the transfer of the Ich parasite seems unlikely.

So what do you do when you have the lighting right, the CO2 right, the fertilization right, the water movement right, the excel dosing, the right level of water changes, filter maintenance, low stocking, high plant mass, purigen in the filter, done a blackout, basically everything I can think of correct and the algae still has a firm hold? :angryfire


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

imeridian said:


> ...
> So what do you do when you have the lighting right, the CO2 right, the fertilization right, the water movement right, the excel dosing, the right level of water changes, filter maintenance, low stocking, high plant mass, purigen in the filter, done a blackout, basically everything I can think of correct and the algae still has a firm hold? :angryfire


I share your pain bro. FWIW, the only thing that I discovered that with the exception of my 15 gallon high ADA AS II tank DIY C02 tank, which is literally an Aquascapist's nightmare as it is jam packed full of plants(and I am scared sh*tless to do a trim for fear of a major algae outbreak), the low light Tom Barr type tanks have given me no algae outbreaks. 

Your tank still looks great and worth salvaging.


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## Naja002 (Oct 12, 2005)

imeridian said:


> So what do you do when you have the lighting right, the CO2 right, the fertilization right, the water movement right, the excel dosing, the right level of water changes, filter maintenance, low stocking, high plant mass, purigen in the filter, done a blackout, basically everything I can think of correct and the algae still has a firm hold? :angryfire



Bro, you are running around in circles chasing ghosts....and, ultimately: you know it. I've done it....we've all done it. Just the way it is some times.

I've checked this thread a number of times and have been pondering your situation. I've tried to get "updated" on it today...again, but I always wind up with more questions than answers. _But_ instead of asking a bunch of questions....I'm just going offer what I would do in your shoes.

First: Pick a light level and stick with it. Shortening or increasing the photoperiod is not as big of a deal as changing light intensity.....so run 1 bank or both....but make a choice and stick with it. It can be changed later (slowly), if desired. Personally, if running both banks is what you want--then run it. No fear, bro. :thumbsup:

Next: Learn the fine science (or is it art?) of the C02/02/surface turbulation relationship. I run around telling everyone about it like I'm some kind of "expert", but I'm still messing with it trying to understand it completely. It seems simple...and it is, but then again: Highlight + high C02 + livestock becomes a real balancing act. You want to _*maximize*_ 02 while maintaining a super high ppm of C02. A bit of a task actually, because the trick isn't "sufficient" 02--it's _*maximizing 02.*_ :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Here's a recent link that may help:

How much surface ripple 

Check out the videos that I posted--especially the gas buildup in the magnum 350 reactor. That's like 8 mins before the end of the photoperiod for the day. From what I understand that gas is N2, 02 and, of course, whatever ppm of C02 that is in the tank. I am running about a 1.8-1.9pH drop. Last #20 tank lasted 3.5 months. Reactor plus mist. At the end of the photoperiod--the silicone is pearling! Or at least has bubles on it. My DC is greenish-yellow by the end of the day.

Maximize 02 + Jack the C02 way up (the fish can handle it no problem--if 02 is maximized)....and then: _*leave it alone!*_ Stop fiddling with it.

Next: Do this WC to totally reset the system and then redose everything right back to full weekly levels--Yes, dump it in that one time:

An Instant Nitrate Reduction Method

This will take everything down to 5% levels, so then you redose (in one shot) the weekly fert levels that you shoot for to get everything back where it needs to be--minus NH3/NH4, organics, etc.

Next: Regen your purigen or put in new (whichever) to try to scoop up any nitrogenous waste. If you have any new on hand--I'd use that. _Don't_ clean your filter--that bacteria is more important right now in my eyes than any organics. If it's really dirty...then maybe clean it lightly--don't replace anything, clean in tank water, etc.

Next: try to manually remove as much of the algae as you can. Don't kill yourself....just make a good effort.

The next day start dosing 2ml/gal H202 1x/day....if the mood strikes--add another 1ml/gal later in the day. Keep at it for *at least *4 days. Yes, I've done this repeatly. 

Start dosing (not spot treating) excel at 1ml/gal/day....if the mood strikes add another 50% later in the day. Keep at it for *at least* 4 days. Again, Yes, I've done this repeatedly. I've gone up to 2ml/gal/day (in 1 dose). This one can be a bit tricky. 1ml/gal is pushing it, but not real hard. 2ml/gal is really pushing it and this *will* stress the fish. Whenever you dose this much excel--make sure--that you dose the H202 also. Apparently it breaks down rapidly and floods the tank with 02--this seriously helps the fish. Dosed together--you should see very little to zero stress on the fish. No guarantee on any and all fish though. Just like excel with ricca, vals, anachris, etc....gotta have an idea what's what and what to expect.


Personally, I think that that 0.25ppm NH3 reading that you had was real. I think that's part of the problem. I'm not clear on the change-over/rebirth of this tank, so I'm wondering if organics is also a major player here--either too much or too little.

But one thing I know is that constantly changing your light, C02 and whatever else is a big part of the problem. Every time we change something--the plants have to adjust. Even something like N03 levels. So, consistency is your greatest ally here. Don't undermine yourself. Reset the tank with the WC, reset your ferts with the one dump, set your lighting and forget about it. What's left? C02 and 02. Get that tweaked out and you should be golden. Kill the algae by removal, excel, H202. Then sit on your hands and wait. It takes time...and you know this....but being _impatient_ is very is to do. So, stop it! :biggrin: Even in a high light tank--it's going to take 3-4 days or more for most things to reveal themselves.

I think 02 is a whole lot more important then most of us realize. Either way, if you run both banks....you should shoot for a consistant level of pearling and/or gas build up (if you are using a reactor or something for it to build up in). My plants pearl a pretty consistant amount--at pretty consistant points in the photoperiod. Tweaking the C02/02/SA--definitely affects this, so try to get it set and forget it.....but let the fish and pearling tell you what's actually going on in the tank. I'm about done fiddling with mine...I think I've finally got it for my tank.


This is exactly what I would do in your shoes. There's a reason that you have this/these algae....maybe it's not enough C02, maybe trace NH3, too much or too little organics...who knows? Reset everything and try to dose (excel/H202) your way out of it.


roud:


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

This is very puzzling. Your plants look great and you have bad algea.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks for all of that, first of all. My patience level is indeed practically zero at this point. I want to drain the tank, refill it with gasoline, and light a match.

Wouldn't you think four 50% water changes over the course of 4 days during the blackout would have reset the tank?

Cleaning the 2217 filter was what indirectly started this mess to begin with. I don't plan on cleaning either of them again for several months (normal cleaning schedule). I did replace the floss in both filters the other day after the blackout, thinking along the lines of the algae particles being trapped in it. During that swap I flipped the purigen packets (one in each filter) around, they were freshly replaced last month at the filter cleaning. The side facing the flow is still fresh. I have one freshly regenerated packet not currently in use.

I'll need to buy another jug of Excel, and that can't happen until probably next month. At least doing the reset & super-nuke is something... I can even just move the fish out into my q-tank for the duration, it isn't like I have a lot of them.

There's practically no detritus to be seen on the gravel anywhere. I seriously doubt there's an organics problem at this point. I have started performing water changes with the python instead of using my inline system in order to grab up any bits I see. Perhaps I should actually rip everything out to do a thorough cleaning. 

The NH3/4 reading may have been real, I still don't think so, and I haven't detected it either before or since. 

My surface movement is already similar to that in your video. 

You may see my attempt at fine-tuning the CO2 as fiddling, maybe not. I don't consider it that way, nor do I consider the changes in lighting to be fiddling either. Well, maybe, I just thought turning down the wattage would help slow things down to figure out what to do about the algae.


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## Naja002 (Oct 12, 2005)

imeridian said:


> Thanks for all of that, first of all. My patience level is indeed practically zero at this point. I want to drain the tank, refill it with gasoline, and light a match.


Been there...know that feeling well....and it's not pleasant



imeridian said:


> Wouldn't you think four 50% water changes over the course of 4 days during the blackout would have reset the tank?


My math says--at best--6.5% amounts left over from before the WC. That doesn't include 24hr build up of anything bad. Plus how did you replace/maintain the prior levels of the good stuff--ferts? It's just too easy to do the WC...why question it? Do it as described and dump the ferts in....done. None of this is really about what you have already done--it's about cleaning the slate and moving forward. roud:





imeridian said:


> Cleaning the 2217 filter was what indirectly started this mess to begin with.


Definitely been there....makes filter maintenance a scary proposition.



imeridian said:


> I don't plan on cleaning either of them again for several months (normal cleaning schedule). I did replace the floss in both filters the other day after the blackout, thinking along the lines of the algae particles being trapped in it.


And you may have damaged the bacterial colony enough to have a _trace_ of NH3. Like: 0.05 or 0.10.....something that would look very yellow, but still be there. Algae love low levels of NH3/NH4.




imeridian said:


> During that swap I flipped the purigen packets (one in each filter) around, they were freshly replaced last month at the filter cleaning. The side facing the flow is still fresh. I have one freshly regenerated packet not currently in use.


So, give it a good regen and start from scratch. The object is to scoop up *any* nitrogenous waste before it becomes NH3/NH4. Give a good regen and clean the slate.





imeridian said:


> I'll need to buy another jug of Excel, and that can't happen until probably next month. At least doing the reset & super-nuke is something... I can even just move the fish out into my q-tank for the duration, it isn't like I have a lot of them.


Moving the fish is ok, but sooner or later you are going to want fish in there, so imo it's just better to learn how to deal with it all at the same time. On that spira looking algae--my experience has been that the H202 will hit it. Not having excel may not be a big deal.





imeridian said:


> There's practically no detritus to be seen on the gravel anywhere. I seriously doubt there's an organics problem at this point. I have started performing water changes with the python instead of using my inline system in order to grab up any bits I see. Perhaps I should actually rip everything out to do a thorough cleaning.


Right--there may be too _little_ organics. I'm not clear on whether you did a good substrate cleaning during the rebirth or not. If so, you may have lost some of the "maturity" of the substrate. If so, don't clean it any more for a while.




imeridian said:


> The NH3/4 reading may have been real, I still don't think so, and I haven't detected it either before or since.


I believe you have a trace of NH3/NH4.




imeridian said:


> My surface movement is already similar to that in your video.


I understand, so turn your C02 up until the DC is greenish-yellow before the end of the photoperiod. If your fish stress first--then you need more 02..adjust the SA higher...and then keep moving upward. Another reason to just leave the fish in the tank--they will tell you in short order what is going on. Between the fish, the plants and the DC--you'll have everything you need to tell you what you need to know.




imeridian said:


> You may see my attempt at fine-tuning the CO2 as fiddling, maybe not. I don't consider it that way, nor do I consider the changes in lighting to be fiddling either. Well, maybe, I just thought turning down the wattage would help slow things down to figure out what to do about the algae.


Fine-tuning and fiddling are 2 different things. But the reality is: I'm really not sure on what you've done, when you've done it, how you've done it, why you've done it, etc, etc, etc.

Turning down the lighting is the easiest way out. If that's what you want to do--then run it. But you will learn the least. And it will again be your only option when you find yourself in similar shoes again. You're not a "I just want a pretty tank" guy from what I can gather, so this is a learning opportunity.


I've laid out what I would do, how I would do it and why......it's all very simple stuff and the reasoning is sound. Why are you resisting?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I'm not questioning the super water change process. When I took the tank out of blackout I gave it two day's worth of ferts, approximately 10ppm NO3, 2ppm PO4.

I didn't gravel clean in the sense of disturbing the substrate. I only vacuumed above it, grabbing obvious bits of detritus. I do not ever insert the vacuum into the substrate. The water movement/filtration tends to prevent detritus from building up.

If I'm going to do something so far in excess of normal dosing that the fish are at significant risk, then putting them somewhere safer seems like a really good idea. Unfortunately the q-tank is quarantined, so if I were to move them I would need to wait.

The drop checker is greenish-yellow by about half way through the photo-period. It starts out as the 'ideal' green color.

I did dosing of 2ml/gal H2O2 once (IIRC) and then 1ml per gallon for several days. Full normal after water change dosing of Excel after water changes and I've been dosing 20ml (~3X daily) every day.

I'm not resisting. I'm just trying to elaborate on what I have done, which all seems pretty similar to what you're recommending anyway. The only hope at this point is that combining them all together like that the individual actions will work. Unfortunately, I just can't drop everything and do it immediately, I'm running out of Excel, and I just can't afford to buy another jug right now. I don't want to half-ass the process by not doing that part, so it'll need to wait.


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## Naja002 (Oct 12, 2005)

imeridian said:


> I'm not questioning the super water change process. When I took the tank out of blackout I gave it two day's worth of ferts, approximately 10ppm NO3, 2ppm PO4.


Think about it: You don't know what the build up was of what (the bad stuff) during each 24hr period. You have an idea, i assume, of the ferts levels prior to the 1st 50% wc. _At Best_--you removed 93.5% of everything...but that does not count bad stuff build up. So, when your BO was done--what were your ferts levels?--You don't know, and neither do I. But I would say that the 2 days dose did not bring the ferts back up to the levels that the plants were used to....so, with stress from the BO--they also have to adjust to a change in nutrient levels = more stress. Favors algae, not plants. WC + dump 1wk of ferts...done. Clean the slate and then you'll _know_ where those things are at....roud: Besides WCs and exposure to air are great algae killers anyway.




imeridian said:


> I didn't gravel clean in the sense of disturbing the substrate. I only vacuumed above it, grabbing obvious bits of detritus. I do not ever insert the vacuum into the substrate. The water movement/filtration tends to prevent detritus from building up.


roud:




imeridian said:


> If I'm going to do something so far in excess of normal dosing that the fish are at significant risk, then putting them somewhere safer seems like a really good idea. Unfortunately the q-tank is quarantined, so if I were to move them it also needs to wait.


Truth? You've got me to tell you what to expect. I didn't have anybody. I had to do and then react my way out of any negatives. Secret? _*Do not*_ dose Excel, H202, and melafix or pimafix together--at least not with excel/H202 in high dosages. Not Good. Not good at all.













imeridian said:


> The drop checker is greenish-yellow by about half way through the photo-period.


Then you may be Golden on C02. With both banks of lights, I would say that you should see pearling and it should be consistant from day to day.





imeridian said:


> I did dosing of 2ml/gal H2O2 once (IIRC) and then 1ml per gallon for several days. Full normal after water change dosing of Excel after water changes and I've been dosing 20ml (~3X daily) every day.



I auto-dose ~21.5ml of excel/day on my 55g. Any "over-dosing" is on top of that. About the only time I OD it now is when I scrape the GSA--~once/month....but I'm slowly getting that sorted out, I think/hope/feel/believe. :icon_mrgr I scrape, OD excel and H202...that's it. No wc. Nothing.

Dose the 2ml/gal of H202 now. Day after day. Your fish and plants will love it and the algae won't. I don't do it everyday now, but I did for a while. Not necessarily 2ml/gal--that's more to hit the algae. Also, I haven't found any effect against the bacterial colony as I've read. Shoot, they use 02 also.





imeridian said:


> I'm not resisting. I'm just trying to elaborate on what I have done, which all seems pretty similar to what you're recommending anyway. It's just not like I can drop everything and do it immediately, I'm running out of Excel, and I just can't afford to buy another jug right now. I don't want to half-ass the process by not doing that part, so it'll need to wait.



Bro, I understand that you can't necessarily drop everything and get to this. A few days or a week shouldn't matter much anyway. I don't think that not having the excel is [email protected] it. The only expensive part about this is the excel. So, do everything else...if it works out good....cool. Getting excel later and then jumping through the hoops again isn't a big deal.

This doesn't need to be done right this minute. If things are not getting worse or very quickly....then you've got time. But the faster things get worse...the sooner it needs to be done.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

those hair algae will go away within a few months time.. Not sure how or why. I have my suspicions where plant's sends out alleopathic chemicals to inhibit algae. Just don't do too many water changes.. Let these chemicals build up in the tank. It would be sweet to bottle these chemical and sell it for beaucoup $$$.

Physically, remove the algae in the mean time


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Alright then, Naja. I'll regenerate a packet of purigen so I can place fresh packets in both filters. I'll go get some more H2O2, as I'm out of that now. Tomorrow night, at the earliest, I'll do the mega water change process, dump a week's worth of ferts in, and start dosing the H2O2. I'll do the Excel until I run out. I'll even crank the CO2 a bit more.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

mistergreen said:


> those hair algae will go away within a few months time..


I really will torch the tank if I have to wait that long. It's time to abandon a hobby when it ceases to be enjoyable. It's not been very enjoyable for the last month as it is... another couple of weeks is probably all I have left if things don't start improving.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

Oh, and you got to feed the plants... Dose ferts... I never though taking away ferts would diminish algae. Once algae take hold, they're there.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I have not changed my fert program at all during this, I have no plans to.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

I know this sounds stupid, but perhaps it may be just a matter of doing what you are doing, which is all the right things and just waiting it out. Sometimes, in my experience, as the tank matures, the algae issues tend to resolve themselves. Lol, I know you really don't want to wait a long time. I say give it 3 months and see what happens, what have you got to lose, considering that you have already put so much time and effort into the tank. And FWIW, I think that is a great setup despite the issues.


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## Naja002 (Oct 12, 2005)

imeridian said:


> Alright then, Naja. I'll regenerate a packet of purigen so I can place fresh packets in both filters. I'll go get some more H2O2, as I'm out of that now. Tomorrow night, at the earliest, I'll do the mega water change process, dump a week's worth of ferts in, and start dosing the H2O2. I'll do the Excel until I run out. I'll even crank the CO2 a bit more.


Good...Glad to hear it! roud: Clean the slate and start over so-to-speak.




imeridian said:


> I really will torch the tank if I have to wait that long. It's time to abandon a hobby when it ceases to be enjoyable. It's not been very enjoyable for the last month as it is... another couple of weeks is probably all I have left if things don't start improving.




Naaaa. :biggrin: A break maybe. I go through that though....and I gravitate back and forth between hobbies. My current tank was on auto-pilot for 3.5 out of the first 4.5 months. I checked stuff in passing and would sit down and check it out for 1-3 mins (literally) about once a week, I guess. Otherwise I was focused on other stuff. It's good to get away sometimes. roud: I think it's good for the tank too. I've had more issues since I've re-focused...then I ever did when it was on auto-pilot. I had the GSA and Ca/Mg issues, of course, but otherwise....everything was cool. Now that I'm re-focused and trying to put more pieces of the puzzle together--it's taking a lot of time and a lot of mental energy. 

Maybe you need a break.... Not shut it down, sell it off and all that. But like I suggested: Clean the slate, get everything setup and walk away for a while. Do your dosing, check whatever needs to be checked and keep moving to something else for a bit. Over time I've learned the value of Fishscale's post here:

A little patience goes a long way

Think about it: Mother nature did just fine before man started becoming...uh...."Advanced". Since we've stepped in and started meddling with everything....it's all going down hill fast. I think that there's an element of truth to that with our tanks also.

Clean the slate and then take a breather. *Try* to stay away from it. Try not to even check on it vary often. Let it be. You know what to dose and when to dose, so just do it and move on. roud:




Homer_Simpson said:


> I know this sounds stupid, but perhaps it may be just a matter of doing what you are doing, which is all the right things and just waiting it out.



Agreed. roud:


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yeah... patience.

This tank was just my little bit of calm and beauty left, you know?

It usually runs on auto-pilot, only special actions aside from feeding the fish occasionally (heh) were the 50% water changes and slight stem plant trimming on Sundays. Winter is usually when I become interested again, because the weather turns against other hobbies and usually because I start running out of stuff and need to reorder.

In other news, the manzanita wood I ordered from Badcopnofishtank arrived last evening.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

For the sake of record... 

I did the massive water change process tonight, total pain in the sitter. I dosed 6X the daily dose for micros & macros, with that extra 1X coming automatically right before lights come on tomorrow. I also dosed 150ml H2O2 and 75ml Excel. Freshly regenerated packets of Purigen went into each filter.


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## Naja002 (Oct 12, 2005)

Sounds Good. :thumbsup: Don't be afraid of the H202...with a little bit of observation...it's pretty easy to read. :thumbsup:


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## MrJG (Feb 21, 2007)

I've been reading everything in the thread so far, haven't added anything on the algae as I don't have any constructive advice to give. :-/ 
Looks like I'm about to do battle with the same algae in my 20 long as I noticed today a few tiny strands coming from several plants seemingly out of nowhere. 

Hang in there. The tank looks really great otherwise and its definitely worth fighting for.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

The algae situation has significantly improved. My riccia is in a dire state, but that was to be expected when dosing 150ml of Excel over two days. I ran out after the second dose. I've dosed 150ml of H2O2 per day for the last four days. Truth be told I think cranking the CO2 blindly on the 22nd was the most impactful. The drop checker is yellow by the end of the day, but the plants have kicked themselves into overdrive like I've not seen in a very long time. The classic 'more CO2' response was apparently just what the tank needed. 

There is a slight haze to the water though, it seems to dissipate toward the end of the day. The waterfall inside the reactor is really getting on my nerves and there has been noisy bubble munching happening in the 2217.


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## Wö£fëñxXx (Dec 2, 2003)

Well it looks good imeridian, in spite of the downfalls
its been through see what good C02 will do.

Add air at night...


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)




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## Naja002 (Oct 12, 2005)

Glad to hear it. :thumbsup: Agreed with Wolfenxxx....the H202 is flooding the tank with 02. I think 02 is a great algae killer and your bacterial colony is probably booming right now. So, when you back off the H202...you need to sort out how to help maintain that 02. I doubt that you can, but backing off the H202 slowly (reducing over 2-4 days) should help plus sufficient surface ripple. Aerating the tank during lights out should help also.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

imeridian said:


> The algae situation has significantly improved. My riccia is in a dire state, but that was to be expected when dosing 150ml of Excel over two days. I ran out after the second dose. I've dosed 150ml of H2O2 per day for the last four days. Truth be told I think cranking the CO2 blindly on the 22nd was the most impactful.


CO2 is an interesting element in the balance. It appears to have a very large impact on all plant (and algae) growth in a tank. Unless fish are dying, more is usually best when fighting algae.



> There is a slight haze to the water though, it seems to dissipate toward the end of the day.


Are you running the UVS? The UVS will precipitate the trace ferts which will cause a slight white clouding. I believe this is also true for iron. I used to have this problem when I ran my UVS 24/7. Now I run it only at night, a few hours before it's time to begin dosing the tank again. That way the plants get all the trace ferts they need so there's nothing to precipitate.



> The waterfall inside the reactor is really getting on my nerves and there has been noisy bubble munching happening in the 2217.


I don't like the noise, either. When I set up my tanks after the move, I made sure I had enough slack in all the hoses so I could physically turn the reactor upside down. That purges all the air. I do this until all the air is purged from the filters, as well. Then I turn it right side up again. It doesn't take away all of the noise, but it takes away enough to make it inaudible when I close the cabinet doors.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I made a mistake by trusting the drop checker too implicitly because within a week of giving the needle valve a crank the algae was gone. I'm sure the water change, excel, h202 blitz was helpful too, though. It did pretty much destroy all of my riccia and subwassertang in that process, unfortunately.

No, I did not use the UVS during the period of Excel and H202 dosing after the water reset as it would counteract my efforts. I did run the UVS the other evening though and found a thick scum on the surface of the water the next morning and clear water. My male gourami promptly decided to turn into a living protein skimmer and took care of it:










I feel bad about destroying his nests on water change day, especially when I see the eggs fly around the tank.

I figure it's pretty safe to say that the water was full of organic goop from the chemical warfare. The water is clear as air tonight after the water change earlier today. If the water starts to become hazy again I'll have reason to be concerned.

I'm strongly considering the inline needle wheel pump method for CO2 misting. I'm sick of both the flow reduction the reactor is causing and the gas pocket that causes the waterfall noise. I may find the smashing of CO2 bubbles against the needle wheel even more annoying though, so only time will tell in that regard. 

I had left slack to 'burp' the reactor too, though since I recently replumbed to try out Naja's suggestion of sending the water to the reactor first my tubing is now too short. The upside now is that I have a double-tap valve right at the inlet to the reactor, so I can just open that to purge the gas. I don't so much like that idea though, no matter what the gas happens to be, I'd rather it be dispersed back into the water stream than gurgled from the outflow. The problem was more severe than usual simply because I was adding so much H2O2 earlier in the week. 










I need to trim again, some of those plants just keep unplanting themselves though, hence the floaters. I think I need something to make my substrate grippier. The left corner is looking empty because I trimmed off most of my tall Sag (or whatever it is) to get rid of dead fuzz algae.

The huge box quantity of manzanita has been soaking in a 30 gallon tub, I'll probably keep soaking it for a good while longer in preperation for a major rescaping, or... in reality, the first real aquascaping. I went out looking at the only landscape supply we have in town and was quite disappointed. Perhaps they'll have something interesting when it warms up, but so far the quest for rocks has been a bust. I decided I didn't really like the look of the petrified wood in this tank, the sizing wasn't right.










I think I've decided on how I'm going to restock too. Naja worked his convincing magic and burned the idea of Tiger barbs into my head... so I'm thinking at least a dozen of those, with perhaps another dozen or so of Cherry barbs. I'll add the essential Otos back in and 'refill' my Cories back up to six.


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## Phoenix-cry (Dec 25, 2008)

The tank looks great! I love the plant selection.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Yuck! That scum would have freaked me out. I'm glad your gourami took care of it and lived to build bubble nests for you to tear down!

Your wood looks great! I'm looking forward to seeing how you use it. I find it challenging since I lack imagination.

I love your petrified wood! I can't remember the sizes though. Are they too large or too small for the tank? I *might* be interested in it.

Tiger Barbs + Gourami = Shredded Gourami.

If you had nothing but super fast swimming fish, maybe. But with a very slow moving fish with large fins, no way!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yeah, it was quite nasty scum, I hadn't seen it that bad since I started the tank.

I think I'm going to need a lot of help trying to figure out what to do with the wood, but there's plenty of it so I'm sure a pleasing arrangement can be created.

I'm quite fond of the petrified wood too, it's just that the large pieces were too large to be accent rocks and there were not enough smaller pieces for that purpose either. I'll probably continue to hang onto it for its originally intended purpose. Someday I'll do that Iwagumi... someday.

I dunno... my gouramis can move at warp speed and are pretty feisty on their own. Clearly the restocking is still under consideration and quite open to change. Finding the gouramis a new home isn't out of the question either.



Phoenix-cry said:


> The tank looks great! I love the plant selection.


Thanks, my collectoritis is really kicking into overdrive lately.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

I just posted a question to Mike regarding his experiences with the TBs. He should be able to give us some idea of the numbers needed to calm a school of TBs down.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/t...s-210-gal-journal-new-pics-13.html#post756587


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

Wow! The tank does look great! I had the same problem with that hair algae stuff. I had to completely ditch my roala sp. goias


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks. X2  

It occurred to me that perhaps I should list down through the fish I've kept in the past, and preface the restocking with the note that I want to try something different.

I've had Neon Tetras, Cardinal Tetras, Glowlight Tetras, Bloodfin Tetras, Harlequin Rasboras, German Blue Rams, Angelfish, Gouramis, Dwarf Puffers, Bettas, Cories, Otos, and... uhm... I think that's it.

I'm open to suggestions.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

I suggest some of the Pelvicachromis taeniatus fish! I think the 'Kienke' is probably the prettiest, but the 'Moliwe' is a close second.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Oh, they are quite charming.


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## fishsandwitch (Apr 20, 2008)

judging by that list you like small school fish?
I would do colombian tetras or neon dwarf rainbows.


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## ZooTycoonMaster (Jan 2, 2008)

How bad is your collectoritis? How many plant species are in the tank?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

It's not to say that I like small schooling fish, it's just that's what I've kept the most of...  ...and it's that reason I'm really wanting to get away from the small schooling fish. In the interests of change, I would prefer something more active and aggressive.

A lot of my past stocking choices were the result of poor quality fish or the simple lack of availability. In a brief history, I originally wanted angelfish and cardinals, but eventually settled on filling out my cardinal school with neons because of those availability issues and adding the glowlights. As the angelfish grew, it became unwise to introduce more cardinals, neons, and even angelfish. This brought about the purchase of the rasboras when the attrition rates of the other fish became high enough to warrant additional stocking. Unable to find additional healthy angelfish I bought the gouramis. With the cost of fuel so high I never replaced the GBRs when they reached their natural conclusion as that would have required too much travel.

As you can tell, the local fish places are really crappy... unless I wanted silver dollars, oscars, pacus, and well the whole spectrum of fish completely unsuitable for the typical aquarium. With fuel prices once again sane, traveling for fish is again a possibility.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

ZooTycoonMaster said:


> How bad is your collectoritis? How many plant species are in the tank?


I count 29, I think... I may be missing something, please pardon the spelling and all that below:

Bronze Crypt 'Wendtii', Dwarf Saggitaria, Red Rubin Sword, Riccia, Ludwigia sp., Stargrass, Taiwan Moss, Java Fern, Pearl Weed, Cabomba, Rotala sp., Glosso, Mini Pellia, UG, Flame Moss, Fisenden, subwassertang, limnophila mini, hygro bold, ludwigia arcuata, rotala macrandra, polygonum kawagoneum, rotala vericalaris, limnophilia aromatica, rotala wallichii, polygonum sao paulo, rotala mini type 1, unknown 'big' saggitaria, blyxa japonica. 

I want more crypts and and some anubias. Right now, well... as usual, the plants are pretty much crammed in wherever they fit without much regard to aesthetics. That is the main goal of my 'rebirth' so to speak... I want to have an actual aquascape for once.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Something must still not be quite right with the aquarium. I just found some strands of algae, so it appears it is mounting a comeback. I did an two ammonia tests with a third as control, and the colors matched yellow. I cut off the effected leaves, but for now will take no additional anti-algae action.


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## brohawk (May 19, 2008)

Re: the waterfall in the reactor, have you thought about adding rigid tubing, a couple inches into the top, and plumbing it back into the input line of your filter? My waterfall has been annoying me for some time, especially after H2O2 treatments as well, sometimes dropping 7 or 8 inches by the end of the day. Though I haven't done it yet myself, I'm thinking the noise coming from my 2215 churning up bubbles will be less annoying than the reactor, and maybe will provide more consistent CO2 throughout the photoperiod too.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I've read of similar things being done, but I haven't given it any consideration. It does seem as though it could be a workable method of dealing with the gas build up on a more automatic basis. Thus far my heaviest consideration is going with the inline needle wheel pump, I look forward to restoring the flow lost by the reactor. It's just not easy to decide which pump to go with, there are many options with such large price differences.


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## twychopen (Dec 17, 2008)

I just read 5 of the 6 pages and man I am tired haha . I have my first planted tank set up (My picture) and I just am starting to get this hair type algae. I have not gotten too worried, but I need to get rid of it. I am leaving to Houston for 3 days. I reduced my light from 10 hours to 4 hours, dosed my ferts and plan on leaving everything else the same. I also have a ph checker that turns the c02 on or off. Usually The c02 runs almost constantly even throughout the night. (this got rid of some brown algae I had when I first set the tank up) I have a HOB filter that oxygenates the tank. I also have about 10 tetras in there which are doing fine. Can anyone tell me if they approve or dissaprove of the method b4 I leave and come back to a disaster?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

That sounds like a good plan to me, but I've not left my tank unattended that long and I also have automated dosing. Asking your question in a new thread is a better idea.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

So, I think I may have come up with a very simple inline CO2 diffusion alternative; old ideas made new.










While the bubbles may not be as small as a needle wheel, the expenditure is significantly less, even with planned airstone replacement. It's essentially a $5 (?) version of the Cal Aqua inline diffuser.

I'll probably get the stuff to make one of these tomorrow.


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

imeridian said:


> So, I think I may have come up with a very simple inline CO2 diffusion alternative; old ideas made new.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, I have thought about this too. There might be some bubbles that come out of the outtake, but it's worth a try


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Well, bubbles would be fine, even desirable. These old ideas that were once ruled out for inline reactors because they'd produce bubbles are suddenly workable again when the now popular CO2 misting is considered. 

I see no reason to avoid trying it at this point, it seems like a DIY inline PVC diffuser has the potential to be inexpensive, minimal maintenance, quiet, and not restrict flow significantly. 

There are better quality airstones that do not disintegrate easily like the blue/green ones do, so they should work well. I used to use them when I did DIY.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I made an inline diffuser, unfortunately it doesn't work very well. 

The airstone is not nearly fine enough to get the desired results, the small bubbles simply head for the surface immediately once they exit the outflow. 

I didn't test the "device" connected to my UVS, which could serve as a reaction chamber of sorts, but I felt the poor results did not warrant further testing and were conclusive enough on their own.

I haven't abandoned the idea, but I would need to find an airstone more similar to those used in actual CO2 diffusers. Perhaps the sweetwater stones from AES are the answer (but a $5 service fee plus shipping on a $2 item puts this outside of being reasonable).

Oh well, in terms of non-returnable or otherwise non-reusable parts I only consumed $3 to find out this isn't as brilliant as it first appeared to be.


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## brohawk (May 19, 2008)

Got one of those cheap glass nano diffusers handy? I'd try busting off the curved end (maybe use heat to make a clean break, or one of those circular pipe/glass cutters) and attach slightly larger airline tubing over it so you can point the diffuser directly into the water flow.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I have a glass diffuser, I don't know if it would be considered nano and it certainly wasn't cheap, lol. I did check to see if it would fit through the 1" plug, but alas it does not and I'd really rather not destroy it.

I did some more searching and discovered that Foster & Smith has the sweetwater airstones from AES. I was planning on putting in an order with them soon anyway, so I'll probably give those a try.


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## MARIMOBALL (Mar 18, 2007)

LOL I was doing the same thing but even easier this week. I found a "T" with 5/8 fittings and I bought an ultra fine air stone but it ended diffused large bubbles. was thinking of making a small rex type reactor with a nano diffuser inside.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

What about trying a chopstick?


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## twychopen (Dec 17, 2008)

sorry to interrupt, i will start a new thread about this later, but to answer my own question on the previous page about hair algae, my plan worked. As I can see, it is completely gone after 3 days! Woo woo!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

MARIMOBALL said:


> LOL I was doing the same thing but even easier this week.


Great minds... as they say. I figure that if this doesn't eventually work, the assembly I created would work well as an inline autodosing manifold. I just need to get another 1" plug and drill several holes versus the single hole in the center.



sewingalot said:


> What about trying a chopstick?


It took me a while to figure out what you meant by this. At first I thought it was a suggestion on how to remove the algae. I randomly stumbled across a post elsewhere that mentioned jamming a chopstick into the co2 tubing to act as a diffuser. I don't have any disposable chopsticks right now, but I'll give this a shot when I do.



twychopen said:


> my plan worked. As I can see, it is completely gone after 3 days! Woo woo!


I thought you were asking about leaving it unattended, not as a method to combat algae. I'm glad it worked for you though.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

I wonder if you could use a chopstick to remove algae? Maybe... I use bamboo skewers as well.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Oh, the chopstick was an algae removal suggestion after all? hehe!

It was quite firmly attached to the leaves, so rolling it around anything was pretty futile until I would allow it to form quite a large mass, something smaller than a toothbrush may have worked better though.

I mentioned back on the 5th that I had seen some additional algae. I bumped the CO2 just a little more and dosed 2ml/gal H2O2 for two days. I think that did the trick. 

The algae is close enough to gone to consider it as such, thankfully. I won't declare victory just yet though... it may be reading my mind... and I'm out of aluminum foil.

I also decided to give both filters a gentle cleaning the other night. It had been about a month and a half since I'd cleaned the 2217 (the cleaning that indirectly caused the CO2 incident), it was still quite clean. The 2028 having been cleaned 2.5 months ago was pretty filthy. I think I should step up the cleaning schedule, cleaning every 1.5 months instead of every 3 months. The 2028 clearly needs to be cleaned more often, it's obvious now because it has essentially twice the flow rate of the 2217 (given the 2217 drives the CO2 reactor). I'll have to work out a new schedule, I'd rather not have the cleaning of each filter coincide. 

When the finances reset for this month I bought more Excel & some filter pads. I did replace the blue course pad in the 2028, as it is now more than 2 years old and was looking quite bad compared to the new one. I compared the 2217's year old pad with a new one and determined it not necessary to replace.


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## brion0 (Sep 28, 2008)

I tried a few different air stones to difuse co2. A ceramic one that came from petsmart did the best. Had to crazy glue the rubber ends onto it to stop gas from going out the ends. They come in a few differnt sizes, can also cutt them down with a hack saw. You can see one in the first pic in my journal.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I had seen those and had pondered if they might work well, thanks for the suggestion.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I've had a lot more GSA than usual, even some on the glass which is basically unheard of in regards to my tank. In a way that leads me to believe I've been on the right track, heh, as that's the bane of an otherwise well running tank. I thought I'd shock the world and show it happens when PO4 levels are high too, as they were around 5ppm last test, much to my surprise the tank is eating up PO4 quite readily and it was the very low 1ppm, so I added another 1ppm as a one-time slug. I'll continue to monitor to see if I indeed need to alter my dosing solution. 

The hair algae was reading my mind, obviously, the other night. I have a couple of spots where it's growing again. I tweaked up the CO2 just a bit more, but I think I'm already beyond what my reactor can handle anyway. I'm strongly considering purchasing this Sealine needle wheel pump for the purposes of CO2 misting.

As the algae returned after my best efforts to eradicate it, I have to conclude there is something more fundamental wrong with the tank -- aeration, movement, CO2. Adding a needle wheel and removing the reactor should serve to improve those aspects. 

I may, in the interim, put my glass CO2 diffuser back to work.


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## mrkookm (Apr 4, 2007)

> I'm strongly considering purchasing this Sealine needle wheel pump for the purposes of CO2 misting.


It seems to be a good unit, but be mindful of the possibility of leaks at the twist lock housing. I bought a Sedra 5000 last week that turned out to be a fluke due to leaks and then was told later that they are to be used submersed only, not inline as the box states. I wouldn't make any permanent modifications unless you are 100% sure you have no leaks with the Sealine.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Hopefully that won't be a problem given the Sealine is a replacement pump for an [strike]external[/strike] (agh, an in-sump) protein skimmer.... What a bummer about your pump though, that sort of thing is so irritating isn't it?


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Man I hate GSA/GDA!!! Obviously its the lesser of the other evils but there has to be something that can get rid of it.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Heh, thankfully it's not green dust, but just a few green spots. Some of my dwarf sag is particularly effected, but that's easy enough to deal with... snip, snip.

I did buy six Otos yesterday afternoon. They'll be in quarantine for a while, but that's fine given that I've been running this tank without any fish typically considered to be algae eaters for nearly two months.


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## mrkookm (Apr 4, 2007)

> What a bummer about your pump though, that sort of thing is so irritating isn't it?


Irritating is an understatement dude. I drove 1½hrs 'oneway' from delaware to ThatPetPlace to pick one up at $104.92, stopped off at HD and spent another $35, got home and pulled my plumbing apart and spent another 3~4hr on prep & setup only to get *drip...drip... drip* after all of that. To make matters worse I cannot return the pump becasue I glued PVC permanetly on the pump....I'm still *HOT* 

The good thing is once you have one setup correctly and running, it works extremely well!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Heh, we're about equidistant from That Pet Place, only I'm to the West. 

Indeed, that's not irritating, that's infuriating. I definitely appreciate the warning.


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## chase127 (Jun 8, 2008)

hey, you had some spirogyra? if you did, how did you kill it? i have some long green thread like algae that i suspect is spirogyra


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Read over page five for more details, but the primary attack was 2ml/gal H2O2 for four days and 1ml/gal Excel for two days. That combined with near 100% water change and increased CO2 eradicated any visible algae. 

I'm not convinced it is spirogyra. It looks like it unaided, but under my toy microscope the spiral nature isn't discernible.

As I think is illustrated in this thread, if the conditions that lead to the algae aren't completely rectified, it will simply return. Thankfully, the return in my case has been very minor thus far.


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## chase127 (Jun 8, 2008)

okay thanks, i read that page. i dont have much, but i hope to get rid of it before it gets out of hand


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I started another "algae burn" by dosing 2ml/gal H2O2 and 1ml/gal Excel today. It looks like all of my efforts thus far were more just buying time than actually solving the problem.  

I'll just buy some more time... again. 

The other evening I put an AC 20 powerhead in the tank near the 2217's outflow to help restore some flow lost due to the reactor. This may help, but is only a temporary solution.

I put my old glass diffuser into the tank tonight just to see how the bubbles would disperse. I'm having second thoughts on a needle wheel pump at this point because the diffuser's bubbles are indeed quite distracting. The CO2 mist being blown around has a violent look to it as compared to the bubbles from pearling which peacefully rise to the surface. I think the needle wheel bubbles are supposed to be smaller though, maybe that would help. 

Another observation is that the bubbles are not making it all the way to the other end of the tank, the flow from the 2217 creates a mist-free zone of sorts. If I were to run a needle wheel on the 2217 I fear the same would happen only with the 2028 'blocking' the mist instead.

This is giving me more motivation to completely redo the filtration system with a powerful external pump. Tweaking the system with these canisters is starting to feel like trying to fit a turbo charger to a Yugo.

Maybe a wider reactor will at least be less noisy. 

It won't be until next month that there is room in the budget for the needle wheel, so there's still time to fiddle, err... experiment.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I've come to like taking photos so often, it really shows how much things change in a short period of time. 

I've tried to do some rearranging, mostly because it was getting absurdly messy. Eventually I'll have the plants nicely organized into groups... lol. It's just that my "style" is chaos.  ...just look at the glosso growing halfway to the top! 

Forgive the blue tubing, it's only temporary along with the uber-pearling from the water change. As always I notice floating plants immediately after I upload the photo.


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## malaybiswas (Nov 2, 2008)

Wow nice and colorful! time for a trim though or is this how you like it to stay?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks.  What you see there is a concession to my brute-force style of aquascaping. That photo is actually after the trim, lol.  I'm growing out the plants as much as possible so that I have plenty on hand for the eventual overhaul in a month or two (which I think I'll need a lot of help with).


As an aside, it's so wonderful to not have the waterfall in the CO2 reactor! Yay for the old glass diffuser!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

So it would appear as though the CO2 injection rate for the reactor (which was causing massive gas buildup leading to loud waterfall) is too much when using the diffuser. I hadn't adjusted the rate when I switched to the diffuser because supposedly they're less much efficient. Well, my three little mollies have been hanging at the surface for most of the night and throughout today. This behavior is different from their normal surface skimming activity. The drop checker was canary yellow, not that I put much faith in that thing any more. 

So, I've dropped the rate back down to that which I had before upping it during the algae treatment. The bubbles are less distracting at the lower injection rate. I also mixed up some more indicator and refilled the drop checker.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I remeasured the flow from my filters this evening, they were cleaned about a week and a half ago, new blue pad in the 2028, new white pads in both. I didn't replace the blue pad in the 2217 because it looked virtually identical to the new pad except for discoloration, though I recognize this may be a factor in flow rates the difference really _should_ be negligible. The type of media is otherwise the same in each filter.

The 2217 now has an unrestricted outflow, tubing straight from the top of the filter to the outflow. In one minute the volume of flow was ~5.5 liters.

The 2028 with a Hydor heater inline pumped ~11 liters into the measurement bucket, same test duration.

There is either something seriously wrong with my 2217 or the ~1/2" ID tubing is providing severe restriction, the 2028 is _still_ doing nearly twice the output!

I think the next step will be to use larger tubing and outflow for the 2217, perhaps immediately sizing up after the double-tap connectors. This direction had been discussed previously in a separate thread, the goal then being to improve flow with the reactor in place.

Cleaning the 2217 along with removing the reactor and UV has increased the flow volume by approximately 30GPH, replacing the blue pad in the 2028 and cleaning the filter provided an increase of approximately 55GPH (which is surprisingly large). If I recall correctly, in a previous thread I recorded the 2217 doing approximately 120gph, but that was without the plastic outflow and not at the normal height. I retested with the outflow removed and obtained the same results of 5.5 liters per minute, so the outflow is not proving to be an additional restriction.

I'm making note of all of this mostly for my own record, but hopefully this sort of information may also eventually prove helpful to someone else.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Wow! You're tank is doing much better, can't tell there was an algae war now. How's the GSA doing? I hate that stuff!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

So far so good on all algae fronts. The GSA didn't come back after I scraped and bolused 1ppm PO4. The hairy fuzz thread horror hasn't shown itself since before last week's 'Excel Incineration.' It appears as though I burnt my UG away in the process though. 

I had a revelation about PO4 tonight, actually. When I first formulated my auto-dosing solution I lowered the PO4 and upped the K because of phosphate in my tap water. I, unfortunately, didn't see fit at the time to make a note about _why_ I wrote up the formula that way and subsequently completely forgot about that. I went through earlier tonight comparing what the standard EI dose would be and what I'm actually dosing and found I'm supplying only 1/3 the normal PO4! :icon_eek:

I wrote up a new formulation with standard levels, and upped the PO4 in my current solution a bit. I have about a month to go before it is exhausted. 

In the future I'll be mixing 110g KNO3 and 30g KH2PO4 into with RODI to reach 500ml total volume and then dose that at 7.5ml daily. That should give me 3.6ppm NO3, 1.1ppm PO4, and 2.7ppm K per dose. It's very concentrated, but should stay in solution. If not I'll just double the water and dose for twice as long. 

The biggest revelation is that I had a tendency before the CO2 incident to allow the plants to grow up and across the top of the aquarium. That completely explains now why what I thought to be adequate CO2 and fertilization was ultimately lacking once I started trimming things more regularly. Even though I was using the same lighting and duration, the actual light getting into the aquarium was significantly filtered.

I unwittingly became a victim of my own desire to improve the tank. My increased maintenance actually spurred the algae! :icon_conf To that end, I think I perhaps should decrease the period that both banks of lights are on, the growth is a bit... insane these days now that I have CO2 back closer to where it should be. 

It also turns out that the CO2 misting out of the diffuser no longer bothers me, so win there.










See that glosso there in the middle? I'm _so_ waiting for it to reach the surface, haha! The plants are really getting out of hand, so I ordered some Priority Mail boxes to RAOK out portions of plants I received in that manner.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Good that you figured out about the PO4 before too much time had passed and you were able to correct it. Each time you write up a new formula, do you usually adjust for your plant needs? I ask because you are one of the people I consider really knowledgeable in this area and people like me need a "role model." I am glad to hear your GSA is gone! I am still having issues with mine on the silicone area in the back and I am scared to scrape around the seems.

So too much maintenance can do harm at times? Never thought about this, but it makes sense. Great job, loving the tank.

The CO2 mist is pretty to me. I like how your tank sparkles right now.  The glosso is so funny. I have gotten used to seeing it grow horizontal, I forgot that it likes to grow vertically, too. RAOK is great, you're so kind!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I don't often change the auto-dosing formula, but when something seems to be going awry I do like to look over _everything_. Unfortunately I tend to overlook things occasionally, especially when at first glance it appears to be fine, because it's been fine, forgetting how everything is interconnected.

Before I started trimming the plants more regularly (i.e. not allowing them to grow across the top) the lower PO4 & CO2 was apparently fine, but not when the light isn't be filtered by the plants. Especially when you consider that prior to the CO2 incident I had a relatively high bioload in the tank. It dropped to practically nothing as a result of that and the fish poop contribution to the fertilization ended. I failed to compensate for that with my dosing. 

The GSA was a warning sign and prompted the evaluation that alerted me to the dosing error.

It seems, oddly enough, that killing my fish was a really good thing, at least in terms of getting my tank back on track. It has prompted me to really investigate everything and find methods of improvement. I probably would have otherwise just kept with the status quo, because it was working acceptably.

It was really a lightbulb moment lastnight when I finally pieced it all together.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

*Milk, Bread, & CO2*

....always check the CO2 cylinder before the winter storm arrives. 

I emptied my CO2 cylinder this morning, having not remembered to check the gauge Sunday after the water change as is usual procedure. In honesty, that means I also neglected to check the gauge last weekend too. I'll blame the cold I'm just now recovering from.

While I could have waited, I found myself going out across town to swap cylinders anyway. Thankfully the roads weren't too bad, but as usual the borough neglected to plow the connecting portions where the township authority ends. This makes getting out of my neighborhood difficult, even if the neighborhood and borough roads are okay.

So, first test of the regulator and needle valve being able to handle the cylinder emptying and it passed, no deadly end of tank dump, thankfully.

My 2217 is more annoying than usual lately. It has been cavitating occasionally for some time, I blamed it on the CO2 backing up from the reactor, as it was especially bad when I rearranged things, but it continues. The 2028 isn't making any bubble chomping noises, so blaming it on pearling bubbles and the like isn't feasible. While it's possible some bubbles from the diffuser are being sucked into the intake, I have yet to see that happen. Given that that the canister seems to fill with air even during lights out, CO2 seems especially unlikely. 

So, I took apart the intake, tightened up hose connections, lubed the o-ring, I even wiped some silicone grease around the connections on the intake and still... bubble noises. It's really starting to drive me crazy. I can't cut the tubing, as it's just long enough as it is now, but I guess that's what I'll need to do next -- replacing the tubing in order to do it. I'll give these new changes a couple of days first though.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

good to see the algae is gone. Your tank is a jungle now.

A canister can suck in air when the seal isn't tight.. If you turn off the canister and allow water to back up into the canister and increase the pressure, you might see a leak.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

*I found the 2217's problem!*

A piece of Ehfimech had somehow lodged in the hard plastic canister intake elbow! 

This must have happened the very first time I set the canister up, having never noticed it and never needing to take off the tubing at that point, that piece has remained lodged in place this entire time.

Needless to say the flow is dramatically improved and now the 2028's flow is looking quite sad in comparison. I now wonder if there's something blocking it somewhere.

I'll need to transition to a larger outflow pipe just to reduce the pressure now, hah! I may give the reactor another go too.

Thanks for the tip mistergreen, that in combination with Nyteblade's suggestion in the chatroom lead me to looking at the little elbow.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

imeridian said:


> So far so good on all algae fronts. The GSA didn't come back after I scraped and bolused 1ppm PO4. The hairy fuzz thread horror hasn't shown itself since before last week's 'Excel Incineration.' It appears as though I burnt my UG away in the process though.
> 
> I had a revelation about PO4 tonight, actually. When I first formulated my auto-dosing solution I lowered the PO4 and upped the K because of phosphate in my tap water. I, unfortunately, didn't see fit at the time to make a note about _why_ I wrote up the formula that way and subsequently completely forgot about that. I went through earlier tonight comparing what the standard EI dose would be and what I'm actually dosing and found I'm supplying only 1/3 the normal PO4! :icon_eek:
> 
> ...


Good humbled write up.
You have now seen, experienced and learned a great lesson.

Also, what occurs nutrients/CO2 wise when you allow the plant biomass to effectively double and what occurs also as it gets closer to the light source(think intensity and inverse square law)?

How might those things affect CO2, O2, and current, and nutrient uptake?
Do you think you can simply set and forget the dosing and CO2?

"I've been adding the same amount and yet now I have algae"

How many times have we seen that?
CO2 issues abound here with this also.

It takes some care and eyeballing to change as the tank changes.
Most of it is common sense however. Often times we forget and blame the dosing, or the algae, or something "we do not yet know(A mystery!)".
Hard to blame ourselves and accept that, has to be the dosing method's fault:redface:

EI is suppose to be rich so no matter how much plant biomass is there, you run a much less risk of limitation that way, and with higher light.

In more limited dosing of EI, you can limit the growth in such tanks with higher light and fuller thicker growth of plants that are closer to the surface.
While more plant biomass demands more CO2, the nutrient limitation if mildly limiting, causes CO2 demand to be less, so you end up with decent plant health, and no algae due to CO2 issues.

If you adjust the CO2 and dose, then you do not get algae also.

This is how both types of methods work and why some believe more nutrients = algae for them, but cannot account for why other folks can add PO4 etc at higher amounts without issue:wink:

You have to scale these things so that one does not influence the other, otherwise you end up not addressing the issue correctly and are unable to explain why there are other counter observations.:thumbsup:

You have learned a lot and know enough about CO2 not to risk things there.
Many are far overconfident there and smug. Do not ever be.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

Wow! The tank looks awesome! The colors are unbelievable


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

So, I switched back to using the inline reactor this afternoon. The reduction in apparent flow rate is still quite significant, but is much higher than before. I haven't made any volume measurements yet though.

I'm still on the fence about injection methods, but I'm willing to give the reactor another chance now that I solved the serious flow restriction problem. 

I also added the six Otos I had bought some time back. They're not really necessary, but was running out of food for them in the 10 gallon quarantine. 



plantbrain said:


> You have now seen, experienced and learned a great lesson.


It certainly feels that way.



clwatkins10 said:


> Wow! The tank looks awesome! The colors are unbelievable


Thanks.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

Now comes the interesting part, what happens if/when you do a massive trim. Some friendly advise here: trim conservatively and no more than you need to.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yeah, I don't want cause havoc by going all Edward Scissorhands on the tank. I do need to trim it though, but will do so gradually.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

Forgot to mention, your tank looks absolutely stunning. Excellent work!


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## twychopen (Dec 17, 2008)

Dude! Thats an awesome jungle!!! Those plants are amazing! Great job!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

*Overgrowth and the BIG Trim*

Yesterday this...









...became several of these...









...to result in this:



















I'm going to float plants for a while to help ease the adjustment for the tank in general. 

I am extremely pleased with the results, though I recognize the need for more refinement.


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## Bowles42 (Mar 5, 2008)

Looks much better after the trim. Your 75g is more of a jungle than my own. I'm usually not a fan of that much variety in a tank, but you pull it off quite well. Also, great colors.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Holy crap! That looks great. Did you keep any of that glosso?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks. That was basically my reaction when I finally sat down to look at what I had done.  Yes, my giant column of vertical gloss is still in there, it's hiding on the left side of the tank, closest to the glass. I just didn't have the energy to fiddle with the tank anymore yesterday.


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## Pinto (Jan 23, 2009)

That look like a S* load that u took out!!
But the result is amazing!!


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Im glad you got things sorted with your 2217. It seems to have been the cause of alot of your strife. The tank looks great.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks everyone. Indeed, yes, fixing the 2217 has really taken a burden off of me. 

I did see a tiny thread of my nemesis algae yesterday, and another piece today. It was all in the same general location, directly in the path of flow. This is alarming, but considering I've gone through everything the only thing left unchanged is light duration. So, after removing the short 1cm pieces of algae I reprogrammed the timer, I'm reducing the duration of the 2nd bank of lights by an hour total, thirty minutes less in each direction. It's not much, but it is a start. I'm still floating plants and may continue to reduce light duration as I remove them (since I couldn't stop myself after I started trimming). 

As it stands now the first bank of lights comes on at noon, the second on at 1pm, then at 7pm second bank will shut off, followed by the first bank at 8pm.

Considering how much better the reactor has been working I doubt it's CO2 related again, but I will revisit the idea of a new distribution method if the photoperiod revision fails. 

Oh, I've also ~90% decided to go with a school of Black Neon Tetras. The idea of Tiger Barbs is about 5%, and another 5% completely clueless.


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

Definitely improving. Your tank is so lush and awesome lol


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## cruiser99 (Dec 29, 2008)

Imeridian,

I have been following your journal very closely. I am in a middle of an algae war myself in my 125G setup. It seams that we, the algae and me, are at a stalemate at the moment as the plants are growing fairly well but the algae is right behind. Obviously I would like to change that.

Assuming that the war with algae really never ends, do you consider the battle won? If you do, what would be the most important factor that contributed to this?

Thanks.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I think I can consider this particular battle to be won, though there may be algae insurgents. 

In regards to the most important factor, it has to be getting the plants growing again. It was one of those things that happened so slowly that I didn't realize, but most my plants had slowed to practically a growth halt. When I fixed the CO2 level they started growing like wildfire again, that combined with incinerating the algae holdouts with Excel & H2O2, got my tank back to a state of relative algae freedom. Distilled, it's really all about CO2, not just quantity injected, but dispersion also. 

In my case, it may also be a situation where there's so much light that maintaining a sufficient CO2 level is troublesome, unless I once again allow plants to grow across the surface. This is why I have decided to begin shortening the duration of one bank of lights. 



clwatkins10 said:


> Your tank is so lush and awesome lol


Thanks


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## cruiser99 (Dec 29, 2008)

imeridian said:


> Distilled, it's really all about CO2, not just quantity injected, but dispersion also.


Thanks for the quick response.

I think that this is my problem. I cannot get enough CO2. My water is fairly hard (10 KH) and I cannot get bellow PH 7 and I pump huge amount of CO2 in.

I also trying to delay the Excel thing because of the Vals I have that I really like. Finding the balance between CO2 and light is hard.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Your vals will survive an Excel treatment. They'll melt, but come back once you're done. Or you could pull them out and keep them elsewhere while you're treating your tank. Again, they may suffer a little, but you won't lose them.

imeridian, so good to hear your algae problems are gone! Your tank is so lush with plants. Amazing!


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## Characins (Feb 4, 2008)

Sweet mother of Jesus that tank is amazing!
I must now read this thread and all of the posts you have ever made!

Brb.


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## EdTheEdge (Jan 25, 2007)

XLNT info + Beautiful tank = 5 star thread rating

:thumbsup:

Thanks for sharing!!


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## justari (Feb 10, 2008)

Wow! What a comeback from the disaster. Your tank is lookin really nice.


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## oldpunk78 (Nov 1, 2008)

imeridian- not to take away from a really nice scape, but - for whatever reason, my eye is always wanting to look right here:









that red plant right there in the middle would look better somewhere else. that way you could take in the whole thing at once. idk - it might just be me...


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks everyone. 

Oldpunk, I appreciate the criticism. I don't really consider this to be a scape yet, but now that you point it out, it is rather 'smack dab' in the center, distractingly so. I still have my metric ton of manzanita soaking, and I do intend on quite a bit more rearranging once I have that ready.


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## jart (Jan 17, 2003)

imeridian said:


>


Excellent. That's the exact look that I want to achieve with my 72, once I get my CO2 and circulation issues sorted out.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Jart, I'm glad my tank can be an inspiration to you. 

As mentioned before I found some strands of my nemesis algae, originally they were in one location, but the next day I found some elsewhere in the tank. I removed the infected plants. I also reduced the period the second bank of lights run, again. Now the second bank of lights is on from 2pm to 6pm, the first bank remains noon to 8pm. 

I've removed the floated plants today, but just noticed yet more of my nemesis algae. I'm hoping the photo period reduction proves to be helpful, but it's looking like something is still screwed up. I may have to do yet another Excel & H2O2 "burn" of the tank. The infestation is directly in the path of the outflow from the CO2 reactor too! I am not pleased! 

I had decided to get Black Neon Tetras (Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi), but customer service was atrocious where I was going to buy them so I left in disgust. I then went to another non-chain fish store and found some amazingly attractive Head & Tail Light Tetras (Hemigrammus ocellifer). They had twelve, had been there for two weeks and been fed Hikari, so I purchased all of them. 










This photo from my quarantine tank doesn't do them justice, but it's still better than many I've seen online. I had always dismissed these fish as unattractive and boring, but thus far they're proving me to be quite wrong.


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## oldpunk78 (Nov 1, 2008)

i've always liked Hemigrammus ocellifer. nice choice.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

My gouramis put on their mating colors today and were "kissing."










I also have a thousand gourami fry swimming around, heh, yet again.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)




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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

The tank looks great! I see you still have some spirogyra in there though


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks. Yeah... still fighting little daily algae battles. I'm trying spot treatment (5ml Excel per strand) with removal following. If that doesn't work I'll hit the tank hard again. My thinking at this point is that I stirred something up when I did the big replanting, and there are little insurgents poking up here and there as a result. It's incredibly frustrating.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

imeridian said:


> Thanks. Yeah... still fighting little daily algae battles. I'm trying spot treatment (5ml Excel per strand) with removal following. If that doesn't work I'll hit the tank hard again. My thinking at this point is that I stirred something up when I did the big replanting, and there are little insurgents poking up here and there as a result. It's incredibly frustrating.


Your tank still looks amazing. The beauty of your tank is reason enough not to give up the good fight. I believe that if you perservere and remain patient, your tank will reach an equilibrium or balanced state and your algae will be a thing of the past.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Oh no! Not algae again. Your latest tank pictures look amazing! I am in love with all the colorful plants.


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## Kayen (Oct 14, 2007)

With that many plants you'd expect the algae to recede, but best of luck!
Nice pearling.
PS. The chatroom is dead without you.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I'm not going to give up, especially now that it seems I have been fairly effective at treatment, if not full prevention yet. 

Good news is that today there was minimal algae to be found, just a couple strands. The other good news it that the manzanita soaking tub wasn't nearly as dark this week as last. Perhaps in another two weeks or so it'll have leached enough tannins out to start working with.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

My emersed Polygonum sp. 'Kawagoeanum' sent up a flower stalk overnight!

Tank is overgrown again too:










You can see my two orange guppies... I'll be getting more. 

I'll be moving the head & tail light tetras into the tank this evening, whee!


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Looking good brother!


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## oldpunk78 (Nov 1, 2008)

holy crap! what is that - two weeks of growth?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Heh, yeah, about two weeks. 

Oh, so the Head & Tail Light tetras are in, one went AWOL sometime this week, so there are eleven in the tank now. 

My two guppies getting to know their new tank mates:


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Now there are nine H&T tetras in the tank. I found two floating, dead, yesterday afternoon. I can't recall any experience in the past where fish started dying after the two week quarantine, so I'm a bit worried about this becoming a trend. They looked perfectly healthy, aside from the deadness. At least they made their bodies convenient to find.

Still fighting off strands of spirogyra-esque algae here and there, nothing to really get upset about, but then perhaps I'm just a bit closer to not caring about it anymore. I really don't want to dump huge amounts of Excel & H2O2 into the tank again, so I'll just continue after it as if it were a maintenance item. I thought I had solved my problem, but apparently I haven't.

The manzanita soaking water was still uncomfortably dark this past Sunday, so I think I'll give it another month. I'm not really in a hurry, though the thirty gallon tub is getting a bit annoying by taking up so much space for so long.


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

Sad to hear about the fish 
The tank looks awesome though!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks CL, so far so good, still counting nine. 

Here's a photo of the tank from today, after having been trimming plants out for S&S.








I really need to do something about all that blyxa & sagittaria, heh.


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## oldpunk78 (Nov 1, 2008)

imeridian said:


> I really need to do something about all that blyxa & sagittaria, heh.


send it to me! lol 

your tank really changes as it grows out. looks good.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Wow, your growth is outstanding! Are you sure you trimmed and took it out? Or did it unpack itself and hop back in the tank????? Love this crazy growth.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

With that intense of pearling going on im gonna say the lighting is your main culprit (as if you didnt already know this). 

Now what im gonna say here may be hard to digest but stay with me. I too have become addicted to pearling because come on that means there growing like crazy and happy right. Recently I have been forced to run only 65w of pc with 36w of t5no over my 37g because of a bad bulb. My plants still pearl, it just doesnt look like a bubbler. Man I miss my other 65w!!! Back on track. Here is what I am suggesting to you. Unplug one of your bulbs. Either after killing the spyrogyra or during the treatment (wold make ousting it easier). Your tank already grows fast enough. So, less trimming AND no algea. Thats what im putting my money on. 

Ohh, I just realized your lighting would be lopsided then right?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Sewingalot, your post me LOL. 

Bsmith, 
There are two banks of lights with two 55/65 watt lamps in each bank. One bank runs for eight hours, the other for only four. 

I had the same configuration running both banks for eight hours without this algae. I'm not willing to decrease the lighting any more than I already have. That isn't an acceptable answer to the issue. When I say 'strands here and there' that is exactly what I mean, single strands. I think it's on the way out on its own at this point. I've pretty much stopped worrying about it.

It is incredibly amusing to me how my lighting is too much now, but when I got it almost everyone said it would be barely enough and I should get 6X55 watt AH supply kits. Things surely change, but that's one area I'm going to be obstinate about, 2x55w PC is not enough light.

Oh, and I tried the one bank of lights thing, back in the beginning... algae was worse, not better. It seems any efforts that impact the growing ability of the plants makes the algae worse. The only way, anecdotally speaking, to keep it at bay is to get the plants growing full throttle.

In retrospect I should have done another Excel/H2O2 treatment after I did the big rearranging... I definitely stirred something up, but considering I had been weeks without algae at that point it didn't seem necessary.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Makes sense. I forgot your setup is like 2 of mine lined up together (==) so if you did undo one bulb you would cut the light to half on one side (=~) with would be pointless. As long as you feel the algea is under control keep it up. I was just trying to offer my experience.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I appreciate your offering of advice.  

Just as a general information point, this is my fixture. I have the 48" Orbit, outlined as "C" on the diagram.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

I want your tank. Wanna trade???


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

You have made awesome progress imeridian and the tank looks fabulous. In nature you would likely be hard pressed to find totally algae free aquatic plants growing in totally pristine waters, so take solace in that. The hardest lesson I learned in this hobby, is that sometimes you just have to be patient if you are doing all the right things and before you know it you hit that elusive magical balance where everything just comes together. The stubborn algae that you thought would never go away, finally disappears without a trace, no where to be seen. 

Keep us updated on a fantastic looking tank and thanks for continuing to share your experience so we can all learn.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks Homer.

Agh, another head & tail light tetra found dead, floating this afternoon. That brings me to eight remaining. I don't understand why they're dropping off like they are, but they're starting to look like a bad choice. Maybe they're really Cardinal tetras in disguise, I've lost four of the twelve in the month I've had them. At this rate I don't think I'll be getting more.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

imeridian said:


> Thanks Homer.
> 
> Agh, another head & tail light tetra found dead, floating this afternoon. That brings me to eight. I don't understand why they're dropping off like they are, but they're starting to look like a bad choice. Maybe they're really Cardinal tetras in disguise, I've lost four of the 12 in the month I've had them. At this rate I don't think I'll be getting more.


Sorry to hear that 
Are you getting the fish from the same supplier?? I am thinking bad stock. Another thing, although you may not want to do this, is just to try to rule out what the issue may be, get some super hardy fish like zebra danios, whitecloud minnows, and, or blackskirt tetras, just to see how well they do. IME, these fish are extremely tolerant of water parameter swings(PH,ammonia spikes or anything else) that would kill most fish. However, if those hardy fish kick the bucket also, it really raises the question of what may be going on at a microscopic level in the tank(possible parasites).


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yes, all twelve of the H&T light tetras came from the same place.

All the other fish in the tank are fine as can be, it's just these tetras seem less hardy than they're supposed to be. They spent two weeks at the LFS, then another two weeks in my q-tank. One went missing at the end of quarantine, then two died within two days of the transfer to the 75g, and now this one. This last fish, presumably, was a loner... so he or his buddies knew something was amiss. That may have been the case with the other two, but given the newness some odd behavior was to be expected at the time. 

I'm simply not accustomed to fish randomly dying once they're in the 75g, quite frankly. I've lost some tetras due to attrition/aging out, but never fish out of quarantine like this.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Co2?????


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

If they can't handle a little CO2 they might as well all die right now. If the numbers fall any more they're all out, I'm not going to put up with that crap. 

We're not going to find the cause, I'm not asking for help in that regard because we'd all be wasting our effort.

I was trying to decide last night if I should get more of these tetras or start another school of something else. They're certainly making the decision easier.

Oh, and BSmith, you might want to check your keyboard, the question key seems to be sticking. :flick:


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Well then crank it up and let em' eat.


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

imeridian said:


> Yes, all twelve of the H&T light tetras came from the same place.
> 
> All the other fish in the tank are fine as can be, it's just these tetras seem less hardy than they're supposed to be. * They spent two weeks at the LFS, then another two weeks in my q-tank.* One went missing at the end of quarantine, then two died within two days of the transfer to the 75g, and now this one. This last fish, presumably, was a loner... so he or his buddies knew something was amiss. That may have been the case with the other two, but given the newness some odd behavior was to be expected at the time.
> 
> I'm simply not accustomed to fish randomly dying once they're in the 75g, quite frankly. I've lost some tetras due to attrition/aging out, but never fish out of quarantine like this.


That is quite interesting, it really leads me to believe that there must be some kind of "transfer shock" or "acclimitization" issue at play. I assume you are drip acclimitizing them. Just out of curiosity what are your tank KH, PH, and GH levels vs the quarantine tank KH, PH, and GH levels. Some fish seem to acclimitize better and just seem more tolerant of any KH, PH, and GH swings, which may explain why the other fish are not effected in the same way. 

Just my 2 cents.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Parameters are the same between tanks, but I dripped them anyway. Thanks for trying to help, but I'm not new at this. I don't know why they are dying and we're not going to figure it out here no matter how hard we try. I don't want help with figuring out this mystery, I'm just reporting the frustration that it has happened. Take the mention of the dead fish as a status update and nothing more.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I found a localish breeder, so I finally have a complete school of Sterbai cories, and a pair of apistos. They're presently in the q-tank. 

The photos are of poor quality due to the very low-light conditions of the q-tank.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

nice find!


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

I wish my high quality photos looked half that good! Beautiful cories.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Heh, thanks  I guess they aren't as bad as I thought they were. I had to crank the ISO setting up to 1600 to be able to get even a semi-sharp photo. 

The new fish appear to all be doing quite well and they've figured out that the stuff coming from the sky is food.


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## Fish for Brains (Mar 9, 2009)

imeridian said:


> The new fish appear to all be doing quite well and they've figured out that the stuff coming from the sky is food.


"The sky is falling! The sky is falling! And... it's delicious!"

Your tank is a beautiful inspiration for the 75 gallon I'm in the process of currently trying to piece together and stressing way too much over. Keep up the great work.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Those apistos are beautiful! I can't wait to see how they do in your tank. I gave a couple of apistos a try, but I think my water is just too hard for them. Maybe I'll try them again one day, but until then, I'll enjoy yours!


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## organic sideburns (Dec 22, 2005)

great fish selection! plants look healthy, great set up!


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## cah925 (May 18, 2007)

beautiful pics of the Apisto


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## Pinto (Jan 23, 2009)

Wow!
envious of your apistos.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks everyone, I'm quite pleased with my apistos.

I got the pair and the cories from The Amazon Basement in York, PA. They're a husband & wife breeding fish in, surprise, their basement.  It is tremendously impressive.

I've been trying to thin out the plants in my 75g, and I found a java fern monster hiding underneath a ton of stems:









I also got a package of anubias nana 'petite' from Rountreesj today, postal service goobered that up pretty well, but they show no worse for the trip taking a week instead of a couple days. 









You'd have thought I'd have figured out what to do with them by now, especially with all the extra time the postal service gave me, hah, but no... d'oh.


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## moogoo (Dec 7, 2007)

Awesome fish, awesome plants. look forward to seeing what you're doing with those anubias petite. I should have gotten those instead of the nana that i have. Doh!


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## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)




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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I moved the Sterbai cories into the 75g ahead of schedule the other night, because the apistos spawned. I now have lots of free swimming little cockatoo apisto fry in the 10g q-tank! 

That's the big update, news, really. It's awesome to have so many cories in the 75g now. 

Here are some photos, I ripped out the big mass of tall sagitarria, exposing the enchanted forest of blyxa japonica roots. I'll need to take care of that next. 









Enchanted Blyxa forest...









My adult Sterbai that just got eight new buddies. 









My male apisto, now a daddy. 









A shot of a head & tail light tetra, with shimmer on the scales.









...and finally, from the 23rd, slightly in disarray as a result of the sagitarria removal. Oh, and I added two more "oh, yeah! I'm orange man!" guppies.


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## ZooTycoonMaster (Jan 2, 2008)

Woahhhhhh you need to give some of that Blyxa to me It'll make my current Blyxa look like a dwarf


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## jargonchipmunk (Dec 8, 2008)

wowzers those apistos are gorgeous! gots to get me some of that!


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## CLASSIC (Feb 25, 2009)

Nice tank, wow thats a jungle  :thumbsup:


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Man, your apistos just could not control themselves! It's great they spawned already. I guess you don't have to worry as to whether they get along together?

Why can everyone grow Blyxa but me?

Cories look great! I'm glad that one is happy to have some buddies to hang around with now.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Heh, well, I'll have plenty of blyxa left over when I do get around to replanting what is there! 

Here's the mommy apisto and her fry:









I think I'm going to get some furcata rainbows as the final school of fish for my 75g, I found a local source, they're beautiful and healthy (looking).  I'm going to water change my holding tank and then go back to get them. Heh, so the MTS begins!


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Great shot of the mom and her fry! Looks like you may have more than extra Blyxa on your hands! :smile:

The rainbows will be pretty in the tank. How many do you want to get?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks, it's not easy taking a photo of such a tiny thing in such a dimly lit tank, lol.

I was leaning toward about 14 of the furcata rainbows... to account for any possible losses along the way and still have a decent grouping.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

14 would be great! I like it when fish like that are bought in nice size groups instead of just a handful. Makes them happier, too.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I got my Furcata Rainbows!










They're in my 25g holding tank (now q-tank #2), I decided to get 16, taking a bit more than half of what they had. So far I'm very pleased with them. Who knows, I might go back and get the rest in a couple weeks... if they still have them.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

Someone's enjoying his tanks again! :hihi: It's great to see your enthusiasm again! I can tell you're having fun!

Beautiful fish and a really nice number of them, too. I can't wait to see them in your main tank and to watch them grow. Let me know what their behavior is like. Who knows, with such a lush tank and that many rainbows, you may end up with some fry one day!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Yes, I'm excited about the tank and hobby again. I have new and interesting fish, have new plants, and have been able to share plants from my tank with others, all that makes it much more pleasant.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

imeridian said:


> I got my Furcata Rainbows!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Sooooooooooo cute! I love them. They will look awesome in your 75 gallon. How are they fairing?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Indeed, they're sort of like insta-favorites for me. 

They look to be doing quite well. They're all very eager to eat flake food, though react to the hikari micro pellets with a "wth are those?!" type behavior.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

imeridian said:


> Indeed, they're sort of like insta-favorites for me.
> 
> They look to be doing quite well. They're all very eager to eat flake food, though react to the hikari micro pellets with a "wth are those?!" type behavior.


They are quite catching. I am glad to hear my CPDs aren't the only ones that react that way toward micro pellets! I can't wait to see these babies in with your others in the 75!


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

You may have just convinced me to get a school of Furcatas. They are such a cool little fish.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Bad news is that it looks like the rainbows have ich, figures... I did get them from that type of LFS. I noticed it last evening and began treating today with quick-cure and increased temperature. At least it is a very mild case thus far, yay for quarantine though. 

I also allowed the CO2 cylinder to empty... again, geeze. I guess I forgot to check the gauge last week at the water change. Funny though, it lasted two months almost to the day... I filled it last on January 30th, will be getting it filled tomorrow on the 30th, hah. I think I'm going to take some measurements and see if I can fit a 20lb tank, filling every two months is an annoyance that I've had enough of. 

I did get one of those Hagen elite mini filters the other night, I think I'm going to give CO2 misting another shot.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

You're blowing through CO2 way too fast. My 10lbs cylinder lasts close to a year on my 75g, and that's at 30ppm or higher. Sounds like you had a leak somewhere.

Sorry about the ich. I hope they make a speedy recovery!

I do not like QuickCure, though. I did not find it very successful. I now use Rid·Ich+ by Kordon. It works much better.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

It's a 5lb cylinder, 2-3 months has been the norm for years, there is no leak, to expect my 5lb cylinder would last twice as long is wishful thinking. 

Quick-cure & rid-ich+ are the same chemicals, though perhaps the concentrations are different. The instructions on the quick-cure bottle will only result in failure to eradicate the parasite, that perhaps is the cause of many troubles with it. In any case, quick-cure is what I have and it is what I'm using. This is the first time I've had to treat for ich. I will keep rid-ich+ in mind should this treatment prove unsuccessful. 

I should have known better than to buy fish from that LFS, but they looked good and it seemed better to get them locally than order them online. Time will tell if I've made a $50 mistake.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

*Major Developments*

I installed a Hagen Elite Mini internal filter the other day, been running a mist again. The noise is a bit annoying, but I understand if I diffuse it slightly prior to hitting the impeller the noise will be reduced. I'll give that a try sometime this weekend. I need to take the PVC CO2 reactor out of the filter line, then the 2217 should be able to push the mist all over the tank, not just half way. 

The Furcata Rainbows are doing very well. I lost one to what I would call fatal curiosity, I found him wedged into the venturi intake of the powerhead. The sad irony is that I found him when I went to attach a piece of airline so the venturi would actually aerate. If I had done that immediately he'd probably still be alive. I did lose another to a secondary bacterial/fungal infection, it was rapid onset, he was dead within a couple hours of me noticing it. So, as of now, there are fourteen of the sixteen purchased still alive and well. I treated with quickcure for three days, water changed, then started a course of Melafix. All of the ich spots were gone by day three, but I'm going to do a second course of quickcure in another day or two, to ensure erradication of the parasite. They'll remain in observational quarantine for another two weeks after all signs of illness are gone and all treatments have been completed, so four weeks total. They all _look_ to be healthy now and are eager to eat flake, micro pellets, and micro wafers. I made the mistake of feeding them blood worms the other day... I thought I'd need to do some form of fish Heimlich maneuver. :icon_eek:

Not much to be said about the apistos, they're still in their 10g q-tank, now nursery tank. The fry are getting decently large, for fry, they're still eating Hikari first bites. Mommy apisto seems especially picky about food, I'm not sure I've seen her actually eat anything. She must be eating something though, perhaps she's just food shy. She's also presenting to the male... again, and still golden yellow. 

I was browsing craigslist the other night... and now am the proud owner of a lightly used.....









The bulb assortment is interesting, but will do for now. It's a four bulb fixture, but came with extra bulbs. There are two 10,000K Current bulbs, a 6500K GE Eco-Lux, and a Giesemann Aqua Blue+; also provided were two Giesemann Actinic+ bulbs. It came with the legs and acrylic shield, all for an amazing price! 

The blyxa monster has been defeated slightly, but there is still so much that needs a new home, wow. 

Here's a photo from earlier today, prior to trimming out some plants I had sold:









I can foresee having nightmares about that blyxa soon.

I'm less grumpy now too, sorry for earlier.


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## CL (Mar 13, 2008)

Holy cow that is overgrown!


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Pretty.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

I have been searching for a good deal on a t5 unit myself. Unfortunately most in STL are till using their 20w t-8's! Great find.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

imeridian said:


> I'm less grumpy now too, sorry for earlier.


Whew! I'm glad to hear that! I thought you were really mad at me for something so I thought it best that I just stay out of your way for awhile. :icon_eek:

You are going to LOVE that TEK fixture! That's what I have, and it really puts out the light.

The bulbs you got sounds like the original owner got it with lights for a saltwater tank and then replaced the bulbs.

Any idea of what photo period you're going to try to use as a start?

I'd love to take some of that blyxa off your hands (only as a favor, of course ), but for some reason, I cannot get it to grow in my 75g. The torpedo barbs love to nibble on the tips which pulls it up. I keep planting it, they keep pulling it up, and the blyxa looses out.

So I'm hoping to try some in my 29g tank, but only after I'm through growing BBA and Clado. I can just see blyxa covered with black fuzz on the edges! But who knows, maybe it can be a new fad?

Too bad algae isn't a desired plant in the tank. Otherwise, I'd have a real winner in my 29g! :hihi:

It's great to hear the rainbows are doing better!


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## Naja002 (Oct 12, 2005)

imeridian said:


> Yes, I'm excited about the tank and hobby again. I have new and interesting fish, have new plants, and have been able to share plants from my tank with others, all that makes it much more pleasant.


I haven't gotten updated. I know you went through so more changes, but glad to hear the quote......:thumbsup:


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

clwatkins10 said:


> Holy cow that is overgrown!


I promise that by the end of the year the tank will have some hardscape and a more refined appearance. The jungle though, heh, I think that's innate to anything I do. 



sewingalot said:


> Pretty.


Thanks, as always, your support is great! 



bsmith782 said:


> I have been searching for a good deal on a t5 unit myself. Unfortunately most in STL are till using their 20w t-8's! Great find.


Yeah, I was flabbergasted when I saw this Tek on craigslist. I was only trying to find a good deal on a used 10g for another quarantine tank. 



Complexity said:


> The bulbs you got sounds like the original owner got it with lights for a saltwater tank and then replaced the bulbs.
> 
> Any idea of what photo period you're going to try to use as a start?


Yeah, he had it on a 75g FOWLR. I took out the actinic+ bulbs, but the color is still sort of meh. I'll need to get some of those Aquaflora bulbs to bring me back to the red-enhancing loveliness that was the GE 9325K. 

I put the fixture on the tank lastnight, so today is the first day using it. I think I'm going to stick with the current photo-period, eight hours for one bank, with a four hours burst of the second. Right now the outer lights are on the longer period, though perhaps I should change that? 



Naja002 said:


> I haven't gotten updated. I know you went through so more changes, but glad to hear the quote......:thumbsup:


It's a roller coaster...


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

imeridian said:


> I put the fixture on the tank lastnight, so today is the first day using it. I think I'm going to stick with the current photo-period, eight hours for one bank, with a four hours burst of the second. Right now the outer lights are on the longer period, though perhaps I should change that?


That's pretty close to my photo-period. I've pushed my 2 bulb timing up to 10 hours while lowering the 4 bulb burst to 5 hours. I also shifted when the burst is on in relation to the entire timing. I now have the burst coming on 1 hour after the first lights come on, and then they go off 4 hours before lights out. I used to have it more in the middle. But then I noticed that the plants didn't start pearling really good until the extra burst, but they kept pearling after those extra lights were back off. So this way, I have a shorter burst photo-period, but the plants are pearling longer. So far, this seems to be working.

I have wondered the same thing about which 2 bulbs to use when only running 2 bulbs. The outside ones or the inside ones?

On one hand, the outside ones should give more coverage overall, but with 1 bulb being 65K and the other 10K, that would mean that only the front or back would get the better growing bulb.

So I've thought that maybe I should be using the middle lights for the 10 hours, and just burst with the outer ones? That puts both bulbs more centralized, but the overall coverage would be less in the front and back.

Seems a silly question, but it's one I've wondered about a number of times.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Does a 10000k or a 6500k grow plants better?



Complexity said:


> That's pretty close to my photo-period. I've pushed my 2 bulb timing up to 10 hours while lowering the 4 bulb burst to 5 hours. I also shifted when the burst is on in relation to the entire timing. I now have the burst coming on 1 hour after the first lights come on, and then they go off 4 hours before lights out. I used to have it more in the middle. But then I noticed that the plants didn't start pearling really good until the extra burst, but they kept pearling after those extra lights were back off. So this way, I have a shorter burst photo-period, but the plants are pearling longer. So far, this seems to be working.
> 
> I have wondered the same thing about which 2 bulbs to use when only running 2 bulbs. The outside ones or the inside ones?
> 
> ...


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

bsmith782 said:


> Does a 10000k or a 6500k grow plants better?


Heck if I know! :tongue:

I think the 6.5K (or something around there) is supposed to have colors the plants light while the 10K is more pleasing to the human eye. So the idea is to mix the two. Or something like that.

I don't have 6.5K exactly, but I didn't want to look up what I have. But I just remembered it's listed on page 1 of my journal. So I have two Giesemann 54W 11000K Aquablue Plus and two 54W 6000K Midday Sun lamps. So 6K and 11K is more accurate.


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## Karackle (Dec 11, 2007)

Wow this tank is gorgeous and so are those fish! They had furcata rainbows at my LFS a couple of weeks ago, now I wish I had! And your apistos are stunningly beautiful they look like swimming fireballs! very cool. And congratulations on the spawn, looks like the babies are doing well  

I dig the "hey i'm orange" guppies too, they make a really beautiful contrast against the green leaves. 

The whole image with the colors of the fish and leaves works really well together in my very humble opinion....did I mention i like your tank? :hihi:


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## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)

bsmith782 said:


> Does a 10000k or a 6500k grow plants better?





Complexity said:


> Heck if I know! :tongue:
> 
> I think the 6.5K (or something around there) is supposed to have colors the plants light while the 10K is more pleasing to the human eye. So the idea is to mix the two. Or something like that.
> 
> I don't have 6.5K exactly, but I didn't want to look up what I have. But I just remembered it's listed on page 1 of my journal. So I have two Giesemann 54W 11000K Aquablue Plus and two 54W 6000K Midday Sun lamps. So 6K and 11K is more accurate.


Like it has been said countless times, color temperature doesn't have much to do with growing ability. It's the actual spectrum that matters. One brand of 10KK bulbs may grow plants with exceptional growth rates whereas another 10KK may not grow them as well. Color temperature only affects what the plants/fish look like to your eye.

If your primary goal is growth, look at the spectral data first, then the color temperature. If your goal is esthetics, look at the color temperature and brand then the spectrum.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Thats what I thought. Maybe Vicki knew something we didnt...



epicfish said:


> Like it has been said countless times, color temperature doesn't have much to do with growing ability. It's the actual spectrum that matters. One brand of 10KK bulbs may grow plants with exceptional growth rates whereas another 10KK may not grow them as well. Color temperature only affects what the plants/fish look like to your eye.
> 
> If your primary goal is growth, look at the spectral data first, then the color temperature. If your goal is esthetics, look at the color temperature and brand then the spectrum.


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## Complexity (Jan 30, 2008)

No, just the opposite. I don't know enough to know what I don't know. If that makes any sense.

Epic, thanks for the clarification. I realize that I'm using the color temperature as the name of the lamps (like calling a T5 a 10K) which is not only wrong, but can be very confusing in a conversation like this one. I appreciate having it sorted out so I can better understand what is what when discussing lighting.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks Karackle! 

I provoked my Head & Tail light tetras into school today, was spot treating some of the lingering nemesis algae. The Tek seems to have (surprise) spurred it. I should probably raise the fixture higher or limit the photoperiod, but for now I'm letting it grow so I can more easily spot treat & prune away. 


























I switched things around a little bit and I'm now running the middle bank of lights for the full eight hour photoperiod, with the outside bulbs the four hour burst. 

I'm really starting to like the Hagen Elite Mini. It was a bit too noisy until I bought a $4 ceramic airstone at Petsmart and cut it to size, drilled a hole in the side of the filter, and hooked it up as a pre-diffuser. It still makes noise, but I think it's low enough that it'd otherwise have been masked my the fan on my old light fixture. In any case, the misting is amazing! I'm really glad I didn't go inline needle wheel. I haven't completely decided to stay with the HEM, but will probably remove the old CO2 reactor in another week or two once I'm sure.

The Furcatas have completed the medication courses for their ich treatment. They're in the 'cool down' period now, literally cooling down from the elevated temperatures, but they seem quite happy. There are males and females doing little dances with each other, heh, maybe I'll have baby furcatas?

I'm about to move the apistos up to the 75g, the mother is getting fairly violent against the first set of fry now that she's guarding yet more eggs. I don't know if they're just hiding well or if they've been mostly eaten. I'll probably move the parents within a couple days of the next batch becoming free swimming, not really sure yet how to handle that.


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Beautiful, as always. You hide that algae well. The guppy wants to be apart of the group of head and tail lights. :hihi: I am looking forward to seeing the Furcatas being added to your tank. Is the hagen elite mini causing all that pearling? So pretty! Glad to hear the Furcatas are getting in the "mood." Just wait until they go to the paradise tank.


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## ZooTycoonMaster (Jan 2, 2008)

If the Hagen Elite causes that much pearling, it must be too much for a 10 gallon:hihi:


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I'd say the uber-pearling is more related to the Tek than the HEM, but the HEM surely helps. I don't think it would be too much for a 10g, it all comes down to how much CO2 you're feeding into it.

Thankfully the algae is fairly minimal, so there really isn't much hiding to do.  I do think I need some invertebrate help, though, in dealing with some of the lingering nastiness. 

I think I'll keep the furcatas under quarantine for another two weeks, but after that, provided they're all healthy, they'll be moved up to the 75g.


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## waterfaller1 (Jul 5, 2006)

Great tank & fish!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks Carole.

I have some bad news though... 
...my male apisto is _missing_. 

I've been looking for him pretty much all day, even tore out half the plants to find him, but there's no sign, on the floor anywhere in my office or in the tank. He's too big to just call dead and leave it be, so I'll need to pull more (pretty much all) of the plants out to verify his status. 

He appeared to be totally fine yesterday, but today the female is just swimming all by herself, all around, as if she's looking for him.

I'm seriously bummed.


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## cah925 (May 18, 2007)

I'm not sure about Apistos, but my Kribs did something similar when they spawned. One of the parents would disappear for days. I was also very worried something happened. I now know that they were guarding the eggs. This may be the case in your tank with the Apistos. I would leave it alone for a few days and see if he reappears with fry in tow.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Maybe... but the mother was the one that took care of them when they spawned (twice) in the 10g quarantine. It's a nice thought though, I hope that's what happened, but my faith has dwindled significantly after searching for him all day.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I just found him dead. At least I was able to find him without having to rip out everything. :frown:

No visible signs of illness, looked perfectly fine except for the deadness. 

I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, everybody else appears just fine. 

I guess they do just... die sometimes. :icon_frow



**sigh**


The upside is that I have _at least_ six juvenile apistos from their first round of breeding. They're ~1/2" or so, maybe. I'm not sure what happened to the second batch of fry, they're either very good at hiding or filtered.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Status update:

The rainbow fish completed their two weeks of post ich treatment quarantine and were moved into the 75g today.  

I only counted twelve though, two appear to have vanished.

I'm still really bummed about the daddy apisto, but I did see quite a few more juveniles today in the 10g breeding tank. I also, making my day, noticed my very first baby cherry shrimp (in my 10g shrimp tank that I probably should start a thread for someday). 

The blyxa monster is gone! It gives me back 1/3 of my tank, I'll get some pics up here soon once I have the remaining blyxa replanted -- there are a lot of floating plants right now.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

*Furcata Rainbows*


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## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)

Furcata rainbows = hot.


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## Voozle (Mar 22, 2009)

Are those rainbows by any chance swimming around in the void where your blyxa once relaxed on his throne? Gorgeous fish, I really like their eyes! Sorry about the losses, what tank were they in that they were able to disappear?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Heh, yeah, the void where the blyxa monster was. 

They were in the 25H, with glass cover. I'd swear that I counted fourteen just the other day, but who knows... they're quick little buggers.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

No more blyxa monster!


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

Such pretty fish! Holy, moly! Where is the blyxa? Who ever bought your monster got a great deal. What are the plans for the tank without all those stems?


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## moogoo (Dec 7, 2007)

even w/o the blyxa monster it still looks like a jungle! but it's so lush


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

*I finally added the manzanita!*





































I still need to return the plants I had to tear out to make room, some of which are floating, the rest are in tubs, but that's tomorrow's task.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

Your plants look great. But whats up with their placement. Please dont take this the wrong way but I just dont see any structure to your scape. What are you going for?


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## moogoo (Dec 7, 2007)

looks sexy. look forward to the next steps and the introduction of a "foreground"...

I'm sure your fish will enjoy the open area for swimming...


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

sewingalot said:


> Such pretty fish! Holy, moly! Where is the blyxa? Who ever bought your monster got a great deal. What are the plans for the tank without all those stems?


Thanks! 

I sold off most of the blyxa, to several people, heh.  Plans... oh man... I never really know, which is part of why I like my tank, it's an adventure. Heh, I even find stuff like giant monster java ferns hidden for a year in the jungle. This is like an archaeological dig right now, uncovering stuff long hidden. 

As you can see, it didn't take long for the tank to "overtake" the void where the blyxa was.


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## epicfish (Sep 11, 2006)

bsmith782 said:


> Your plants look great. But whats up with their placement. Please dont take this the wrong way but I just dont see any structure to your scape. What are you going for?





imeridian said:


> I still need to return the plants I had to tear out to make room, some of which are floating, the rest are in tubs, but that's tomorrow's task.


Reading comprehension?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

bsmith782 said:


> Your plants look great. But whats up with their placement. Please dont take this the wrong way but I just dont see any structure to your scape. What are you going for?


You people and your obsessiscapes...  Not everyone wants a perfectly manicured glass box full of mediocrity. 

I'm not going for anything. They're just there. It's a work in progress.

In any case, it was epic endeavor just to get the manzanita in there, it's much larger than it may appear. I managed to get it placed and get the water changed just in time for the lights to go out for the evening. I just clicked the lights on a bit ago to get a couple photos to report my progress. This is a major development for the tank, the manzanita has been soaking since before Christmas. Placing plants into a "scape" can wait.

Anyway, thanks. Patience is in abundance over here, just give it time.


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

No, just a fervidly throw together one. 



imeridian said:


> You people and your obsessiscapes...  Not everyone wants a perfectly manicured glass box full of mediocrity.
> 
> I'm not going for anything. They're just there. It's a work in progress.
> 
> ...


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## bsmith (Jan 8, 2007)

That would just make it more confusing.



epicfish said:


> Reading comprehension?


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## oldpunk78 (Nov 1, 2008)

i think this the first time i've ever seen the back of imeridian's tank, lol. 










that manzanita will look really good once you get your plants placed the way you want. are going to add some type of shorter foreground so we will be able to continue enjoying the manzanita?


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

LOL... in my defense, the photo in the 1st post shows the black background. 

Yes, I have some dwarf hair grass, HC, and UG I could choose from. I'm leaning toward the DHG.


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## Dollface (Sep 30, 2008)

Hair grass would go insane in your tank. Do it!


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## sewingalot (Oct 12, 2008)

that manzanita looks smexy with the guppies!


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Thanks.  Hopefully I can find some way to arrange the plants so the wood doesn't completely disappear in another week.


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## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Oh, I took some photos the other day, forgot to post them.


















Julius needs to play some Barry White for Ethel...

and for good measure, my shrimp tank...


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## Dollface (Sep 30, 2008)

imeridian said:


> Julius needs to play some Barry White for Ethel...


She's gonna blow Cap'n! 
It's 3 am, I officially get to be silly.


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## Gatekeeper (Feb 20, 2007)

Closed by OP's request.


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