Chandra
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Posts posted by Chandra
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Sera Micron and crushed vibra bites.
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Cur down the lights for few days and you should be seeing some reduction in algae.
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Guppy tank is beautiful too in a fluval flex.
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You should definitely checkout the list from Aquarium co-op here. Here's another video recently low-tech plants that are good for you.
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With your tank size, those fish are okay. Don't chase pH too much. Add crushed coral to your substrate to maintain pH drops. I really don't recommend pH and kH adjusters from API. Instead if you have really really soft water, you can use seachem equilibrium to harden water based on the species you have. Wonder shells are great too but they are costly I feel.
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It depends but I would highly recommend. I didn't know about the quarantine process, burned my hands! Let me share my experience as a beginner about this.
I always trusted my local store when I had my first few tanks based on their advice when I asked about cycling. When I pretended as if I didn't know about cycling, they told me the whole story correctly instead of vague answers like Petco that you can get fish on the same day. They do the quarantine process by monitoring fish but not treating them. So, if I saw a fish died in that tank, there are high chances to affect fishes in that tank. I bought some guppies and killies from the local store and didn't have any problem with so far. Same thing happened with Corydoras.
Some sellers have fish that lived for a few months in their tanks. If you can trust the seller, you can get the fishes without quarantine I think. However, there have been instances where they get diseased due to stress during transportation.
I recently got otocinclus from my local fish store and added them to my tank directly without any quarantine. However, out of 4, only two survived. I believe because most of them are wild-caught, making them carriers of worms and diseases from the wild.
After a week, I noticed one of my healthy killifish I had camallanus worms and died. My killie fish was healthy before that. Luckily, I had Levamisole from Greg Sage handy and treated my whole tanks. So far, all fish survived.
Here's what I do now after some lessons, every-time I add a medical dosage of salt and bring new fish, I monitor for the first two weeks, feed them well with frozen food or live food. Salt is good for osmoregulation and also helps treat few diseases. If I see any signs of illness like white poop, fish are not eating, white spots... etc., I hit them with meds accordingly. That's where the med trio was helpful. I was able to get my fish healthy without knowing what disease they had before after treating with meds.
I agree that treating the right disease is best instead of a shotgun approach, but there are very few diseases I can still identify after I got six tanks with about 80 fish.
Let me give you another approach I have been trying. I recently got rummy nose tetra (Couldn't resist seeing Cory's videos) from the Petco and hit them a med trio. Some of them had red gills that got cured, and few of them died. I was able to see capillary worms when I inspected a dead fish on a cheap microscope.Dosed with levamisole and the fish now are looking good and haven't had any deaths. So I was able to identify the disease and treat correctly but not always.
In summary, I would say for a beginner, it will take time to identify diseases and treat, but the success rate seems to be okay with the shotgun approach, too with the med trio. Irrespective of whether you treat or not, I would highly recommend monitoring them in a separate tank for 2-4 weeks before you go with adding them to the display tank. It is always handy to have meds too. -
Beautiful
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No it won't. I had plenty of pink plants that needed easy iron dosing apart from easy green but go depending on the signs. if you see the pink plants not pink, I would dose easy iron. In general, I dose only one dosage of easy iron to keep my iron levels.
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58 minutes ago, Jack said:
I don't have the budget for the quarantine trio so would API General Cure work?
I would say put them in a quarantine time for a week and see if you see any signs of disease like not eating, stringy white poop, white spots on body or fungus, pop eye. I would really invest in med trio to help fish be safe. If you really want to save, then try Aquarium Salt. (Read about dosage here: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish)
API General Cure work is same as Mardel Maracyn in the med trio. Do quarantine for atleast 4 weeks and that way you know if the fish is healthy.
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I wanted to try a canister filter for 20g inside my room. I got an eheim 2211 deal and got to try.
Any suggestions on setting up the canister filter media?
People using canister filters, How do you handle power failures?
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43 minutes ago, Mr. Ed's Aquatics said:
You're welcome, I set mine up how they suggested and did not like the results or how often I was having to clean the bio media so I hot rodded it before I knew that was a thing.
I took it apart, totally cleaned it and figured out how it works. Following the intake, it immediately goes through the top basket, and each basket linked all the way to the bottom. So the first basket to get dirty water was the bottom. Totally the opposite of the brand I used before.
Once I started doing them bottom up, they worked great. Usually only had to rinse the intake and coarse sponge after that.
Do you recommend this setip for eheim 2211 too?
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I went by advice @Cory's advice and had gravel in one of my tanks. My corys had no problems ever and they have been fed bood worms and they do great.
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I use Alum like @Irene and Select Aquatics recommends.
"To remove organisms, snails and snail eggs, soak the plants in water dosed with 3 tablespoons of alum per gallon of water for 2-3 hours. Alum is not best for killing Algea."
I found it to kill snails and keep nasty things out when giving plants to others. Just don't do it for long with too sensitive plants. I killed few floating plants letting them stay for long.
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I really love Fluval 3.0 for its excellence at what it does.
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I usually don't go by one inch fish per gallon rule. I have stocked 14 in a 10 gallon too. As long as its not way too crowded, they have spaces to swim and zones to have territories. Most of fish should be okay. Be sure to check the parameters though as heavy bio load can cause ammonia to spike up and never forget to keep up with regular water changes as per nitrates. As long as your filtration is good, you will be okay.
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Aquariums keep surprising me. When I have setup my first planted tank, after the tank cycled I found a mysterious species moving across my aquarium.
I panicked but I found it was a damselfly nymph. Its usually a pest that comes from plants. It could prey on fish so got rid of it.
When I was setting my second tank, I ordered plants from another vendor for carpeting plants in mat size.
To my surprise when I opened the peat, I found egg like balls and I was shocked again. The seller couldn't tell me what they were and why they were there.
People told me they are eggs and what not but it turned out to be fertilizer. So funny!
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2 hours ago, MickS77 said:
I keep Microworms and Vinegar Eels because they're easy and will last forever if you maintain them
Where do you buy a good starter culture
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1 hour ago, Irene said:
@genuine_red Oh wow, your tanks look beautiful! Yeah, lack of minerals probably isn't your issue. I had already tested many other plant nutrients first, and nothing else seemed out of whack. After looking at different online articles, here is a list of recommended nutrient levels I wrote down to try to troubleshoot what my plants were lacking:
- CO2 content: 20-30 ppm
- Nitrate (NO3): 10-25 ppm OR 10-20 ppm
- Potassium (K): 5-10 ppm OR 10-20 ppm
- Phosphate (PO4): 0.1-1 ppm (dose to 0.5 and let it drop to 0) OR 0.5-2.0 ppm
- Magnesium (Mg): >10 ppm OR 2-5 ppm
- Calcium (Ca): 10-30 ppm
- (calcium-magnesium-potassium ratio = 2:1:0.5)
- Iron (Fe): 0.05-0.1 ppm OR 0.1-0.5 ppm
- General Hardness (GH): 4-8 degrees
- Carbonate Hardness (KH): 4-8 degrees
I tried tweaking the individual nutrients I thought my plants needed more of, but I ended up making a bigger mess of things. Eventually, I went back to using Easy Green since it's already calibrated to the right concentration of nutrients for most tanks. The one thing it doesn't list in the ingredients is calcium though, which is what I was missing. 🙂
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I did first try dosing the liquid carbon on the whole tank for several weeks. It was gradually killing some algae because I could see lots of particulate floating in the water and making it cloudy, but it didn't seem to make much of a dent for some reason. Eventually, I gave up and just started spot treating, and it worked much better/faster for me. Best of luck to ya!
How do you keep up with so many tests and kits, @Irene?
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On 7/28/2020 at 5:19 PM, StephenP2003 said:
In all my aquaclears, I run the included sponge, some bulk filter pad media (https://www.amazon.com/Aquarium-Filter-Pad-Premium-Density/dp/B01AHIOM8A), co-op pre-filter sponge, and seachem matrix. I only replaced the included fluval bio media because I falsely believed the seachem matrix was some magical nitrate reducer (it isn't, at least not in a filter with high flow). In some where my driftwood is still slowly leaching tannins, I use a bag of purigen.
Do you put bulk filter media at the top or bottom?
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On 8/21/2020 at 12:31 PM, Nataku said:
So I actually do this six days of the week, not just today, but figured the pics might be amusing.
This is the 'otto buffet' - I keep a small tub out side with a few inches of rainwater and dirty tank change water in it, and I throw these rocks in there to sit out in the sun and grow algae. I then pull two or three rocks a day and put them in this tank for the ottos to have fresh algae since they've done a fine job cleaning up the rest of the tank.
These rocks will be cleaned in a couple hours. I will swap them back out to the outside tub tomorrow and bring fresh algae covered rocks in for them.
I'm going to try to my new otos in quarantine. Thanks for the tip.
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12 minutes ago, gcalberto said:
I give my snails and shrimp a lot of kale, which supposedly has a lot of calcium. My water is soft, but I've never had shell malformation or molt issues.
Do you just dump into the tank?
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12 hours ago, JaydenDSin said:
Would it matter which tums you're using or is any alright? I'm assuming not.
I like that but I was hesitant because of the inactive ingredients.
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I have few mystery snails in my tanks. How do you guys keep up with Calcium?
I read on few sites that offer snello kits and calcium carbonate powders but I was looking for more of measurable dosages if any one is doing.
Photography
in General Discussion
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Thank you so much @Ryan W. I compared both iPhone and camera finally. I debated alot and luckily bought a fuji xt-200 which I like transitioning from iPhone photos. Your advice was very well given.