daggaz

Yeah is that not normal? We don't have a lot of fish shops in my country, but the one I found the guys are pretty dedicated and everything looks great. They were happy to set me up with a UGF for example, even tho I wouldn't be buying a bunch of filtration crap from them.. But yeah, they have live daphnia, bloodworms, blackworms, normal mosquito larva (hahaha waiting to put those in my tank until im certain I have fish that will eat them all), tubifex worms and I think on occasion some other critter.. And a fridge chock full of all sorts of frozen goodies. I'm very very happy with the powerhead/UGF, by the way. Runs super quiet and yet keeps the tank flowing without buffeting my fish around, if the water gets cloudy from me screwing around in there, it's always super clear within like 30 minutes. Tannins not withstanding.

Tony has a good point. Some kinds of easily captive-bred fish are unfortunately inbred and in poor health, as people selected primarily for visual traits and not for hardiness. Lots of wild-caught fish are already stressed from a long journey before you get them. Both are often kept in poor conditions at the big stores and even more stressed. Getting bagged and dropped into your aquarium, no matter how nice it eventually is, is just more stress. All of this can also happen, even if you buy from a dedicated small shop owner. You can also be unfortunate and buy old fish. It's hard to tell with some fish, if it is a grandma or a whippersnapper, once they reach breeding size. Then there are fish that just require exceptional water quality that you may not have yet. That ties in to the fact that your tank is new, so despite the recent parameters looking good, it can have other factors and instabilities that also stress your fish. Take it easy, give it some time, and introduce new fish slowly. Definitely aim at some of the more robust, easy types first.

There are plenty of online pictures of these guys with blue fins, so seems normal, but yeah can't find any with a golden butt. 😄 Pretty fish, how do they compare with the standard hillstream loach?

It was on Turner's old channel, right before The Incredible Hulk; ie a regular guy who worked out but not too much who got hit with green spray paint. I'm also a big fan of Gilligan's Island. The characters are analogies of the Seven Deadly Sins. And Gilligan? Gilligan is Satan, keeping them trapped on that island for all of time.

I dont have a direct comparison, but I do have a dirted tank that is heavily fertilized (tho not with worm castings specifically, lots of organic lake bed soil however that is certainly full of worms) and it is going great now after a somewhat rough start. Check out my journal if you want to see more. So far I am very happy with the setup. Do you really need the heater, by the way? I took mine out.

We can rebuild him. Faster. Better. Stronger. Definitely leave it and let it see if it rebounds. One thing you can do, which is adapted from the Reverse Respiration trick for sterilizing plants, is to give it a little bit of a recovery boost: take it out, and rinse it under cold dechlorinated water. Be rough enough to manually scrub out any algae, biofilms, and decaying matter. Plants like it rough when they are down. Then fully immerse the plant in plain carbonated water, the more fizz the better. Put some plastic wrap over the container so the CO2 cant escape, but leave a bit of air at the top so there is some oxygen and room for gas exchange. Leave it in that for 24 hours or more, but leave it in the light right on a windowsill, you can replace the seltzer water if it starts to get cloudy and rerinse the plant if the algae starts to grow again. I did that for some african ferns for a few days, and brought them back from something that looked about as bad.

You definitely need way more plants. Qwazarr has a lot of good advice, and this bit in particular I can definitely agree with and have the same experience that Limnophila and floaters are both super easy and super fast at growing, meaning they are doing a big job pulling nutrients out of the water column and away from algae. Floaters in particular are super easy to remove, the limnophila you just have to get used to clipping it back once or twice a week. Its not so bad (and its a very pretty plant). If your parameters are stable, the best algae eater I've found, hands down, are amano shrimp. These are followed in a somewhat lower second place by my siamese algae eaters. Snails are ok, but they are slow and prone to just shelling up for long periods. My hillstream loaches are good at keeping the glass clean, and will scour some of the rocks, but thats about it they don't really do the picky bits of my plants. That's really where the shrimp shine. As far as adding more ferts, yes this can definitely (ironically) help, but I would absolutely recommend getting far more plants first. You need the biomass to ensure those extra nutrients are taken up by plants and not algae. Check out my journal if you want to see the difference between having a few plants, and having a lot more plants, does. Including a picture of the crash that occurred that forced me to realize my mistakes.

Get a couple amano shrimp. They are fun to watch and have picked half of my tank so clean, I am worried there will be enough food for the other algae eating critters..

Unintentional Automated Feeder update: So I bought some live bloodworms, haven't tried these before so I just dumped them in like I have with the blackworms/tubifex/daphnia. I expected them to swim around a bunch like the daphnia which would have looked really cool, but after spreading out into a cloud they dropped rather quickly to the bottom, where most of my nano fish largely ignored them. Now I had dumped them above my UGF because its the clearest part of the tank in regards to obstacles, so there they lay, wriggling around on the substrate. Hillstream loach snacks, I though to myself. A while later I looked again and they were mostly gone, vanished as things want to do in my aquarium. And that was that, or so I thought. But my glass catfish, usually cautious and lurking in the shade of the lily pads, had bravely ventured out into the "sunlit" clearing of the UGF, holding position in the current just under the edge of the crowded floaters. They usually only do that when I am feeding them, so I waited... and then it happened. A single bloodworm was ejected out of the powerhead, flailing in the heavy current, only to be instantly snatched up by a voracious catfish. The others edged forward, greedily. A few minutes later, yet another bloodworm came flying out of the powerhead, and the next catfish got his snack. And so it continued.. I have three inches of gravel substrate in my UGF. Those little guys get around!

wait... what do you do when it is no longer summer? I opened this thread thinking this was going to be about setting up microflora feeder tubs. Is this for breeding and selling or something?

What are you measuring again? Alkalinity/acidity is measured by pH, but you say you measure your pH and get it just a smidge over neutral. That's normal and fine. So are you getting a blue color (that doesnt exist) on the pH section of the Tetra 6 in 1? Sounds like the strip is defective, or you contaminated it somehow. For test strips, you want to leave them submersed until they stop changing color, and this can take a good ten minutes if you have a lot of buffer in the solution (KH). Then you should read them immediately after taking them out of the water. Some strips will start reacting with air after being immersed and give you erroneous results (often moving towards very high pH).

Im with you on the sound. I've got a UGF with a powerhead even, and you almost can't hear it. I think that must be as equally stress-reducing for the fish, as it is for me.

Stocking update: I went to my LFS,, you know, just to look around only not to buy anything, and I found out lampfish are a thing. I was missing a top swimmer and had considered hatchetfish, but they do resemble the glass catfish a bit much in terms of how many seethru fish do we really need. And these guys' eyes were glowing! Need I say more? I bought 10. And a blue vampire shrimp (still small sized). He disappeared in a hurry, but my lamp fish are no longer top swimmers, but instead best friends with the CPDs. Go figure. Will add pictures later.

Is there a good way to (relatively) accurately measure O2 and CO2 levels, preferably something that can be done many times without getting exorbitantly expensive? I have the same questions as OP, with a 50 gallon heavily planted tank. Got a powerhead on a UGF giving minimal surface agitation, and previously this was fine but I went thru a tank crash that involved among other factors, severe O2 depletion, so we got a small airstone. I'd like to take it out as its a bit noisy, but am cautious doing so. The tank is otherwise thriving, both plants and animals. Having some way to actively monitor my gas levels would be a boon to answering this question.

Go salt water. Nothing but a rolling sand bottom, maybe a single rock. Put a school of small fish in there, and a bobbit worm.

Thanks for the warning. 🙂 But it's a heavy duty one, popular in my country a generation or two ago for making welcome drinks in for fancy parties. "Pond scum, Sir?"

Might be a good idea to draw the room and the tank location so people can get a better idea exactly how it will be viewed.

😃

I don't know about that app. I downloaded it, then I put my phone into my tank to measure my parameters, and now my phone won't even turn on.

Have you set up a planted tank before? If not, definitely do a lot of research on what you need for a low-tech planted tank, and what to expect in terms of possible problems. Basic starting points are 1) get a LOT of plants especially fast growing easy to care for types, 2) get a good light and put it on a timer max 8 hours, and 3) use some fertilizer to help get the plants started. All of this will help you avoid an algae apocalypse.

I consolidated all of my microflora buckets into a gigantic brandy glass. It's gotta be at least ten liters if not more. I've been using little five liter plastic buckets, and visiting various lakes, ponds, and ephemeral pools. I kept those standing on my balcony, and took out little starter cultures that I had in my windows in clear plastic food containers. I got a great big bucket for eventually doing a stabilized culture in (primarily daphnia) but I really wanted something to have in my living room that was more like an aquarium, where I could see all the little critters going about their daily lives. So last night I saw the huge brandy glass in the red-cross store, and I took a morning off from work and was at the door the minute they opened and bought it (what a steal, like 10 bucks) and put all my established cultures into it. So I've got scuds, seed shrimp, daphnia, microworms, some kind of tiny pond snails that don't seem to grow more than 0.5 cm which seems perfect, copepods, some really fast round things that are on the verge of being microscopic (like max 1mm) and which I need to identify still despite spending my entire childhood studying this stuff -no they are not paramecium, and just a plethora of other infusoria. Also have some different algaes and moss, hornworts, and some plant cuttings from my fish tank that I will get going in the cup, which I basically set up like a walstad. I'll put some pictures up once the water settles.

Day 7: I have finished my investigation of my prison: the invisible barriers holding me captive are impermeable and beyond reproach. I am exhausted, and can only hope the feeder will return soon with something better than these stale, oily flakes. They are palatable and afford me some constitution, but only just so. I must retire to the wooden branch, which I have claimed as my own, and recoup my strength. I still do not understand why I am being held captive! Day 8: Those damned puffers are at it again. This is my branch, and I will have none of their impudent abuses. We are all prisoners here, to what end should we visit grief upon one another? I do not feel they comprehend such necessary civilities in the slightest, unfortunately. Day 9: The feeder has returned! And the water abounds with wriggling red worms, the likes of which I have never known! Oh such splendid pleasure, to think I would find such a heavenly grace in this damned place.. Perhaps I have been too condescending in regards to my new fate...

I didnt think about the Ca. You are right... that's interesting. Though I wonder if it doesn't drop out again as calcium phosphate, if you have phosphate ions in any excess. EDIT: and yeah, thats never going to happen. tricalcium phosphate.. no way that dominates any reaction equilibrium. Clearly the answer is to have a metric ton of shrimp in your tank, to set up an equilibrium with the Ca ions. Every few weeks, you just need to harvest shrimp to keep things in balance.

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But the coral will actually act to create stability, setting up a chemical equilibrium between solid and dissolved carbonate, and this remains in equilibrium no matter how much acid is produced from bacteria, so long as you have undissolved coral/limestone remaining in your tank. With K2C03, yes you can set it instantly (better measure correctly), but this is eventually depleted and doesn't come back as an active buffer, and will also quickly be lost with water changes. So you have to keep doing it. That's not exactly stability, is it...