spokanejared

I find space works well for smaller numbers. I have 5 angels in my 150 and they go at eachother all the time. There's enough of them to spread out the aggression so no one fish gets it all the time.

What are you using to monitor the ph like that?

Ok I will work on that. I'm worried about my discus since I've been told they can be sensitive to fluctuations like that. I do keep up on my water changes and parameters and so far they are healthy so I guess if .8 isn't causing harm then I should be good...?

Only time I ever had this happen is when I changed foods and had an ammonia spike. That detritus took my entire aquarium over. I gravel vacuumed and changed the water every 2 days untill I got it back under control. It was so bad it blocked my filters and made a horrible mess of the entire tank.

Ok I checked my ph right before it turns on in the morning and it reads .8 difference degassed.

Yeah I didn't know that was a thing. My ph is always stable at 6.8. I have never checked it in the middle of the night when the co2 isn't running. I'll give it a try tonight and report back my findings.

I had a snail issue once and I just threw in 3 assassin snails and that problem was gone in about 30 days. They really did a great job.

I use one of those kits that uses baking soda and citric acid. I added it last month and have been slowly dialing it up since I don't want to rush into any changes too fast. I use the fluid checker to monitor my levels and from what I know if it's in the green it's good. I just use the diffuser that came with the kit and send the bubbles right up to the filters outflow to dispurse throughout the tank. My fluid checker is on the opposite side of the tank since I figured I would get a bad reading on the same side as the diffuser. I agree on time and consistency. All the lights and the co2 are on timers so I can slowly dial everything in. I make one change at a time every two weeks to see what helps and what doesn't.

For those of you with planted tanks. How long did it take for your tanks to balance out. I'm doing a 150 gallon planted tank and recently added a ton more high light plants due to my new lighting setup. It produces about 30k lumens at 2 watts a gallon. I fertilize every other day with easy green. I use root tabs upon planting and that's it. I also have co2 injection running 8bps. My parameters are 20 to 40 ppm of nitrate, 0 nitrite, ph of 6.8, water temp of 84 for discus. Zero ammonia, kh of 40 ppm, and a gh running on the high side up at almost 300(tap water issues there). I still have algea growing on certain plants like the Java fern so I've since removed them since I know not all plants will work in every setup. Any thoughts or advice is greatly appreciated.

You need to check the nitrate load in the water column before you fertilize. That's a bare minimum in my book. I only fertilize if my nitrate levels get below 20ppm. The directions on the bottle of most fertilizers imo is very generic and doesn't fit most applications. In short always test before you fertilize. Also I only use tabs once to kick start the rooting process and that's it. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with once a month bit if your doing once a week then that certainly way too much. I look at rooting tabs as just a temporary thing to get the plants going on putting down a good root base and as long as ypu have enough bio settling to the bottom nature will take over.

That's not algea that's a green bacterial bloom. Cyanobacteria. Not easy to get rid of.

Whats your light cycle and are you dosing ferts? What's your stocking like?

From my experience you have to much of a food source in the tank. Feed less frequently or smaller amounts and that should sort your issue out.

Right.... so far so good. I'm certain I will have an algea issue untill the plants catch up but hey that's just part of the fun. I just ordered a in line dimmer for them just so I can have a little more versatility with them. That's exactly what I ordered. I just did a little digging on 6500k lights and these popped up. For the price what have I got to loose. I need something that gets me around 2 watt per gallon and these cover the lumen requirement I'm looking for on my co2 injected 150 gallon.

Not even sure Here's the model number sticker. It was 40 bucks after shipping off Amazon for both of them. This is my attempt to build a cheap but proper plant light setup. I'm sick of spending insane amounts of money for seemingly cheap led kits with gimmicky features that poorly grow plants.