CanadaAmanda

Thanks for the replies! Definitely possible it could be a coincidence. Just weird. @Kurt Brutting I've been dosing at half the recommended amount to start. Yeah the Java Fern is finally looking good again after a ruthless removal of the poor looking leaves and a couple months of regular dosing of the potassium so I don't want to cut it off... but I could try reducing it a bit further to see if that does the trick! @Lennie How much are you dosing? This tank was previously a bit of a frogbit farm - I sell excess plants locally at about half of what you'd buy them for at a store, some of which we never see at local stores and they're hard to buy online as they don't ship well. It's nice to have a hobby that can pay for it's own upkeep and selling plants allows me to meet more local aquarists as we don't have a club!

Manual removal is a must. Even if you use another method, a single little plant left will re-populate, so you have to be very on top of it. Hydrogen peroxide treatment (usually used for algae) is quite hard on other floaters. I have no duckweed so I can't confirm it kills duckweed. You can look up instructions, generally they are: - turn off filter and lights. - dose 1 ml / gallon of 3% hydrogen peroxide - turn the lights and filter back on after 40 min This is plant, shirmp and snail safe in the treatments I have done but it is hard on other floating plants (frogbit, salvinia, red root floaters) as well as delicate leaved plants (elodea densa, some val varieties, wisteria, etc). If it does work to kill duckweed, I'd repeat it weekly. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down to water plus oxygen so no need for a water change after. You'll notice everything pearling with the extra oxygen. If you have any algae you want to treat, be sure to treat it as directly as possible with the peroxide. Good luck with it!

Hi folks! So I've been dosing Easy Green for >1.5 yrs. I recently added Seachem Potassium to my dosing as well as I have a tank with a TON of java ferns that weren't doing so well, and I was told they're potassium hogs. Since I started dosing it, I notice my Amazon Frogbit is just not doing well, leaves are rotting off, roots are falling off. It's still growing, but struggling along instead of going gangbusters as it has for over a year. I notice the smell of the Seachem Potassium is similar to what I remember Seachem Flourish Excel smelling like, and I know that stuff is hard on delicate plants like frogbit. I can't compare them directly as I threw out the Flourish Excel after losing some ottos following dosing it (according to the regular dosing, not initial dosing!). My questions are: Has anyone else noticed any ill effect after adding Seachem Potassium to their dosing regimen? Any knowledge of what causes it's pungent smell?

Very interesting reading this thread! I have two albino BN's that have mated and thrown approximately 50/50 brown and albino babies. I've thought about it and believe it's due to the parents having different genes coding for their albinism, and on the mother's side those genes on the X chromosome where they are unmatched by the Y chromosome (X chromosomes have more genes), leading to expression of a recessive gene coming from just the mother (eg. in humans this is seen with male pattern baldness and ocular albinism). This is called X-linked recessive inheritance. Anyway, thought someone else might find this interesting so wanted to add to the thread. 🙂 ETA: if my theory is correct, all the albino babies will be males.

@bigpuma I'm looking at setting up a huksy shelf, and hoping to hear how yours is holding up! Still what you'd recommend? I was thinking ideally there would be support on the front and back of the rims as well (parallel to the length of the shelf) - based on how your tanks sit on the shelf, do you think you can add front/back 1x3s and they would be helpful (or at least not do any harm)? I like the idea of avoiding ply wood if possible as it's definitely not cheap, and I'd have to have it cut by the store as I don't have a set up for that.

Excited to be able to order! I saw someone post in a Canadian aquascaping facebook group about it. It would be super helpful to have the currency shown somewhere before getting to to checkout if possible 🙂 I'm seeing on several product categories that it says a certain number of products are there, but doesn't show me any:

@JamesB same, I have one right now. How I deal with a tank with nitrite (and possibly ammonia, not tested for in this case) with fish is different than without.

If there is still nitrite, the tank is still cycling. Are there fish in the tank?

An update to the column tank, the red plants in the bottom were very slowly dying, so I’ve replaced them with elodea densa. I’ve also got some Brazilian pennywort up near the top.

@Koi OH! I have a solution for you - bendy plastic coated wire. You can wrap it loosely around the base of the plant, and leave long ends to use as hooks on the side of the tank 🙂 I learned that trick from MD Fish Tanks on YouTube - he's got some lillies, ferns and philodenrons growing out the top of several tanks. Previously I was just rooting plants in the top, but now starting to plan to keep them there permanently. The roots are an interesting look and provide a different bit of colour. Your tanks look great! Just a tip for the marbled pothos you have in there since you mention it's newer for you - if it doesn't get adequate light, you'll notice the new leaves coming out mostly dark green (folks in the plant world call it "reverting"), if that happens, just move it so it gets more light 🙂 Leaves will come out darker so they have more chlorophyll to make more of the lower light conditions.

@TheDukeAnumber1 Yes, I'm seeing that with so many things, that the internet is just a big echo chamber of folks all repeating the same opinions. So glad to have this community. Great to hear you're having success with sunlit tanks! I'm planning for this tank to have some shrimp so hopefully they help with any seasonal/weather shifts that cause a bit of algae to flare up. And of course there will be snails!

A cycle is not on/off but rather scaled to the bioload it supports. You have a tank with enough bacteria to process the waste of the snails, that's it. You will be going through another cycle, to catch up to the new bioload, when you add fish.

@Koi Do you have pics of your tank with the plants? I have some little peace lillies I've just rinsed off and put into the top of a tank - got a second hand plant for $5 that was massively root bound and split into a good chunk for an aquarium and a good bit of it in a pot as well. I have pothos and heart leaf philodendrons in a couple tanks, and transcendia in one. This one I'm planning I think I'll either do golden or neon pothos depending which colours look best against the plants that end up in there... quite hard to get plants lately so it's a bit of taking what you can get and making it work and likely trimming things in other tanks a touch prematurely to fill it out. It's a large fish bowl (3.5gal) and I've got it starting to cycle beside an existing tank but not loving the look... and it would fit perfectly in this one little nook in my kitchen. I plan to use it as a grow out for baby endlers and hear that sunlight helps some fish develop their colours as well which would be a nice bonus.

I'm having a hard time understanding why the internet basically says "HECK NO!" to any natural light, especially direct, but "HIGHLY REQUIRED!" to full-spectrum high powered LED lights which seem to strive to reproduce natural light. What am I missing here? I'm starting a planted tank that will have emersed house plants coming out the top, and I'd like them to be able to grow nicely, without putting a light over them and shadowing the plants in the tank (this has been a challenge with another similar tank) or having to use multiple lights. I have the perfect spot, but it gets about 2 hours of direct morning sun and bright indirect light for another 4 hours. I plan to get a basic clip-on LED light to make sure the plants against the wall with less natural light will still grow, and so I can see the tank after dark, and know there will be some playing with the light timing to get things balanced, and that this will likely be on-going with changes in weather and seasons. Is a tank that gets natural light doomed to have a massive algae issue like the entire internet seems to tell me?

The mulm would indicate not enough mechanical filtration and/or not enough flow in that area.... definitely clean the filter to see if that fixes it, a gunked up filter can run way slower than a clean one.