Fishingfool

I have a bad infestation in my 9 gal tank. I've given up and accepted my fate.

Got any small hillstream loach? Looking to add 1 one in a 9 gal cuz they look cool and my single Otto has decided to go on strike on cleaning my rocks.

So, less overfeeding and they die off completely? What I dont get is, if it's a sign of overfeeding, does that mean those critters are always there, just cant see them? Or do they appear out of thin air once a tank is overfed? Today is water change day. Since it's only a 9-gal tank, I use a siphon and bucket. Typically change out about 3-4 gallons. What I found is, the worms on the glass are very easy to suck away. I removed quite a few doing it this way. I cant vacuum my substrate. It's SeaChem Flourite Black. It's way too light and I always lose a few when I hover near the bottom to get the crud. My hose has this little cap thing to help prevent that but it appears to block flow and prevents sucking up any visible particles. Can Rhabdocoela live outside water?

They are unsightly. Kind of like bread algae and the likes. If I see any, I try to tweezer them and remove it from whatever surface they are attached to.

How long does that take? I got a couple magnifying glasses to try and help. So far I haven't been able to get one of the larger ones up front for a closer inspection. But now I'm 95% sure they are rehabdocoela. How do I get rid of them? Are they harmful to humans? I don't want some eater to splash on my eye and get these suckers in them. Or a cut on my hand.🤢

Do you guys sell any siamese algae eaters? I remember seeing them in some of the tanks but I don't think they were actually for sale. Looking for the tiniest SAE.

These suckers are tiny. Only thing I had available was a loupe and now I think they are rehabdocoela. I do not see a pointy triangle head. Does look more rounded. Then again, they are so tiny, it's hard to focus on them.

It's a Fluval Flex 9. Been up and running for 10 months. I added some chili rasboras and a couple of amanos and some new plants to the tank that I got from the co-op a couple of days ago. Wow these new additions are tiny. I never realized how much my CPD grew. Anyways today while I was trying to check up on these tiny additions, I saw little white things on the side glass. Upon closer inspection, they look like of like white slugs, at least the biggest one, which isnt very big actually. There are about a dozen that are super tiny. Maybe tip of ball point pen size. They are thin and move around the glass like a slug. I'm guessing they are planaria? If so, how do I go about eradicating them? Or just leave them alone? https://i.imgur.com/l3qOelZ.jpg

I forgot to mention. I added 2 Otto's about 3 weeks ago to help with the algae. They did a great job on my rocks and leaves. Then 1 died about a week later. This other one seems to be doing well still,

Well a bit of an update, sort of. I'm still doing weekly water changes. As of today, the test strip on my tester showed pink for nitrates before I did the change! It wasnt pink enough for 20 PPM(1st marking) but it finally changed colors. I also tested ammonia with a test strip and it looked very promising. Slightly different shade than 0. So I tested the water with my API freshwater kit. Ammonia is barely .25 PPM. It's somewhere between 0 and .25 PPM. Great! Nothing for nitrites. And nothing for nitrates........ So I assume I have some nitrates now but below 5 PPM for the API kit to not pick up. Crazy this tank started back in early Jan and here we are at the end of April and finally seeing signs of going the right direction. At the way it's going, I'm thinking I should be able to do bi-weekly changes soon. I think it's just about time to replenish the root tabs but I may wait until I see signs of distress of the plants?

So here we are, 3/31. I'm still in the same spot. Ammonia 1-2 PPM with 0 nitrites and nitrates. I tested with new test strips also. Seems pretty closer except according to the strip, my ammonia is about 4 PPM. I understand strips are less accurate though. Starting last week, I've been using a syringe to add SeaChem Prime. It's basically .1ml per gallon. Which is about 3-4 drops. Without a doubt, I was overdosing with API Conditioner early on. Not sure what effects that might be. I'm also adding SeaChem Stability, half capful. Even though it doesn't seem to be doing anything. I already have it. Might as well use it. Today, I trimmed off a lot of the dead to melted leaves. Hoping to reduce the ammonia from decaying leaves. As you can see, I do have quite a bit of algae now. I think it's hair algae? I do like the look of it on my rocks. Looks more natural. I haven't been dosing in a few weeks now. Just whatever root tabs from Jan. The fish seem to be fine. The shrimp seem to be fine. They haven't made a dent at all in the algae. Want to pick up an Otto to help. The plants seem to be doing fine. I did remove the clump of dwarf hairgrass on the left. Wasn't completely dead but a lot were and it was too hard to separate the few living strands.

Alright, so today is water change day. I also lost a cherry shrimp yesterday that I got last Saturday. I tested my water that I pulled out of the tank, which included the dead partially pulverized shrimp. Estimated about 2.5 gallons pulled. Ammonia ~4 PPM Nitrites and nitrates 0. I did buy a new bottle of SeaChem Prime to try out. Even though above shows smell doesnt mean much, this bottle of SeaChem barely has a smell to it. I had to take several deep inhales to get a scent of it. If my little dropper is accurate, it's roughly 2 droplets per gallon of SeaChem. I only need no more than .3 ml for this water change. We'll see how well this works out. I'm going to add some of SeaChem Stability again since I have a spike of ammonia from the added shrimp.

Correct. I'm still seeing about 1 PPM of ammonia each week before the water changes. About .5 PPM afterwards. Maybe a tad more or less. Really hard to tell. I'm still at 0 for nitrites and nitrates. And yes, my bottle of API conditioner smells like a bottle of farts. Supposedly it's sulfur base, so that make sense but wow. lol

Well, as of last week, I still have no signs of a cycle. All the current fish seem to be doing well. So we shall see how it goes.

Added 2 cherry and 2 orange shrimp yesterday. Was looking for some Otos but no go.

API. Directions say 1 ml per 20 gallon. I'm now using 1 drop per 1/2 gallon. I wasn't. I did this past water change though. The flex has this big sponge media with 2 cutouts in it for filtration. One for bio-rings and the other carbon. Instead of using carbon, I added more bio-rings. Anyways, I cleaned the sponge just be squeezing and rinsing it in the bucket of water I just drained from the tank.

If I use too much water conditioner, could that kill off my good bacteria? I wonder if that's my issue.

I actually have a piece of filter that I cut and jammed into those covers. It's some sort of pink filter floss I guess. It's very porous but same reasoning behind it was to prevent shrimp from slipping through and help with a bit of pre-filtering for all the big crud. Well, it turns out, this was the cause of my water flow issue. It seems to slow things down enough after a while. I still have some on the bottom cover but I've removed it from the top filter. Ever since doing that, there's only about 1/4-1/2" difference in water. If you havent had any flow issues with those mini sponges, I might give those a try and see what happens. Always, so here we are. 3/10. I'm having the exact same water parameters. Only difference is, I do have a bit more algae forming on the glass, rocks, and plants. I've had to scrub the glass the last 2 water changes. I want to add a pair of Ottos and 3 shrimps to help with cleaning but I dont want to do it with the current water conditions. Should I even bother adding Easy Green, since my water seems to be so nutritious lol? 3/10 [img]https://i.imgur.com/zSllhxj.jpg[/img] https://imgur.com/zSllhxj

It seems like after 6 weeks, I should start to see other signs. It's just weird to me. Maybe my plants are using up the little nitrates I might be getting. Dont know. So this flow issue I have with the tank. Last night after changing the water, like I said, there was about an inch difference. If you look at the last picture posted, you can see the water line for the front portion of the tank. Well as of right now, that water line only has 1 row of those dots exposed from the top. The rear partition is about 5 inches lower. So the back is roughly 2/3 full only.

I've edited the main post to add the missing info. Got lost when I was jumbling with the images I guess. Anyways, the substrate is just SeaChem Flourite Black. I rinsed the substrate throughly since I saw how dirty it was. The chemical additive is SeaChem Stability. I know the first couple of weeks, I believe it was the gourami having lots of poop. I kept sucking out those. I'm also feeding micro pellets that I crush just slightly for the CPD, once per day. Without a doubt, the majority of my ammonia is from fish waste and remaining food. There is a tiny bit of algae in the tank. It's growing on some of the leaves, rocks, and fake wood. When I do water changes, I dont do anything scrubbing. I just hold the hose end near the rocks or plants or whatever and suck out as much of the junk I can see. I dont vacuum the gravel since it's so light. I typically loose a few of my substrate when I get too close. It's just too light. There's also these weird looking fuzzy clear hair on the root of my runners that's not in the substrate. Also had several long strands of what I would normally think is spiderwebs strands coming off my grass clump on the yellowing side. It was probably about 6-7" long. I'm assuming some sort of melt off from something. I sucked that away when I did the water change. I also notice something odd about this Fluval tank. Right now, after this latest water change, it seems fine but sometimes the water level in the rear/reservoir is much lower than the actual tank side. I'm talking about half the height sometimes. Right now, there's only about a 1" difference. For some reason, sometimes water is slow to filter through.

Never bothered testing it but just did. I cant quite tell. It's not quite yellow but it's not quite .25 PPM green either. So somewhere in between I guess. Could also be residue from the previous testing. So in my noob opinion, I dont think ammonia in the tap water is a factor. Or is it? I wonder if my tap water conditioner is bad. It smells terrible. I

Set up a Fluval Flex 9 on Jan 6th. I added a bottle of Tetra SafeStart Plus that afternoon. Tap water with API conditioner. Substrate is SeaChem Flourite Black. That evening, I added plants, 2 cherry shrimp, 5 Celestial Pearl Danio, and a dwarf gourami. Testing with API Master Freshwater kit. After 1 week, I was still not showing any signs of nitrites or nitrates. Ammonia was .5-1PPM. So I added API Quick Start to help and also a handful of gravel from a friend's tank. Started adding SeaChem Stability around week 3 and been adding it daily since. There's like 7 or so root tabs in the substrate. Also weekly squirt of Easy Green. Well today is week 6 and still same parameters. Doing weekly water changes. Typically about 20-25% except for about the 3rd week which was 30% or so. I test the water after doing the changes. Ammonia .5-1 PPM Nitrites and nitrates 0 First day, Jan 6th. Week 1 Week 3 1/27. I did about a 30% water change. 1/28 Lost both cherry shrimp 1/29 Lost 2 CPD. Dont know if they died in the water or died when they got stuck on the intake vents. One was on the bottom vent. Other on top. Started adding SeaChem Stability Week 4 Week 5 Week 6

What a coincidence. I did about a 30% water change in my tank recently and lost both cherry shrimps too. Also lost 2 CPD the next day.

Was hoping to stop by to check out the shop.