TheDojoMojo

Okay. I have heard negative things about chemical methods for changing pH. Are these ones safe? What natural ways would you recommend?

Thanks guys. Will alkaline buffer raise pH as well, or just KH? I have never attempted a softwater tank before, so most of this is fairly new to me.

Hello all, I am setting up a tank in which I hope to breed German Blue Rams. I live in Texas, and my tap water is hard with about 10 dGH and 6 dKH, as well as a pH of ~8. So, I will be using an RO/DI unit to fill this tank. I am looking for a remineralization method that would restore the RO water's GH and KH to an ideal level, while not raising my pH, since I am looking for an acidic pH of around 6.5. My pH meter doesn't work for RO water according to the instructions, but it is my understanding that RO water tends to be around pH of 7? Anyways, I need a method to be able to keep my tank at a stable and slightly acidic pH using remineralized RO water. Thanks!

I've always kept it in a bag in my canister filter.

If it comes off fairly easily, it’s likely green dust. Blue green algae I’ve found to be more deep colored and, as someone mentioned, smells horrible.

I use 2 pothos in my 125. I use an intake sponge on my Eheim canister filter and set up one of my pothos to root into the sponge to sort of use the nutrients that get caught up in the sponge. The other one I just have pulling from the water column.

CO2 injection is always a bit of a headache in my experience, though I still love using it. The difficulties are just a part of it, and a lot of times it just makes no sense whatsoever. I've never had this problem in particular, but what I do to troubleshoot is to first get an understanding of how the setup works and then examine each different component to see if you can narrow down where the issue lies. Is your system currently connected to a diffuser? Is the diffuser diffusing properly into the tank? I ask this because it seems as though there are fluctuations in the pressure of your output, which is what the right meter is measuring. I also know that the bubbles come out faster when there is less pressure in the tubing (For example when you first turn it on after disconnecting it). So, if there is something irregular in the diffusing process that is fluctuating the pressure in the tubing and therefore the rate of the bubbles, that may be the culprit. It is also possible that there is a leak in the airline tubing or check valve that only gives way when the pressure reaches a certain point. Also make sure you have CO2 grade airline tubing, as while I doubt this is entirely the issue, some tubing for airstones isn't exactly CO2-proof. The other possibility is a regulator issue. CO2 regulators are one of the most unpredictable pains in the behind the aquarium hobby has to offer. I would test this by removing all tubing from the end of the bubble counter so that it is just shooting into the air. Then see if the irregularities continue.

To vac or not to vac. It can depend on different factors of your setup and stocking as well as your own preference. We know that plants with roots like the dirty gunk and nutrients that fall to the bottom of the tank. However, finer substrates like sand will allow some of this detritus to lay on the surface of the gravel more easily which can cause problems aesthetically. On the other hand, sand-sifting species like loaches will pretty much gravel vac the top half-inch of your substrate naturally. Personally, I gravel vac the top half-inch of my substrate in planted tanks if that tank lacks a creature to do so itself. The plants want the nutrients in the bottom in order to have functioning roots, so I leave everything below that half-inch alone. Especially do not uproot all your plants for the sake of gravel vac-ing. Replanting your plants requires them to entirely reset. Just vacuum around your plants in the open areas. As a side note, I purposefully stock all of my tanks with Malaysian trumpet snails since they sift and mix through the entire substrate. I believe this also alleviates the need for vacuuming. I combine that with an army of loaches to keep the ecosystem cleaning itself 🙂

He acts about how I would expect a fish of his size to act in a 10 gallon. He isn't as active, and doesn't swim from end to end like he did in the 125, but he still moves around fairly regularly with the little space he has, so I wouldn't say he is particularly lethargic. I have noticed that the bloating is larger on one side, but it isn't obvious. A tumor is something I haven't thought of yet... It is true that he has always eaten whatever I feed him like a monster, so I've always wondered if he was just fat, but I'm not sure how I could differentiate between bloating and simply being overweight. It seems like the bulge is just in one area of his abdomen rather than his entire body appearing fat, but again, I'm not aware of what a fat fish ought to look like. How long would it take for a fish to begin to lose weight? He has been fasted multiple times since being in the QT and the rest of the time has been a diet of almost entirely peas, so I would imagine that I would have seen some improvement. Would it be possible that his setup prevents him from losing much weight (Small tank and low temperature)? So if we can rule out constipation, bacterial infection, and egg-bound, what does that leave us with as possibilities?

Hello all, I have a group of 7 dojo loaches in my 125 gallon heavily planted aquarium. The largest of the dojos has been struggling with bloat lately. Symptoms began showing maybe 4-5 months ago, and have escalated since then. Here is a picture of him currently: Throughout the early part of that period I was just watching to see if it would worsen or just get better. When it started to get worse, I just dosed some Maracyn in the whole tank to see if that would solve the problem. About 2 months ago, I realized that it wasn't going to get any better on its own, and the meds weren't helping. So, I moved him to a 10 gallon hospital tank and have been taking more active measures to work on him since then. I did a ton of research and found (to my dismay) that there are almost an infinite amount of potential causes for fish bloat. Eventually, I came across this FAQ article by the Co-Op: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/faqs/bloated-fish . I was unable to decipher which of the scenarios listed was causing the bloat, so I figured I'd go ahead and try some of them. I started by fasting the fish for about a week and then only feeding him peas and frozen cyclops. Around this time I also dosed some aquarium salt, then Maracyn. Seeing no improvement, I later did a Maracyn Two dose for a couple weeks. At this point I'm also only feeding peas, and he has been actively eating whatever I feed him. I also dosed ParaCleanse for a couple weeks to no avail. Most recently, I tried one dose of Expel-P as described on the package, and nothing happened. Now, the dojo is still eating primarily peas but with a few Hikari sinking wafers and algae wafers mixed in. I have not found any poop in the tank whatsoever despite consumption of food. This means it is either dissolving into the water, he is eating it, or he is not pooping. At this point I feel as though I've tried everything under the sun multiple times, and need advice on what to do next. Any thoughts are helpful, thanks!

Hello, I guess the title is pretty self-explanatory. What floating plants would you suggest/recommend. I barely know anything about floating plants but plan on buying a couple. Feel free to leave any ideas here! Thanks!

Hello. I'm about to jump-start my 125 gallon tank's cycle by dosing ammonia. The tank is heavily planted and has loads of snails (MTS) which I need to keep alive. I have a few questions regarding the cycling process: How many ppm of ammonia should I keep the levels at? I am unfamiliar with how sensitive plants and MTS (or any snails for that matter) are to ammonia levels, but it would be a must that I keep the levels low enough that these organisms continue to live well. I can do more frequent dosing to keep lower constant if that is required. The tank is very heavily planted, so will the plants consume the ammonia before the bacteria can? This may be a dumb question but I just want to make sure the dose won't just go to the plants. Thanks for the help!

If you don't care to be exact, estimating a half a pump could work. I would recommend using a pipette and measuring a half a mL as that's pretty easy. The dilution idea also would work well. If you do care to be exact however, I recommend measuring easy green before dosing anyway, since I've found that the pump head can be innacurate in my experience anyway and often pumps closer to 0.5 mL than 1 mL for me. I just squirt it into a measuring cup to the right amount instead of directly in the tank. If you dont care to be exact with your dosages however, you may want to use this to your advantage if your pump head is like mine. Measure the average volume of one pump using something to measure it (I used a test tube with my API kit since the line is 5 mL, and found that it usually took like 8 or so pumps to fill it up to 5 mL, so after repeating this test a couple times I concluded that my average pump is probably around 0.625), and if your pump is like mine then you may not need to dilute your solution or use a half pump after all if your pump size is close enough to 0.5 mL. Keep in mind that my pump may be very different from yours as it is a pretty old bottle or may just malfunction, so make sure not to just use my results. Also keep in mind that the 1 mL per 10 gal is just a guideline and depending on the nutrient uptake of your tank, you should dose more or less in order to keep your nutrients in the proper range.

Thanks a lot guys. Just added a cascade 1500 from chewy to the list. I'm excited to see how it does!

Hmmmm. Thanks guys. The Cascade really does seem to fit my idea here, especially for the price. When looking into it however, I ran into a problem. The treys have a hole in them where the tube would go through, which isn't really a problem at all... as long as you buy their filter media. I'm someone who needs to be able to customize my filter media: the sponges, fine pads, bio media, carbon pads, the whole deal. So the fact that the pads and sponges need to be exactly fit with the perfect circle-cutout in the middle makes me wonder if I will be able to customize it. I'm wondering what your experience is, and if you customize your cascade filters at all. Does it seem like I would be able to cut the perfect circle out for my media easily enough? Because I typically change the pads frequently and will likely need to cut new ones each month or so. What are your thought?

I am looking for a smaller canister filter to go along with my FX6 on a 125 gal that is not crazy expensive, has customizable media, has pretty good flow for surface agitation. It doesn't need to be that large, as I don't need too much more filtration. What do you guys think?

This one isn't much of a fantasy, because I know they have to exist somewhere for saltwater if not freshwater, but just a relatively cost effective (obviously couldn't be cheap, but hopefully not insane) digital meter for all the stuff we'd normally test and more. What I'd love is just a handful of little meters that I clip to the side of my tank when testing or prop up inside a cup of the tank's water, and after a minute or two, it tells me all my concentrations accurate down to the decimal. I have found that a lot of the liquid test kits can give very different results each time since there's an infinite amount of variables that can be hard to prevent. Specifically the API nitrate test I have found to be inaccurate sometimes. What I would love to get first would be Nitrate, Ammonia, Phosphate, and then probably Oxygen, GH+KH, and CO2 would all be a dream come true!

Yes! I have always wanted to be able to test the nutrients in my water, and do a little quick math to find out exactly how many mL I should put in to bring my levels right to the sweet spot. Easy, right? As much as I love Easy Green and the results I have had with it, this is probably one of the only criticisms I'd have of it, as many other brands like seachem give you the exact lab-tested ppm that one dose adds to your water. If I could keep all of my parameters in line perfectly I could maximize plant growth and probably do a better job of cracking down on my algae problems.😌

I am not a fan of rimless either. Some people prefer the look of them, but personally if I want a tank to be super neat looking in my house, I prefer a rimmed tank with a canopy anyway. With a rimless tank it's often very difficult to get a lid to work, so you are often limited to fish that wont jump, as well as keeping the water level lower. If you cant get a lid for it you lose all the other benefits of lids as well. And yes you have increased cost too. Rather than getting a rimless 20 gal, I'd rather get a rimmed 55 or maybe even like a 75 gal for the same price. You may be able to find cheaper options of rimless, but keep in mind that the cheaper you go, the more likely it is to not be built sturdy enough to compensate for the lack of a rim.

Ah that makes sense. I also believe your math used to reach 0.7 ppm is correct, because I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out my own equation to solve it, and reached the same answer... which is obviously not what is actually ending up in the tanks according to a whole year of weekly API testing. So either both of us did the math wrong, or, as you suggested, there is something else going on in the chemistry of the "nitrates" themselves. I'm convinced the second one is what's happening. I ran my equation with potassium in order to see if it would seem right with a different element. My answer was 2.43, but I didnt take the time to check my math extensively. However, if this is right, then at least that sounds like a reasonable number for potassium, and at least sort of lines up with what Bob stated. This makes me pretty sure that when nitrogen becomes nitrates, something else must be going on, or maybe, the percents on the bottle mean something completely different from what I think they do. Also, a while back I asked a question on a live stream of how much ppm of potassium is in a dose of easy green, and if I remember correctly, @Candi answered my question saying 2 ppm, which is not too far off from my result, and is exactly what Bob said. I am still however extremely curious about the numbers @Bob gave us, or if he can explain something we don't know (because I still don't know what I'm dealing with😅) And please, don't feel like you need to spend an endless amount of time on this lol. I will probably just resort to continually testing my water before and after each dose in order to get a ballpark for how many nitrates/phosphates. This will at least help me calculate my doses a little better if I run a few experiments. I tried testing on my quarantine a few times so I didnt have to account for plant uptake, but inaccuracies with testing along with a mix of other variables I couldn't really work around made me give up that method for now. If I happen to get any new info or something I will post it on this thread when I figure something out. Thanks for all the help!

I am lost when you converted the % to mg/mL as well as the whole weight by volume lol. Can you explain the process of turning a percent, which is equivalent to 0.0266 in decimal form, into an equivalent of 26.6 ppm, which is the same as 0.0000266 (again as a decimal).

I am looking for a ppm value, not a percentage. If you know a formula with which I could convert these percentages into how much ppm are in a 1 mL dose, that would be very appreciated.

Thank you this is great. I'm not trying to doubt you or anything🙃, but I'm curious to know your process when finding this, or if there was a source which you found the answers from. Thanks!

This occurred to me, but then I wasnt sure how to apply the results after converting the percentages. For example, It states 2.66% N, which converts to 26,600 ppm. I know thats obviously not what's in it, but I didn't know what equation to apply to that number to find how much is in the actual dose. What would be the next step?

Hello. I have been using Easy Green for almost a year now and have loved it! I have recently been trying to figure out how much ppm of each of the nutrients (Specifically Nitrates, Phosphates, Potassium, or any other necessary nutrients that I cannot test for) is in one 1-mL-per-10-gallons dosage, as this would allow me to more accurately calculate my weekly dose according to test results/different bioload of different tanks. I have tried re-watching old Aquarium Co-Op videos but could not seem to find a suitable answer in the ones I saw. I also tried holding my own experiment in a quarantine tank but I was unsuccessful to come to a conclusion. I figured that the percentages listed on the Aquarium Co-Op website may hold an answer but I was unable to decipher the percentages into ppms. I was wondering if perhaps @Cory was able to give some info on the details inside his wonderful bottle of Easy Green, or if anyone else has personal experience in regards to this topic. Thanks!