Koi

So today the owner of GuppyTrain allowed me to come see his fishroom. I was shocked to find that he only lived 30 minutes from me. I bought one trio, 2 pairs, and 20 assorted guppy fry of his entire collection. The pictures aren't the greatest but I didn't want to disturb at the moment, I will definitely get better pictures before I take these guys outside. There is no picture of the 20 fry cause their colors haven't shown yet. With his permission he allowed me to take some videos too but they are extremely short since I was more concerned with picking my fish. Maybe the next time I visit I'll try to take better videos.

I would say how you plant the bulb isn't too important. I've completely buried the bulb of a lace plant and buried only the roots and didn't see too much of a difference. I could only guess as to why the spike didn't flower but typically plants will need considerably more nutrients to produce that flower. Specifically I use extra phosphorus to help promote flowering (I can't really prove if thats true or not)but you could get the same results by either adding root tabs or just more of an all in one fertilizer depending what you have available. Lace plants use up a lot of potassium as well so generally more ferts the better.

I don't have a fluval 3.0 so the interface is a little foreign to me, but thats 12 hours right? Try it out for a few weeks and see. I think at this point it will be more productive for you to start making tweaks between your lighting and dosing. I would say try 8 hours if you could cause you can always add more time to your light schedule. But its all the same if after a few weeks from running 12 hours and the algae is still there just cut back a few hours. Same thing with the dosing try to figure out how many pumps it takes to hit that 10-20 range if at the end of the week you're still short do your water change and do a few more pumps. Wether you make changes to the lighting or dosing, give a few weeks at least and see what happens before you try to make another change. Be sure to manually remove any algae where you can also

Aerial roots are normal with a lot of stem plants. It mostly serves as a closer source to absorb nutrients for the plant as they get taller.

Looks like a type of crypt wendtii

Mine stay unheated at around 70 usually and the lowest probably 60-65. During the summer my tank can reach 85 degrees and I haven't noticed anything to their detriment. From my experience as long the temperature slowly moves up and down like a body of water would outside, you should be fine. I do enjoy seeing seasonal differences in my tank so there may be some bias to that. If you heat your house during the winter, that would help insulate your jar. Your light will probably be producing a good amount of heat and you can put a lid on the jar or saran wrap to trap heat. Generally I think cherries can handle cooler water but I haven't really taken it to the extremes yet.

I like the use of your vantage point with a triangle it naturally draws your eyes to the center. I don't know what kind of livestock you're considering but I think cherry shrimp would look really cool climbing the drift wood.

Beautiful looking shrimp by the way. I kinda of have a similar experience as you. I would't say my shrimp are sluggish but they usually just crawl around slowly everywhere at least for my older ones. The only time I see my shrimp swimming around everywhere is after a water change or the males looks for the females. If I had to guess, I would go with what you stated and you just have a colony that are much older. From that picture alone I would think you're doing everything right and more. Better than me forsure Do you have a video of this slow movement?

Hope every one is having as a good a start to their weekend as I am. I have removed the dwarf saggitaria from the front of my tank as it was it was being a bit problematic. I didn't expect it to grow so large in the front and it was starting to block out a lot of my background plants. Being that my tank is so tall, it became more cumbersome to constantly try to remove all the runners. Not only was it blocking circulation in the tank it started to choke itself out and other plants next to it because it was matting so densely. So for now, it has to go but maybe I can add somewhere towards the back if I can find a spot for it. I kind of have a love hate relationship with dwarf sag because of how easy it gets out of control. Luckily since it grew so densely within itself I was able to pull it all out in one shot Also I noticed a little critter appear in my tank after pulling up a lot of my substrate and I have no clue what it is. It looks like some sort of nematode but I'm not well versed in parasites. From the looks of it I'm thinking horsehair worm but thats just me taking a guess. I'm not worried about the worm itself since this tank does hold pond inhabitants but I'm more so curious and would like to learn more about all these different invertebrates/ crustaceans that are living in my pond . I would love to hear from anybody who knows or has any kind of experience with this thing. Also this last part is a little off topic, but I didn't want to clog the forum with more separate posts but I figured since this tank has something to do with my pond, it might be relevant? I've been pretty excited now that the weather has started to warm up and I get to play outside with my fish. I got about 11 koi somewhere around May 2020 and just this week they finally allowed me to sit next to them while they eat. After about 7-8 months of watching them behind a bush (kinda creepy if it wasn't my fish) they've become more personable, or maybe they are hungry enough to not care since I cut off feeding during December. July 2020 January 2021 And lastly to top it all off I noticed that my cherry shrimp have berried up. I'm not sure why I get so excited still with my shrimp being that Ive kept them so many times but I suppose its these small wins that I get in taking care of my of fish that make it so enjoyable Sorry for the quality since most of this is done on my phone, hopefully the pictures/videos get better as I start to document more.

Theres also a relationship with ph and ammonia, Somewhere around 6.6 and below ammonia becomes ammonium which is less toxic. Conversely somewhere past ph of 8 ammonia becomes much more toxic. Temperature plays a role in it but I don't know why. This might interest you if you haven't already seen it.

Ive had the same experience that Brandy mentioned where a piece of leftover root brought back another plant. Here are two pictures of lutea in different tanks if it makes you feel any better. kind of lower light Higher light

I forgot to mention that once temperatures reach above 60 degrees you can resume normal feeding. And I think you're definitely doing the right thing just by asking questions instead following arbitrary rules blindly, every system is different and nobody will know your pond better than you. There is a lot to be said about just observing your fish and I feel like a lot of people get into trouble being complacent and assuming everything is fine. The more time you spend with your pond the more in tune you will be with its problems. Your fish and water will tell you almost everything you would need to know.

I think this is a good video that has some good information. I would definitely recommend looking at co2 cartridges used for bike pumps to save some money just do a little research and make sure its compatible with the fluval kit.

Ok so this will most likely be a long read but I'lll try to keep it as organized and concise as I can. I'm gonna touch on a few things that stick out to me within your system that could be problematic but thing I want to address is setting a baseline with your lighting, fertilizing, and maintenance schedule. A lot of things I mention will be merely suggestions or just the approach I would take in your situation don't think of it so set in stone and I'll try to offer other solutions that could fit your needs. Lighting First thing would be your lighting schedule. I'm not too familiar with fluval 3.0 interface, i may be reading it wrong but I think you have it ramp up and down? Theres not really with an issue with ramping up/down the lights maybe i'm reading it wrong, the 11:30 and 12:30 times are confusing me. What I see is that you do have a siesta mid day, it looks to me for about 2 and a half hours. I asked earlier about that just to see your reasoning behind the siesta. Most people run double cycles in a day with a siesta in between usually to allow buildup of co2 that the plants release when lights are off. Now you could still run that siesta cause maybe those hours you set are to accommodate your work schedule or whatever may be and those are the times you can view your tank. The problem is the how long the lights are off. Usually most people give at least 4 hours rest time if they plan to go this route. I find that it takes some time for the plant to switch from photosynthesizing to sleep. This will kinda of get into a pseudo science and I have absolutely no way to prove this, but I think the plants sleep cycle is just as important as the photoperiod. Sure plants do some growing when the lights are on but I notice especially with my own plants 2-3 hours after lights off I can literally see that my stem plants have gotten taller. It seems to me that plants tend to eat all day when the lights are on and when the lights are off use that energy grow. I think rest time is just as important as photoperiod and we should try to strike a balance with those 2 phases. It looks like in total your lights are on about 14 hours give or take? Think of it this way, can humans work 14 hours a day with a small nap in between? Sure, but over prolonged periods of time, that stress begins to weigh on you. That aside, seeing that you can inject co2, I really see no need for a siesta if it were for the purpose of building up carbon. If this lighting schedule is to cater your own schedule, I would suggest at the very least give the plants 4 hours rest time and possibly 4-5 hours lighting periods. (When I tried it i did 4 hours on 5 off 4 on and didn't really like it because the tank ph was swinging alot throughout the day) I personally would just do 8 hours only until your problem is gone and then look to adding incremental if it isn't enough. And for your lighting spectrum i would suggest to go back to whatever the standard plant spectrum is for now. But thats very minor, If you happen to like the way it looks keep it and see. Fertilizer So you should definitely find one dosing regime and stick with it for now and do everything at the recommended. Wether it's Seachem or UNS all in one it doesn't really matter but I think you can get into a whole lot of problems by say adding one thing from here or one things from there. If there isn't a strict guideline that you follow there will be absolutely no way to track if your missing a certain nutrient. I haven't had any experience with the UNS all in one fert but nowadays I feel like ferts in general are more comprehensive than they used to be. Just the headache of trying to figure out nutrient deficiencies its so much easier to do a pump of fertilizer where it gives just about everything plants would need. I would say do the low light dose of 2x a week and 30% water change first until you see your tank start to come back and be sure to do the water changes. The water change is key to remove any leftover nutrients so that algae can't use any of it. This part isn't set in stone because once your plants begin to thrive you'll be able to give more to push growth but right now you should focus on limiting extra nutrients for algae to uptake. Now you could also go with Seachem but the two problems I see in arsenal is your missing the Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium bottles. I've used this dosing regiment and it works fine but I feel like its so much more confusing on how each dose of ferts is not standardize. A capful for each of their fert is for a different tank size and it makes it more confusing than it should be. So if you do go this route I really suggest getting the NPK bottles, advanced, trace etc. I really do think if you listen to anything just stick with the all in one, just look at how much of a nightmare the seachem dosing schedule looks like. https://www.seachem.com/downloads/charts/Plant-Dose-Chart.pdf Also I noticed on your water test you didn't have any visible nitrates which is an issue itself. A lot of people like to think overdosing fertilizers is the cause the algae which really isn't the case if you keep up with water changes. I think why your plants are struggling to beat out your algae is because there is at least nitrogen deficiency possible phosphate and potassium too. Since your plants were limited so much they couldn't use the rest of the micronutrients in your system leaving for the algae to eat. If you go Seachem make sure to get the NPK bottles and try to follow that schedule but definitely just for ease i'd really recommend just doing UNS. Make sure that by the end of the week your nitrates are atleast withint 10-20 ppm by the end of the week. If it isn't continue with the water change schedule and try adding a little more. Co2 This part will be very general cause it can get really technical but I can help you out with that once you resolve the algae From what you've said it sounds like co2 is being dissolved into the water so this part should be short. You could leave it for now but if you want to further optimize I would say don't tweak co2 pressure since it seems to work and play with the timing. You mentioned that your drop checker turns green at the end of the day which means some co2 is present. Keep in mind that the drop checker is usually an hour or two behind on its reading. So say at 6 PM your drop checker turns green, that means you achieved optimal saturation at 4 or maybe 5 PM. This part right here is VERY IMPORTANT If you do this, you really need to keep an eye on your fish. You can set your co2 to turn on an hour before lights turn on to start that buildup and have it turn off an hour before lights off. If you do this be sure to keep an eye on your fish for the next two weeks. Continue with using the airstone at night just to gas off the rest just to be safe. Bubbles per second isn't really a good measurement for diffusion but atleast we know carbon is present and rising at a slow rate. Right now either stick with the schedule you have or have co2 turn on an hour early for atleast a couple months. they way you should manipulate the co2 is just by changing the time frames, it gets really dicey when you play with the pressure. Any changes that you make should be done in very small increments and allow atleast a week or two to see if there were any negative effects. Sidenote: when you see the co2 bubbles come out of your diffuser you want to see the bubbles slowly drift upwards, you don't want it to fly straight up. Theres definitely alot more I should address but I think these topics have more of a holistic approach. Theres still a lot i"m struggling to remember. If you can take away anything, once we standardize our routine maintenance, issue become more apparent and we can pinpoint certain problems. This would be how i run my schedule (you don't have to follow its more of a reference to visualize the timeframe) Timers Use Only the Fluval 3.0 Co2 turns on: 11:00 AM Co2 off: 7:00 PM Lights on: 12:00 PM Lights off: 8:00 PM Dosing UNS all in one dose: Monday and Wednesday the recommended dose waterchange: Saturday 30-40% Follow something like that for atleast 2-3 months because thats how long it will take to see the effect of that change. From there any changes you do make you only change one part of that schedule and see what happens. If you get more algae go back to your old schedule. Hopefully I didn't bore you to death with this long rant, I really hope something in there can help you with your problem or give you a better idea of what could be happening. If theres any part that doesn't make sense just ask me

Hey Joe, I briefly read your other post with the specs on your tank and it looked like you have been changing around your lighting schedule a bit? I just wanted to ask what does that schedule look like now? Also I wanted to ask if you were dead set on keeping that kind of schedule doing the siesta and what not. are you running two lights? What is your dosing schedule looking? Could you kind of break what your dosing looks like between each water change? I couldn't remember if it was a weekly or biweekly schedule. whats the co2 schedule like and is it on a timer? But i'll put the general husbandry aside for the moment and try to address the algae. It looks like most if not all of your plants are fully covered in some kind of algae. You probably will not like me saying this but I think a good way to go is a hard restart. You could try to fight it slowly, that works perfectly fine but if it were me I'd try to take one day to do alot of the heavy work and then try to focus on the small details later. Whatever day you choose to do maintenance maybe give yourself a little more time in that day to attack this head on. I would definitely start removing as much algae as you can by hand or with a toothbrush. If you can see new growth I would just look keep the tops of your stem plants and throw out the rest. If you're not too sure if your plants are healthy enough at least cut out all those leaves that are covered in algae, those can't be saved. I know a bare stem looks really ugly but as long as you diffusing co2 correctly and have some fertilizer your plant will come back in no time. I realize I'm proposing a rather drastic measure and many people dont like doing huge overhauls. If you'd like I don't mind trying to dissect whats going on in your tank with you otherwise i'll stop drilling you with questions haha

Thats cool you should try it, Im pretty sure you'll like it. The only thing is you might like it too much and end up buying co2 tank anyways haha. Ive never done a passive co2 system myself but I think getting a co2 bell system is really nice option to get your feet wet with. It has a relatively clean look or atleast better than a floating cup (unless you don't mind a more DIY look). Take a look into that if you haven't already.

Oh you should be fine then, I found glosso to be resilient in my tank. Even the really rotted out pieces still grew back. I forgot to mention be sure to really get the glosso in the substrate the first time and try not to disturb that area for a while so it doesn't uproot. I always have had trouble planting things into stratum, sometimes I would accidentally pour some water into my carpet and knock everything out in it. I like to stick 3-4 strands together in one plug (if that makes sense what im saying) I find that it grips a little better. I do use co2 in the tank for that picture, but I have another tank without co2 and it grows fine just not as densely.

As long as you have healthy looking strands they will grow. I got some and almost all the roots rotted out because they came in a rubber band and I had to plant tiny bits and pieces and it came back. I'd suggest getting as much of the plant into the substrate and leave like just a little bit of the leaf sticking out so that it has its best chance to grab the substrate. Heres a picture kinda showing how I plant the strands although it has grown a bit. The glosso can either grow straight up or sideways and just keeping cutting if you want the carpet effect.

For me, anything under 40 degrees, I completely cut off food and don't worry too much about my koi since bulk them up heavily during the summer. As for right now since it's getting warmer, I feed around once a week or so. My pond this month has been around 50-55 degrees and try to pick a sunny day or near the middle of the day when its the warmest to feed. Also I switch from a higher protein based pellet to something with more wheat germ to avoid any digestive issues. Since colder water slows down the kois metabolism they might not be able to digest larger amounts of protein. I use food with wheat germ, green beans, or duckweed just to ensure their digestion track stays clear. Really though koi should be fine and if you're not too sure its always safer just to not feed. I think somewhere in the 30s and 40s koi hibernate and know some people that don't feed for 1-2 months. I'll add that something you should think about is the beneficial bacteria. There is the idea that some types of beneficial bacteria can't survive under 50 degrees so there is a fear that it wont be nitrified as quickly. I can't really speak to the truth of that but I do know from my own experience that the colony of bacteria is still there maybe just not as much as saying during the summer. Also when I cut off feeding during the whole month of December, wether it's the because of the cold or lack of feeding I know a lot of my bacteria has died off so when i do start adding food again I do it very slowly. Maybe just a few pellets for each koi a week while monitoring water parameters until the colony has built back up. A lot of this is speculation and I could be completely wrong though. This is just more of my thought process as to why I go this direction since I tend play it on the safe side with my koi. I would just emphasize being cognizant of ammonia if you do choose to feed and your parameters should tell you if you can or can't.

No, totally normal mine do the same. They take on different colors in different lighting, think of it as getting a tan. Just be worried if you see yellow.

Im not too experienced with hygrophila but in general, if you are seeing new growth then I think its safe to assume your plant is fine. It sounds like the leaves that were melting were adapting towards more emersed growth. I would cut off all the old leaves of the plants that already have new growth coming out of it. If you are worried that you might hurt the plant just try a few of your plants and leave some in case. I would definitely cut off any leaves that already lost say 25% or more of the leaf. If you're feeling experimental cut the the top of one of your plants that has the new growth and replant that too.

Sounds like you have a pretty good plan or at least an idea of how to approach it. A trick I like to use when removing plants if I'm not trying to disturb my substrate is slowly pulling the plant up just enough so I can see a little bit of the roots above the substrate and cut it at the roots. Whatever roots that are left under the substrate I leave for either for my snails to eat or it will eventually rot and become fertilizer for the rest of the plants in that area. You could probably still reuse the plant but when I go about this method, I usually throw it out. I'm a little jealous how you are able to fit everything in a relatively small tank so nicely. I'm so clumsy I would never be able to maneuver my hands in a 20 gallon without knocking out half the hardscape haha. It reminds me of how people make ships in glass bottles.

Do you have any ideas what kind of plants you plan to put in that pathway/slope in the middle? My worry is that slope will fall if you ever have to uproot anything from there

I think you should definitely tone down your light by either the intensity or the photoperiod. Especially since there is no co2 in the system I think your plants are having trouble up taking all that light. It sounds like you want a carpet of montecarlo which is definitely achievable. In a 40 breeder, the distance from the light to your substrate is very shallow and doesn't need as much light as you think. You can achieve "high light" by either going max intensity or longer light duration but I think doing both is very overkill. If you really insist doing 100% I think you should go like 6-8 hours. If you like having lights on for 12 hours a day i would say try 50% honestly ( you can always ramp it up more if its not enough). Thats just a rough guideline in the directions I would go to tweak the lighting schedule you may have to add more or less for each of those examples. If you like those fish definitely get them they will help combat the algae, but don't get them just to add bio load. You would see more benefit for your plants by adding nitrates with fertilizers because your plants need potassium, phosphate, and other micros but thats whole can of worms itself. I'll just mention now your issue isn't with the lack of nitrates. I suspect that your higher light is driving up nutrient uptake but you are bottlenecking cause of the lack of carbon. Since your plants are cant take up anymore nutrients (light can be considered as a nutrient) since its limited by carbon, any excess is being absorbed algae.

The cave you made with the rocks looks awesome. Your hardscape has a really good sense of scale I definitely couldn't tell what size tank you had. Are all those plants going in that tank? I'm looking forward to see how you plant it, cause I can't even imagine how you'll be able to fit that all in the tank haha.