Pepere

Yes, then they dislodge and free float in the water column…. Until they snag on something…

Plantlets typically go with the flow until they snag on something like a rock or driftwood. The roots than tend to attach to the rock or driftwood.

It might like some more potassium… As to gluing it to a rock, it doesnt have to be a big decorative rock. You can glue it to a smallish rock, just big enough to weigh it down reliably. You can submerge the majority of the rock under the substrate so it isnt as visible. To my eye it looks better than a metal plant weight.

Or test your water for current nitrates and subtract that from what you are dosing… 5 pumps “adds” 15 ppm to 10 gallons, it doesnt “raise the tank to” 15 ppm…. If you start with 15 ppm, 5 pumps raises the level to 30 ppm… 5 pumps per 10 gallons also raises potassium about 10 ppm and phosphate 0.8 ppm and Iron about 0.5 ppm…. That iron level is getting to the upper range of a weekly dose. Using Easy Green to dose a tank to these sort of levels with weekly 50% water changes every week on a larger tank is a vey expensive way to fertilize your tank. I have switched to Dry salts to estimative Index my CO2 tanks weekly, and use Easy Green fir my non CO2 injected tanks that see lower fert levels and less water change. balancing convenience vs cost…

Yes. In addition to limiting total dose, my plan is to do it before weekly water change. Dose, let set with filter off for 15 minutes, than do weekly water change.

Well, its all part of the learning process. You learned something that didnt work…Thomas Edison learned an awful lot of things that wouldnt make a good lightbulb till he found one that did… I learned an awful lot of ways that didnt take care of algae too when I was starting… The epiphany for me was being told to not worry about getting rid of the algae as much as learn how to grow healthier plants. Healthy thriving plants defend themself very well against algae…. If I have algae on my glass or rocks, but my plants are algae free, I take time to clean the glass and rocks…I am happy to see the plants algae free… Plants really like stable conditions. They have the ability to reprogram their selves for a range of conditions…. If the water, fert levels, gh, kh, light, co2 etc is always changing, the plant spends all sorts of energy constantly trying to adjust. It gets exhausted running to try to keep up with changes… Making good healthy nutritious soup and keeping it the same, day in, day out and the plant spends its energy growing and outcompeting algae.

With ph of 8.0, the type of iron in Easy Green gets bound up and the plants can suffer from Iron deficiency.. yellow leaves can be a symptom of Iron deficiency. ” Iron and Potassium: Vallisneria has a high demand for iron and potassium. If you notice the leaves turning yellow or transparent, it might be signaling a deficiency of these nutrients. Consider adding specific iron or potassium supplements.” https://aquaticskingdom.com/vallisneria-plant-care-guide/

Shutting off the power to the filter would not-stop most leaks. The head of water from the tank will be pushing the water out. Shutting the power to the filter for an extended period of time will suffocate the beneficial bacteria though…

What are you using to take photos?

If plants have been deprived of nitrates they will suck it up for a while when they get more… And the roots of your emerged plants isnt helping matters with trying to raise nitrates… Each pump of Easy Green provides 3 ppm nitrate in 10 gallons of water. 37 pumps of Easy Green would add 15 ppm nitrates to the tank. But at that point you are adding a fair amount more of other nutrients than needed.. You could continue as you are doing with adding fish and feeding more…. are you particularly attached to the emersed plants with the roots in the tank? They are sucking the nitrates out fairly strong as they have leaves surrounded by well over 500 ppm of CO2 were the plants in the tank are surrounded by water that is most decidedly at less than 5 ppm of CO2….

Fluval recommends food grade silicone grease.

Yes, pretty common. To resolve it, inject some H2O2 along the front glass. Now that was worth the time to be perusing…. all this time I have been carefully excavating back substrate, cleaning with a scrubby, moving the substrate back etc… next time it grows I am going to try injecting some peroxide…

O rings are a wear item on canisters. In the Fluval 07 series they recommend cleaning the filter monthly, and cleaning and lubing the o rings and then to replace the O rings yearly. I suspect if you do that the liklihood of a leak goes down exponentially… But a lot of people only want to service their cNister filters every 6 months and then say what a chore it is…. Monthly it takes roughly half an hour for everything from the time I close off the Aquastop valve till I am priming the filter. That includes bleaching and cleaning the glass lily pipe intake…

If you opt to use the filter on a 15 gallon tank with that amount of fish, it would be prudent to feed lightly and test daily for a while and be prepared to do a water change to lower nitrites as needed. more likely than not you would be fine, but any time I add fish I test daily for a week for any sign or hint that ammonia or nitrites might rise…

A lot of the info in the other post is also relevant to this one and I didnt want to retype everything.. If you significantly fed more and left uneaten food in the tank, bioload would increase. If you significantly increased fish count by adding fish, the bioload would increase.. my point is that cycling a tank is not a moment in time, and that the beneficial bacteria colony will build and decreased based on bioload it is exposed to…. If “food” for the bacteria decreases, the colony will eventually get smaller and not up to the task of a sudden increase later on…

Probably, but if you significantly increased bioload, you would quite likely see ammonia and nitrites creep up again… see other post…

Personally I consider cycling a continuum. The beneficial bacteria colony will grow to the level of ammonia produced…2 ppm ammonia per day is sort of an arbitrary number that was decided upon. A lightly stocked tank likely produces less ammonia per day, and a heavily stocked tank could produce more.The beneficial bacteria colony could grow sufficient to metabolize more than a 2 ppm ammonia challenge in 24 hours, but if that colony was then fed much less ammonia through a much lower biolad in the tank, the colony size would decrease over time and its ability to metabolize ammonia and nitrite would decrease as well… so, is your current colony enough? Well it is enough to handle a lower daily ammonia production than 2 ppm…. If you had a lighter bioload than that it would be just fine. If we were to consider a fully stocked tank to produce 2 ppm of ammonia per day, than a -50% stocked tank would produce closer to 1 ppm per day… So is your colony enough? Yes. It is enough for some bioload…, and if you subject it to a higher bioload it will grow over time to handle it…

I use Purigen in my canister filters. I use these mesh bags to hold it in the filter. https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Aquarium-Reusable-Activated-Saltwater/dp/B08YYX8HSF/ref=sr_1_5_pp?crid=3EM7Q5PPXW14V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.rKucpydeidoq2__UeiuyiMMDJtTQBYrYUNpQaQFD4tH_GVU_sFtuB0JbGE7aa_xuxyYAmuXXcQMOjSp96LlvBCljyZ4BI-RqYnzjtw0KeZf5CuxFjj3avvwrK6MquJyi1c2Qi-z7jxmqSRaSWni1IFYwHWQcfFq_X5LuAdGLUMbSmhettJcdFFwQcOWCLSJrHqyzf6BOLb2ReQv1aqpofHnCd9V3BGkQsmOUuFDc5-qKryO-Qhgd6cO0DO7an7W4EJTwSaUH7ocU_EIaKh5tac4qLnbrsTGOfURyC5JJcfQ.bAW_NPpPee9HVbBQ3d48O-zbgAKf65EypDBeLznjEgc&dib_tag=se&keywords=mesh%2Bbag&qid=1722334052&sprefix=Mesh%2Caps%2C427&sr=8-5&th=1 For each canister filter I have 2 bags. One in the filter, one in the fridge in a water filled food storage container ready for monthly filter servicing. I service my filters the first saturday of the month and swap purigen bags. The removed bags get placed on a bowl big enough to hold all of the used bags and gets recharged by soaking in a heavy bleach solution for 24 hours before being rinsed well and soaked in tap water for several hours and then soaked overnight in fresh water with a quarter cup of dechlor poured in. Then into water filled food storage container with a few tablespoons of dechlor added and into the fridge until filter servicing day. Purigen helps to remove dissolved organics as well as tannins and hence removes the yellow greenish and brownish tinges that can occur in aquarium water. It will also remove meds, so needs to be removed before treating a tank. It can help remove contaminants accidentally introduced to a tank. It is a product I consider worthwhile keeping in use, but I dont consider it essential.

There are any number of fish care guides online about them.. I have looked in to them before but never kept them I would try an internet search for “Pygmy Sunfish care guide” as a start. i think they are quite attractive.

I would not be running it more than 8 hours myself. after cleaning and water changing I would definitely add fertilizer.

I have liked Safe T Sorb in mesh bags capped with 2 inches of Black Diamond Blasting sand (BBBS) very low cost, nice to plant stems into… the Safe T Sorb has excellent CEC. Placing it in mesh bags prevents it from rising to the surface. The BDBS is coarse enough it allows easy root growth. It also looks very good to me..

sadly most things that are sold to consumers are on a similar pricing schedule. Of course, when you buy a bottle of all in one fertilizer you are buying a bottle, a pump, and the liquid the salts are dissolved in…. And the weight and volume of the bottle, pump and liquid. And “free” shipping costs account for a lot of the cost of that bottle of all in one fertilizer… The dry salts dissolved in that bottle could likely be shipped in an envelope… I don’t consider the liquid pre mix all in one fertilizer sellers taking advantage of anyone by over charging. For a low tech tank with no co2 injection under 30 gallons, a lot can be said for the convenience of an all in one like Easy Green. 3, 1 ml pumps twice a week for a 30 gallon tank and that $20.00 bottle of Easy Green should last you over a year and a half and run you about $13.00 a year…. While it is only about $1.15 worth of salts, the upfront cost of the 1 lb tubs of salts and mixing bottles cost me around $80.00 more or less… Easy Green would make more sense if I just had a few low tech tanks…

Well, it depends on how long that bottle lasts. For my two non injected tanks, I figure the two unopened 500 ml bottles of Easy Green should last me about 4 1/2 years… Of course once they run out I will likely make my own macro solution tailored for the low tech tanks needs… I am sort of intrigued by Tom Barr’s article on non CO2 methods that minimizes water changes and mostly relies on fish waste and fish food for ferts and only supplementing with a bit of Seachem Equilibrium every other week to replaced Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium and Iron, and also adding a wee bit of supplemental Nitrate from time to time in addition to the Equilibrium… https://barrreport.com/threads/non-co2-methods.422/

Many thanks to @Mmiller2001 for taking time to help me decide what salts, compounds to buy and walking me through the use of Rotalabutterfly.com. so, I am doing this on 2, 29 gallon display tanks with CO2 injection. I recently turned off the CO2 to my 20 High.. It is on the lower level of my two tier stand and trimming and pruning while on my hands and knees at 58 years is just a bridge too far… I am thinking of doing a complete rescape on this one pulling all the substrate out and creating a Bonsai tree scape with anubias, buce, and crypts. Low tech slow growth tank… Until then, this tank and the 17 gallon bowl are continuing with Easy Green and no co2… I am also looking to reduce water change depth and frequency on both… Quite honestly though on the dry salts ferts on the display tank, it was anticlimatic… There had been a hesitancy over having to learn everything involved… It basically took a few emails back and forth and maybe 45 minutes of facetime call to get comfortable working with Rotalla butterfly calculator. Now that I have worked out the measurements, I simply weigh out or measure out the volumes into a custard cup and sprinkle them in to the water after doing my weekly water change for the macros, and measure out the micro solution 3 times a week. Going with Dry salts is definitely going to be a fraction of the cost of Easy Green for the CO2 injected tanks…. The co op will miss my frequent Easy Green orders… I am still using it in my low tech tanks, but the volume used is definitely a fraction of what I was using.. The other advantage to the dry salts is a more optimized fetilization schedule for my water, and plant needs.. Now we wait for a while for the plants to adjust to the new soup they are sitting in and optimize for it…,

Rather than trying to kill algae, concentrate on growing healthy vibrant plants, cause healthy vibrant plants defend themselves very well against algae. Sickly suffering plants leach out all sorts of organic compounds that attracts and feeds algae… not fertilizing the plants is a mistake, and more than 8 hours of light is a mistake. Plants like consistency and stability. They can actually adjust to a reasonable range of conditions, but fluctuating conditions is a problem as the plant is expending energy to reprogram and reorient to optimize for changing conditions… What is your Gh, Kh, Ph, nitrates? What is your water change and filter service schedule? What do you have for fertilizer? What is your tap waters GH, KH and PH and does the tap water have any ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates?