FishyThoughts

If your interested. Here’s some information regarding aquarium filtering, best media types and performance here. https://aquariumscience.org/index.php/7-filter-media/

Yeah, I’d check it again after the prime has had time to dissipates. Then maybe another WC if nitrites are still showing. And I guess it was perfect timing to skip a day of feeding! It may have been those snails that were causing the increased nitrites.

I would agree that the small drop that your showing shouldn’t cause any issues with your fish. Though I do believe that prime will skew the results, it detoxifies Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. So it should have been binding some of those elements up when added to your tank. With your results showing as they did, I would say that’s what the prime did as well. The 30% WC should have lowered your nitrates to somewhere around 30-60ppm. And the results may still show some nitrites in a day after the prime is no longer binding those elements. You could also not feed for a day to allow the tank to process some of those nitrites without adding more. Also if you test regularly and this is a drastic change you may want to check if something died, or what may have changed. And would suggest not to do too much to correct your parameters too quickly. Your fish won’t mind the clean water, but your cycled tank might.

Since you have the honey gourami already, you could do the pygmy corys or otos or even some kuhli loaches. Personally, I would only do one group out of the others you listed though. I think doing several of those would take away from the appeal of each fish and make the tank too busy overall.

I have a 20gal cube that I was considering doing some (Lamprologus Ocellatus) shell dwellers in. I was looking around for something that might be a good top swimmer. I came across Cyprichromis Leptosoma Burundi that could be a possibility. Most of the information I’ve been finding seems to be kind of random with pertaining to different variations of Cyprichromis. Does anyone have experience with cyprichromis and know if they would be suitable for this setup? Also, does anyone have recommendations for other species that would work well with shell dwellers?

@lefty o is correct. I’m more with the group of don’t myself. I usually only will gravel vac if I see a change in my tank and excess buildup on the substrate could be the cause. And then like them, I just try to take what’s on top and not get down into the substrate.

Guessing your not wanting them? 😏 I’d agree with the others as well, definitely looks like snail eggs. They’re a little sticky, but you can scrap them off relatively easy if you wanted to remove them.

Personally I’m not a fan of bio balls. Though I can’t say I’m a huge fan of filter socks either, but that’s only because the socks can be a bit of a pain to clean. And kind of wasteful/expensive if you went with just replacing with new ones. They do work well though. Anyway, you could make that into a sump setup without having to modify the acrylic at all. First compartment- do sponge filter pads; filter floss on bottom, medium sponge in middle and thick layer of course sponge on top. Second compartment- make a basket that fits relatively snuggly. With the basket having a solid sheet of acrylic in the middle that goes to the bottom of the compartment and up to the height of where you want the water to come up to. Only the bottom of the basket would need to be perforated, so you could make it with solid acrylic sheeting on all sides. Just make a cutouts on the basket that’s slightly bigger than the cutout in the bottom of the compartment of the wet/dry. Could also make it so they acrylic goes a little higher in the middle and cut a handle into it for removing the basket. I would recommend sintered glass media, ceramic media or something porous in this basket. Last compartment- return pump, heater. Depending on space you could also add chemical media, additional bags of media you used in the previous compartment or add a divider and grow more plants.

I can’t say this is the problem for sure. The meds can effect the beneficial bacteria. From my experience tanks with plants even have a stronger smell while doing treatments. But I guess the plants are helping counter it enough that it’s not as bad as without plants. You could try adding some floating plants, or maybe float some stem plant trimmings. Maybe that would help. Other than that I’m not sure.

I’m not sure why it’s recommended to keep 20ppm of nitrates. Maybe so that there’s a reading for people to see that nitrates are present for feeding the plants? And I don’t recall the preset settings, but the more light the faster plants many plants grow and use nutrients. So your levels could be lower due to that, low bio load and anaerobic bacteria (if present with your setup). The nitrates on my tank show as around 0, and the plants are healthy and growing. So if you find the balance of bio load and nutrients being used why wouldn’t that be considered good. While it’s important to monitor ammonia/nitrites/nitrates, if they are stable (ammonia and nitrites at 0 ideally) it decreases the concerns for a potential issue and indicates the frequency of when maintenance is needed. Personally I would be looking into why water changes are needed to keep the PH stable. Do you test you GH and KH? Have you tested the ph of your tap water? You can put some tap water in a bucket, test the ph,let sit for a period of time and test again. If you have a change in ph between the test the tap water is off gassing. If off gassing is the cause of the changes it may be better try and maintain the ph level once the water has out gassed as the initial ph is basically a false reading.

You could get a 75g, move everything to it and sell all your current tanks. If 75g isn’t feasible due to size/weight, maybe two 40 breeders with everything spilt between those.

That’s how many of mine were done. And it still takes a long time at boiling, I would boil my pieces for 6+ hours and still sometimes have a little buoyancy. But so far finished sinking in a day or two.

Not sure if that store charges more for the established media than the new media. But the second round of established media wasn’t really needed. The bacteria is supposed to more or less double each day, providing there’s food for it. So you would have been good with just the first bit of media. Ammonia and nitrite readings are normal starting a tank up. Ideally you won’t really have anymore readings with those two. Then depending on your setup/stocking you may or may not really have much nitrates. But just incase your not... the nitrate #2 fluid has to be shaken very well. If not it will only give a reading of 0.

It is not unheard of to have water test show all 0’s. It can be done in various ways with about any tank. There’s even setups that only use plants to filter the system and don’t require water changes. I setup my 75g with the goal of requiring no water changes due to nitrates. It’s still relatively new, but for a couple months ammonia, nitrites and nitrates all read 0 on water test. I also feed fairly heavy so the guppies breed well and occasionally use some fertilizers to make sure the plants get the nutrients they need. Unless your using RO water, using RO generally requires adding minerals back into the water, there’s some trace elements in the tap water. And the chloramines are broken done a leave ammonia in the water. You likely had a water test showing all 0’s because the plants consumed the nutrients. The bacteria you put in the tank is commonly used to instantly “cycle” a tank and add fish immediately. I’d agree with some previous comments that you can start adding fish.

If you quarantined that fish that are in the display tank when you got them there shouldn’t be need for too much concern. They should ideally be clean and healthy. You are quarantining the new fish, so when you add them they should be clean and healthy as well.

Here’s a picture of my Madagascar lace, it’s a standard 75g for reference.

I would have to say that’s not true, though I don’t know the extent that they can grow at. Mine has grown fine at 72 and it seems to be growing even better at the current 75. And most sites don’t seem to agree on temperature ranges anyway. I just looked at two sites to see recommended ranges, one stated 59-75, the second stated 72-82. There is 4 different varieties of Madagascar laces plants that are common in the aquarium trade (fenestralis, madagascariensis, henkelianus, guillotii), this could likely be the reason for the variation in information. I do not know the differences between them all, but from some general information I’ve read the size of the leaves and lace patterns are different between them. I would not be able to identify them, and there’s a good chance they’re only named as Madagascar lace at a LFS, and not to the specific varieties. I’ve read that they’re supposed to have resting periods where the plant is in cooler water for a few months. I’m not sure about how important that is either, or how true. I don’t intend on cycling the temps on my tank, nor a second to compare, so I won’t be able to test the testing period aspect either. As for you getting one, all I can say is that you can give it a try. Just know that like any plant, there’s a chance it could die. I can say mine grows around 24-26 inch leaves and canopies over about half of my 75g tank I moved it to. So expect to need some room for it, if you get one. Well, guess that’s the long way of saying I have no clue! 😁 Sorry it’s not more helpful

This is not an exact accurate method. But will give you some idea of what the tank is doing as far as cycled state. If your wanted to check the state of a planted aquarium you can dump some fish food (more than what the plant can handle) in it. Basically let it rot and test your water. If you see ammonia than the BB isn’t established enough to support much bio load, no ammonia but nitrites would indicate it can support some (around the amount of fish that would eat the food you put in), only nitrates would indicate that the tank is more or less cycled and can support a bio load. If it results in only high nitrates, meaning the tank is cycled, I would recommend a water change to bring it to a manageable level and then wait a day before adding stock to allow it to settle again. Like I mentioned, it’s not an guaranteed method. But i have had decent results with making sure there’s sources to create ammonia while I’m cycling a tank. I haven’t had any large spikes of ammonia from adding the livestock and I don’t really spread out adding the fish. And like others mentioned getting media from an established tank basically jumpstarts your aquarium. So almost instantly cycled, but it does need some food source to maintain and grow additional BB.

Depending on what your looking to do, or what look you want. You might be able to get some rocks from a local landscaping supplier and save a decent amount of money on those. Please get some larger ones if wanted. The ones from the landscaping supplier require more cleaning though, they’re usually pretty dirty. Also, @lefty o previously mentioned fastening slate tiles to the drift wood. That is a great option if you don’t want to wait on setting the tank up. I’m sure it’s still limited depending on the size of the wood though. Those big pieces can be persistent with wanting to float.

If the pieces are relatively small put them in a large pot and boil them for hours. I do suggest getting a pot specifically for doing this, something cheap from thrift shop maybe. It can ruin a pot. I’ve used this process for most of my bog wood, and even the larger pieces that still floated after boiling would sink by the next day.

There could be a number of contributing factors. Dead/dying bacteria on the plants themselves, dying leaves on plants, dying bacteria above water line during water change, anaerobic bacteria dying substrate from becoming aerobic conditions when planting, fertilizers on plants. I’m sure there’s probably many more possibilities that I didn’t think of. I don’t believe stirring up the plant leaves/brown algae should have been a big issue. Unless you had a fairly dense layer of those materials, then that might contribute. But overall I wouldn’t stress too much over an small increase since you said there was no fish. Snails in general are rather hardy and I’d guess the tank should be able to recover from the increase without any severe problems.

Lol, I made it happy to just make it unhappy again... the stem just wilted and was dying without flowering. Maybe I’ll have better luck next time. Unfortunately I can’t give any tips for how to get it to flower. This was first time, and was just luck that it did. But if you’re curious, water parameters are usually stable at ph 7.8, ammonia/nitrite/nitrates at 0 (nitrates would build to 20-40 range in smaller tank), GH ~12, kh~8, temp was 72 but recently changed to 75 for fish. I recently moved the lace from the 20g cube to a 75g, maybe a month before it flowered, and didn’t plant the bulb as deep. I did read an article that mentioned the bulb should be pretty much completely uncovered. Maybe that’s something to look at?

Have you asked them if they would order some for you? The LFS I sell some stuff to seems more than willing to order items I ask about, permitted that it’s available or not banned. They may not do special orders for everyone. But if you’ve been dealing with them there’s a good chance they would be willing to order you some. A suggestion... If the LFS will order them for you, than make the order for all them you want from the one store.

Like most things with fish keeping, it comes down to setup and preference. I try to set my tanks up to require minimal maintenance. I don’t do weekly/bi-weekly/monthly water changes. I monitor to water and do changes when I see nitrates, GH, KH or other issue that needs a water change. And I pretty much never vac the substrate, only spot vac if nitrates are getting high and see area with a lot of buildup. For the most part my regular maintenance is only cleaning the prefilter sponge. With the periodic rinsing of the canister media/sponge being occasionally needed.

I don’t know if it will work for your puffer. This is a recommended method I came across for encouraging kuhli loaches to eat snails. Maybe it could work for a puffer. But you could try crushing a snails shell between you fingers. Not pulverizing it, but breaking it into pieces, the see if your puffer will eat that. If that works you can do that for awhile, then try to work in some whole live snails.