Koi

This weekend I was able to pull my first spawn from my breeders. Technically it would be my second for two of my breeders but since the first batch was 2-3 each I don't really count it. The first batch was so small just cause I recently got these breeders and I assume the stress of moving caused the females to consume their fry while gravid. But to make things easier to document and track my fry, I will considering this the first batch. Plus all these fry dropped within the same week so going forward I can probably adjust my calendar to when I expect the next fry to drop for each strain. By Sunday I counted around 131 fry in total from 3 breeders. Surprising as it is, I didn't lose any of my fry that I harvested the week before so fingers crossed I can keep it that way. 32 fry from my black lace 42 from my mosaics 57 from my black moscows This is an old picture of the black lace pair. I actually got really lucky with this because I had lost the male 2 months prior and there was a possibility I would have lost that line. I have since just left the female alone in the tank in hopes that she stored sperm from the male before he died and luckily she did! I'm definitely not safe yet until I can raise up the fry and pull another breeder but I definitely got aa second chance. Definitely glad that I didn't have to pull one of my black moscows to mix with my lace and selectively breed it back to true. (Not saying that I even know how to do that, It would be more so just guessing) Heres another short video of my trio of mosaics to give my post some context. Only one of the females dropped fry, the other female looks like maybe another week away. And this is my pair of black moscows. They are the mvps of the week just cause they are the youngest out of all the breeders and I kept them in a 5 gallon tank instead of 10 gallons like the rest get. While being the youngest of the group and having the smallest tank this female almost put more fry out than my other my other two breeders combined. Also shoutouts to aquarium coop brine shrimp eggs. Just bought my can maybe a few weeks ago and it definitely played a huge role in maximizing my fry output and it saved a lot if not all of my fry from being eaten. I've tried a few other other brands of BBS and just after a few weeks of using the AC BBS I feel like its a cut above the rest on all marks especially with price and how easy it is to separate them from the eggs.

It looks like Valisneria

Try to stir it up the water in your tank. It sounds like it is still dissolving if you can see clumps on the bottoms which might be why your water is still cloudy. I'm guessing you added the equilibrium straight to the tank? Try mixing it in a bucket before pouring it in. I have a little powerhead I put in a bucket to stir the water for like 5 minutes before putting it in the tank. Most times it clears up the next day. You can also sprinkle equilibrium on the outflow of your filter so its gets pushed around your tank too.

I have a Japanese peace lily above my tank, I'm not sure how good it is at removing nutrients though. And now that I reread your post I don't think this fits what you're looking for... Very cool setup though! Is it all gonna be done within the plastic tub?

I like to drop mine bleach while it's running. I'll turn it off for a few minutes to see if the bleach can make it inside the ceramic stone and turn it back on a couple times. Then you know obviously sit it in some dechlorinated water before returning it to your tank. I soak it in hot dechlorinated water but I'm pretty sure that doesn't do anything...At least it makes me feel better haha Oh I also hit it with some hydrogen peroxide too

Nice tank! I mean really you can go pretty heavy handed with nitrogen and not see anything detrimental to your tank besides possibly losing the pinks in your tank. On one of my tanks I used to go somewhere around 5ppm every other day without issue and out of pure laziness I have another tank where I'll drop around 10ppm every week or two. I'm assuming you want to keep the pinks in your tank and since you dose every other day try 1-2ppm. Test at the end of the week and see if nitrates even register. If not raise dosing up a little more. From the picture it seems like you got your dosing pretty dialed in so I don't even think you need/want me telling you how to dose but i'll leave it there in case. Now I'm confused, why did you ask if you knew that haha. But I agree with everything you said. I think the issue for most people is fish don't create enough waste for fully planted tanks unless you overstock like a dummy(me). You know I've always wondered about that too, I don't know if it is the plants or the bacteria that to consumes it first.

As far as which fertilizer to use, pick your poison. But something to consider is that easy green has both the macro and micronutrients needed to grow plants. If you have other forms of phosphorous, potassium and traces, you can use this in conjunction with nitrogen instead of easy green. I would aim for 10-20 ppm nitrate if you were using easy green to ensure you have plenty of other nutrients available in the tank. I'm not sure if nitrates is the cause of the loss of your shrimp especially if you are getting primarily through a fertilizer. My tap water comes out at 40 ppm and my shrimp breed just fine. In such a small system co2 can be a bit tricky to keep steady. I would first look into making sure you are not overdosing co2 and making sure you have adequate oxygen levels. The latter is a littler harder to diagnose but if you see shrimp darting around your co2 could be too high. Do you have any kind of surface agitation in your tank? Nitrate (nitrogen) is one of the 3 main nutrients needed to grow plants.

If you are in no rush to add fish you technically don't need to test your water. The only thing you are doing is using more test solution which you can save when you add fish. But it doesn't hurt to do it and I think learning and keeping track of how your system grows is invaluable. Just to remind you in case you weren't aware, since you are doing a planted cycling do not look at rising nitrates as a sign of progress. Since you are dosing easy green, you are adding the nitrates into the tank. Instead I would raise up the nitrates a little more maybe like 10ppm through easy green and wait till you start seeing it come down. Thats when you know your plants have converted and are starting to consume nutrients. And keeping an eye out for new growth would be your visual queue that there is progress. Also I know it will look ugly but I would leave all the melted leaves in the tank for now. Because technically your cycle hasn't started yet since there is no ammonia present in your system. You source of ammonia will come from the decayed leaves. If you have some fish food you can throw some in there too. But I think using old leaves would be the easiest source to introduce ammonia without having to go out and buy more things. But this is if you are not in a rush to add fish and enjoy the slower process of watching plants grow.

I think chili rasboras would look great in that especially with all shadows/dark spots in there

Thanks @OceanTruth! I have maybe a month or less to enjoy these guys until they go outside. I am considering keeping some of the best out of that stock to breed inside but then they miss out on getting all that good sunlight. I tend to always choose fat colorful guppies since I'm gonna end up with thousands of babies anyways!

@Trish mad props on growing pogostemon helferi

Got lucky today and happened to walk in on one of my females right as she was dropping fry so I was able to pull every last one! This is my breeding trio hopefully the other female drops in a week or two. I counted 42 but I'll have to see how many survive the first week. Overall I'm pretty satisfied for the first batch. Also this post is sponsored by Madeleines Nothing really new to see in my mixed holding tank. transitioning a few plants at the moment so everything is a mess. But heres something if you like bubbles

Not to be a nitpicker but thats aqua soil in that picture

I personally would buy just one of each plant if you were looking to see what plants work for you except maybe for the Java fern and Anubias since they are slower growers. That way if you are unable to grow a plant you only lose the one. Also if you are successful with a certain plant you’d be able to propagate and get more whenever you want. But if you already have an idea what you want in your tank and don’t want to wait for them to grow out definitely stick with the list you have. As far as a cohesive look, having more of fewer species is aesthetically pleasing. But then again your tank is so big I wouldn’t consider your listing too random. It just depends if you are going for a jungle look or more of a zen style. I fall somewhere in between where it just looks like I shoved a bunch different plants together. So I always go for random! Also there are a lot of different types of ludwigias with nice shades of reds too. Most of them don’t have that in your face red, some are more like maroon but it is a fairly easy and fast growing plant. And as always having an iron supplement will help you get your deeper reds.

Yes you can just mix your well water in with water changes. I would say exchange 20% first and test where you water sits while monitoring fish and plants. Over the course of a few months you can slowly increase gh/kh to where you want it but I think dGH/dKH of 5 should be decent enough but don’t focus too hard and trying to match it so closely, just reach for somewhere around there. At least all is not lost with equilibrium. It can be used later down the line for an extra source of potassium just be sure to not use as much well water when adding that in.

Got a little vertigo trying to orientate those pictures but otherwise thats a really nice looking tank. And thats 55 gallons?? I like that way better than the dimensions of the standard 55. So to start off it just sounds like you are having a mini cycle probably due to lack of beneficial bacteria within your new tank which then had a cascading effect leading to your algae issues. There could be other things going on but the time would be better spent tackling your other issues rather than trying to figure out what happened. In general your tank/plants have gone through quite a few changes and it looks like a little bit of new tank syndrome. At least algae wise, what you're experiencing isn't out of the normal and pretty much expected to happen. Nitrites If you can help it, reduce the feeding until your cycle finishes. Try to keep it down to at least once every two days. If that makes you uneasy you can try giving your fish like 2-3 bites of food a day but we need to try to reduce fish waste as much as possible until the beneficial bacteria can catch up. If your nitrites are still at 2ppm I would try do at least another 50% water change unless you did a substantial one recently. At this point smaller water changes do little as far as diluting the nitrites and I wouldn't be concerned about it possibility of disturbing the fish. The benefit of cleaner water outweighs the potential stress you could cause your fish with a larger water change. In all honesty I've never experienced a fish get stressed from water changes but there could be some specific cases. As @Mmiller2001 said adding a dose or two of prime every day will help the fish along too. You could get bottled bacteria as well but I feel at this point in, the cycling is almost finished. Algae You can actually tackle this multiple ways and I'll try to lay out a few options and you can decide which way you want to go. It mostly looks like diatoms which you can just rub off the plants. For your stag horn you could dose the whole tank with excel if you want but it looks like you have valisneria and that plant could take a hit from treating the tank. I also think saving the excel for spot treating would give you better value from that bottle. I only see stag horn on what I think is crypt parva. You spot treat with excel but I think it would be much easier to cut/pluck the infested leaves. But only if you are seeing new growth. I lean towards this method because usually once a leaf is covered in algae, its has pretty much given up on trying to sustain that leaf. By removing the leaf you are allowing the plant to use all its energy in creating a new leaf than trying to keep the old one alive. If it were me and I know all the plants are growing I would just start removing old ugly leaves especially the watersprite/wistera (I can never tell the difference) and what I think is pogostemon stellatus. This is a rather aggressive approach but when I move plants between different tanks all the leaves grown in my old tank will eventually die over time. The dying plant matter not only is a good host for algae but it does introduce ammonia back into your tank as it decays. So I would keep note of which parts of your plants have grown in your new setup and remove the older leaves as soon as you see signs of the leaves falling apart. I'll just add that hydrogen peroxide is a nice cheap way to remove algae. Just like the excel I would either spot treat or spray plants with peroxide. When using either I try to treat what I can outside of the tank, let it sit for 10 seconds and rinse before putting back in. I usually use this for staghorn and blackbeard algae though most of the others usually can be removed by hand. As for your water flow, now that I see the tank you probably don't need the powerhead. So if you'd prefer not to have it you can take it out. I'm pretty sure the internal filter has good flow. If it makes you feel any better your tank is definitely way better than my first planted tank! Everybody gets hit with algae at least once when starting a new tank and most get it again multiple times. Yours is definitely not that bad, I actually had trouble seeing where the problems were in your tank. Hopefully something in here works for you and just try to up you fertilizers a little. You don't have to overcompensate but increase it incrementally over time as you see your plants starting to grow. As your plants start to perk up, the algae will start going away on its own. Good Luck!

Definitely just add in while you do your water change. I would try raising to 1dGH just to start (around 20 ppm). I honestly don’t think much would happen raising the gh higher cause I think shooting around 4-5 dGH is ideal. But I don’t want you to blame me for killing your fish so slowly easing it in through water changes would be ideal in case of any adverse reactions. Here is a dosing calculator you can use. Just look under directions https://www.seachem.com/equilibrium.php

Hey @Rhonda sorry we kinda took over your thread but I wanted to share my opinion with what might be happening in your tank. But first how old is your tank, and how old are the plants in it? Whats your filtration like? From your pictures shown, algae wise, its not that bad. And you could be right about the manganese deficiency but I feel like that might not be the case. When looking for deficiencies it will be apparent on a lot of your plants and these things tend to happen over a long course of time. Very little of it is needed and easy green should provide enough. Plus if you are using root tabs on your tiger lotus that shouldn't be a problem. When looking for trace element issues, you want to look at your faster growing plants to come to that conclusion. But you do have a better view of your tiger lotus than I and you could be right. None the less, I think your issue is inadequate dosing. How much are dosing in a week and can you send a picture of your whole tank? By looking at your nitrates alone, I am almost certain you are more likely deficient in multiple nutrients. Something to keep in mind is that if you are missing one or two nutrients it can show up looking like another deficiency. Sure you have some nitrates but if you are missing phosphorus or potassium the plants can not use any more other nutrients until it reaches optimal levels of all nutrients. For your lighting, it could definitely be too much or not enough. You could either turn down the light or dose more easy green. Thinking of lighting as a nutrient itself, and the more light you give creates higher demands for nutrients. If you like the lighting schedule you have now try more nutrients. Remember also, algae doesn't occur because of excess nutrients (too a point) but I see it more commonly with absence of nutrients. The best way for your plants to not get algae is to provide enough food so that they grow faster than it takes for algae to grow on them. When plants starve out, they begin to get for lack of a better word "sick" and having an unhealthy plant mass makes it more susceptible to growing algae. If you haven't stopped reading at this point I'll just mention shortly that you can actually just pull the stag horn algae off the plants by hand. Stag horn can happen multiple ways. To list some would be not enough water movement through the tank, imbalance of nutrients/unhealthy plants, or excess iron. At this moment I would look into water flow, if you can visibly see the all the leaves in your tank move a little like grass in the wind you should be good. Hope you're still reading through this thread, we may have gone a little off the beaten path but I'm sure all of us want to get your tank back to shape @Mmiller2001 I think you forgot to post the journal. I'm still interested in reading it if you could post it

@Mmiller2001 all of your other points are totally valid and and I'm with you on those

I can definitely get behind the idea that people are are using fertilizers incorrectly and there is some validity to not needing to use root tabs. But I have to disagree with root tabs being hocus pocus and I don't mean any offense by that all. I feel there is a time and a place where root tabs can be used but doesn't have to be. It is just an extra tool for us to use, after all everybody has different methods/approaches that better suit what their goal is. After all root tabs are mostly just dry salts inside of it. I think a lot of what you're saying comes down to the fact of user error not the tabs itself. Its the same way as saying ei method is faulty because half the people dose the non limiting amounts of fertilizers but choose not to do the water changes or they think that high co2 means good co2. As @StephenP2003 mentions, a distinction should be made, but in my opinion it's between high level aquascapers and home hobbyists. I'm sure the guy in the article has no problem with tearing down his tank and reconstituting his aquasoil every so often. I don't think many people, I myself included, want to go through that hassle and amending substrate is a lot easier/cheaper option. Personally I find most of the stems I grow do much better in nutrient rich substrate and less heavy handed dosing. I actually have a lot of more finicky stems that will stunt due to the typical ei ranges of dosing. Since I'm too cheap to buy aquasoil, root tabs/osmocote better suit my needs. Even for the beginners, who may not understand how often they should be feeding their plants. Root tabs can make up for whatever is lacking in the water column if nutrients ever bottom out. For the most part I do agree with you though I just think not everyone has the time or patience to dose everyday and root tabs is a good fail safe. As I said earlier it being misused is more to blame because of lack of knowledge/understanding.

@Mmiller2001 are you saying root tabs or better yet nutrient rich substrates have no place in growing aquatic plants?

That they are! mine literally jump into my hand whenever I need to work in the tank. At least it makes catching them a breeze. I know my bristle nose has plenty to eat cause her belly is always plump. I just never get to see it eat anything but green beens and she has to fight them for it too haha I'm pretty sure mine does it solely out of self defense. My big females have killed 3 of my angelfish already!

For now get nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (NPK). Flourish trace is essentially micronutrients and since you already have bottle for that, you could skip getting that bottle . Flourish excel is an algaecide which could be useful but it might cause some problems for your valisneria and it's not necessary. Before buying the Seachem line, Nilocg has an all in one fertilizer as well but I'm not sure if that is available to you. Trying looking around first and see whats available if you would prefer an all in one fert. I usually don't like telling people they have to buy specific products. Fertilizers are fertilizer no matter where it comes from as long as its aquarium safe. Look for something within your price range find something that works for you wether its an all in one with a pump head or the specific NPK bottles.

Hi @BaRanchik sorry to hear your experience isn't going as you'd like. To answer your main question, I don't think water hardness is your problem, neither ph. From what I understand somewhere around 90-95% of easily available aquatics plants can be grown in a wide range of hardness. I find that its very few plants that need more specific gh/kh values and they often tend to be harder to get anyways. I read your other post but just wanted confirm that your setup is a fish bowl right? I don't think lighting is your issue, since its a bowl I think almost any kind of light would be able to reach such a short distance. Even if it wasn't deep enough, you would still be able to see some growth. If I'm wrong please tell me but from what I gathered your tank is fairly new, 2-3 weeks by now right? It is too be expected that your plants will go through transitioning period where it needs to adapt to your water and your lights. I think you should know this to at least understand it will take some time till you see any progress but my main concern is your fertilizer. Is that the only fertilizer you are using? From the looks of the bottle, it seems to be a micronutrient fertilizer. Unfortunately if that is all you are using you are half way there. You will have to find another fertilizer to go alongside with it because that bottle alone won't be enough. To keep it short fertilizers will be categorized as macronutrient or micronutrients. Your macro nutrients (the main nutrients plants need) will be broken down generally as NPK or nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium and your micronutrients (nutrients that are required at very minimal amounts) are generally different types of metals. I assume you are expecting the dirt to be your main source of nutrients which is totally fine but you still need nutrients within your water column for your other plants. This could explain why your tiger lotus seems to be growing and others are not since its roots are reaching past your sand and feeding from the dirt. But for your other plants, nutrients need to be in the water. Seems like you have some nitrogen in your water (nitrates from fish) but without phosphorous and potassium, the plants won't be able to use it up. The fish food you use probably has some phosphate and potassium in it which could explain why your valisneria grows for a bit then dies because it has already used up all the nutrients from the food. A good start is to see if you can find some kind of aquarium fertilizer wether its an all in one or just buy the macronutrients. I think buying a macronutrient fertilizer would be a better option since you already have a bottle of the micronutrients. I think you said you live in Israel so are Seachem products available to you? If so I think buying the Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium bottles would be a really easy solution to get your macros. If they aren't you might have to resort to buying the chemical compounds. I know that compounds like potassium nitrate and monopotassium phosphate can be almost found universally and are much cheaper options but being that you have such a small tank, measuring those amounts can be rather difficult. For instance in a ten gallon tank you would need 1/64 of a teaspoon for an adequate amount of phosphate in your water. If it could be helped, try finding a macronutrient fertilizer sold for aquariums but I did give you at least 2 chemical compounds you could use if something like Seachem isn't available. Let me know if there is anything I missed, and hopefully we can figure out what is going on (if not me, there are plenty of smart individuals on this forum who might know something).

Most likely co2 is being pumped into your water to bring the ph down. And as you let that bucket sit, the co2 will off gas bringing the ph up. Most likely your waters actual ph could be even higher. You can test this by putting an air stone in the bucket and test the next day. But I wouldn’t worry about your ph. Ph naturally fluctuates throughout the day. As long as it moves gradually there’s nothing to worry about. But if for some reason it drops a full point and continues to drop then you should be concerned. I think gh should be addressed at the moment and I am a little skeptical about the kh reading from the api test strips. But as long as you have some kh you should be good.