Pepere
Members-
Posts
2,392 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
6 -
Feedback
0%
Pepere last won the day on February 22
Pepere had the most liked content!
Recent Profile Visitors
2,261 profile views
Pepere's Achievements
-
Well, it is a distinction without a difference sort of. I mean if either the plants or the beneficial bacteria colony are able to handle fully the livestocks bioload being produced, All is good. Fish poo is very rich in beneficial bacteria and seeds a tank far more reliably than bacteria in a bottle products. How long have you had fish in your tank? How many fish, how many gallons? How long have you had fish in the tank?
-
If you dont add bacteria in a bottle product, , your tank will still cycle…. The spores are airborne in the air we breathe. They are in the ground , and in the potting soil in your houseplants. The very best such bacteria in a bottle products can do is save you a tiny amount of time verses just adding ammonia to your tank and waiting… My experience with such products have not convinced me they save any measurable amount of time. As to how can you tell if your tank is cycled? Yes, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and some nitrates, assuming you placed an ammonia source in the tank, either ammonia or food that rotted and caused ammonia to form, and no nitrates weee in the tank, does indicate you have both forms of bacteria in the tank…. But, the question remains as to how much ammonia can the tank process in a given amount of time? Does it take 24 hours or does it take a week to process 2 ppm ammonia challenge to 0 ammonia and 0 nitrates? If it takes 24 hours, your beneficial bacteria can handle a reasonable bioload. If it takes a week, not so much…
-
I agree with the cories. They are so good at stirring up the bottom Re suspending detritus to give the filter another chance to clean it up…
-
Connecting a Tidal 55 to an undergravel filter, 29 gallon tank
Pepere replied to madmark285's topic in General Discussion
My take is that cleaning substrate with an Under Gravel Filter is akin to cleaning out a canister filter. Yes you are removing some nutrients from the substrate that plants can use, but you are also removing waste organics that algae thrive on as well. And plants can do just fine fir the most part with water column fertilization and inert substrate. -
Another week, another photo… mostly for myself so I can document progression for myself… If you look closely in the left rear you can just barely make out a new addition behind the Corymobosa Compacta. It should look pretty good as it fills out and gets height. sneaking around the corner to get a better view until it grows.
-
I always marvel when I read of someone having spent money to get duckweed. In the past 2 years I have never bought it but have worked at eliminating it from a tank or two at a time at least 4 times… once was the incredibly pernicious super tiny version of it…Wolfweed iirc…or wolfia or some such name…. The stuff just mysteriously shows up in a tank…. It is almost enough to think the stuff mysteriously spontaneously generates itself into life…. Or floats in on air currents… I wonder how anyone can sleep at night, having charged money to someone selling it to them….
-
I never saw any bacteria in a bottle product give any results that convinced me the purchase price was worthwhile. i tried multiple bottles of multiple products. I have spent my last dollar on such products.
-
Your top tanks are higher. Do you have flourescent lights overhead?
-
It sound like it is just noise then. If there is nothing conductive in the tank… Or it could be the meter itself. But I am very much a fan of titanium ground probes and regularly tested GFCI circuits… and if the GFCI ever trips work to determine why. They can trip from artifact as well… Sometimes the feed wire going in to the GFCI needs to double loop through an RF ferrite core choke…
-
As a general rule unplugging one item at a time while testing flow to ground is a good way to determine offending item. and ensure meter is set for ac voltage of course… current can flow on a ground wire itself and be both ac and dc current…. Can be due to induced voltages from inductive kr capacitive loads near wires… last night I pulled a spare grounding probe still in the package. On the package it specified to ensure outlet powering aquarium is protected by a GFCI circuit…
-
How are you measuring the voltage leakage? Is it voltage leaking to ground? All of my tanks have ground probes in them and are powered by GFCI protected circuits and I trip and reset the GFCI on the first Saturday of every month after ensuring that tripping has shut the circuit off. In all of my tanks I actively work to minimize energized conductors submerged in the water. The only cutrrent carrying conductors in my tank are for the heaters, and those are energized and de energized by an Inkbird controller so they are not energized all of the time.. Canister filters do have conducters near water yet they are isolated by a plastic wall around the impeller, and while I havent opened the powerhead on them, I would hope that they are well bedded in epoxy… I have had more conductors immersed in water before, ie internal filters, hobs, powerheads, but I am much happier with them gone now… In my opinion everybody should have both a grounding probe in the tank and the electricity to the tank should be GFCI protected. And you should trip and reset that circuit every month. Tripping it exercises the mechanism to prevent it from freezing in place, and if either it fails to shut off or can not be rest lets you know you should replace it. If you only have GFCI, you could have an exposed hot conductor in the tank with no issue to trip the circuit… until a path to ground makes itself available. Now from my perspective Zi am much happier having a grounding probe providing that path to ground to trip the GFCI circuit instead of current passing through my body to a ground source.. If you only have a grounding probe, the circuit breaker will not trip until you exceed its rating… Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 watts. It is possible to suffer a fatal electrocution at under a watt iirc. For those that do not know, A GFCI is designed to trip when the amperage returning on the neutral terminal is more than 4 milliamps lower than the amperage leaving the hot terminal…. 0.004 amps time 120 volts is about half a watt… To those relying on a tingle when you have your arm in a tank to alert you to check for faulty equipment, be advised that the threshold for possible fatal electrocution is not a lot higher than the threshold of feeling that tingle… Another reason for a ground probe in addition to a gfci circuit is that power can be leaking out a faulty hot terminal at one sideof the tank and go through a faulty neutral at the otherside, and the gfci doesnt care. It only cares about electricity not coming back through the neutral .. stick one hand near the hot, and another near the neutral and lazy electricity that always wants to find the easiest way home might find your electrolyte filled body a more suitable and hospitable path home… Murphy is a clever fellow at finding new ways to ruin ones day… Former ABYC certified marine electrician and instructor. Former Paramedic
-
One of our members on the forum did some testing of the ammonia test strips. I had reported finding the reported ammonia levels with the test strips being substantially lower than api test readings. I had purposely dosed water with 4 ppm ammonia using Fritz Fishless fuel ammonia. The API was reporting consistent with dosing and the co op test strips was reading much lower. Bottle 1 of the API test kit is apparently a base to raise the ph of the test water so all ammonium will convert tofree ammonia to give a total ammonia level. when the member, and I forget exactly who it was, but ifmemory serves me correctly it was @Biotope Biologist,tested a sample with the co op test strip that had base sufficient to convert all ammonium to free ammonium iirc the two tests correlated well with each other and with dosed ammonia. That evidence tends to argue the Co op test measures free ammonia and not total ammonia. The problem is that the amounts listed on the label and the advice is for total ammonia and not free ammonia… I havent heard if the co op ever followed up on this question.. all of the above is from memory of the thread, and at 58 years I am starting to trust my memory less than I used to. For myself, because the API test results correlate nicely with water dosed with a known amount of Ammonia it is the one I trust and use.
-
Have you measured phosphate levels in your tank water and source water?
-
Yes. I originally set up this tank with ugf plates. I have converted the air riser tubes to use co op Easy Flow kits. I have an inch or so of Safe T Sorb on top of the plates capped by 2-3 inches of Black Diamond Blasting Sand. My main filtration is by a Fluval 207 with a spray bar for better mechanical filtration and water flow and to use an inline co2 diffuser. Once I went with co2 it just made sense to me to have better flow to keep the bubbles in suspension.. the ugf plates provide nice back up biofiltration via a simple battery back up air pumpin case of an extended power outage. In event of an extended power outage I can simply give the canister filter a thorough cleaning out to reduce ammonia spike from decaying dead beneficial bacteria and allow it to reseed while the ugt continues to maintain tank. It is a nice redundancy.. I also have a suction cup mounted double sponge filter in the tank. I have it therein order to have a fully cycled sponge filter on hand for back up use in a quarantine tank.