Will Billy

I have to agree with @tolstoy21 on this one. My aging eyeballs has difficulty telling 40ppm and 80 ppm nitrate. (Which has often made me wonder how a person who is legitimately color blind navigates this issue.) Ball park readings is what i am mostly going for. Any drastic changes are my alarm bells that tells me something is wrong. I also will admit that i dont have very fussy fish. I could see where more delicate fish with larger margins of error could come into play, but again if your new test strips are accurately reporting consistency or lack there of, i feel like it is doing what it was intended to do.

That is perfect for my neons and white skirt tetra. My guppies are surface feeding little piggies, but my neons need the nano pellets. The rate in which the pellets sink is sometimes hard to target my neons. I have to put in just enough that some of it gets past the guppies for my mid water feeding neons, but not too much that a bunch get past the neons too. Its a bit of a juggling act to get food to everybody, without overfeeding my tank.

Wow! I love that trick. I am definitely going to try that.

The initial theory was algae hates liquid carbon. By coating the glass with liquid carbon it keeps the algae from staring back as quick and treats any spots in cracks and corners where its hard to get completely clean. Eventually the algae does come back, but with a slower start to repopulate i found i can go almost twice as long before i have to clean the crud off again.

Anybody got any cool tricks or hacks you have learned during your experience in this hobby? I would love to hear neat ideas that made your life easier or your pet fish lives better. My hack i came up with one day was doing tank maintenance i was cleaning my glass on my hood from that gross dried up algae that builds up under the light, when an old bottle of seachem excell caught my eye. Then it hit me, so i put on some rubber gloves to limit skin exposure and scrubbed my glass lid with the excell. This has greatly reduced the amount of build up between tank maintenance and allowed me to go longer periods without need to clean the glass under my hood light.

I have noticed this, even under the recommendation of premixing it up in treated water before adding to the tank. It eventually does go away, and premixing helps it go away faster. I have yet to try wondershell, but from other peoples experience it does not do this, at least at any noticeable levels anyway.

Believe it or not 40ppm nitrate is not incredibly detrimental. There are reports of fish surviving up to 800ppm nitrate or more. Im not condoning subjecting your pets to such extremes, surviving does not equal thriving. But 40ppm is not a full stop emergency. However i do see where 40ppm can quickly grow out of control, and have you constantly chasing your tail with water changes which too many water changes can be stress full for your fish. Here are a few low tech (cheap) options that can help you out between tank maintenance. 1:) Fast growing plants like stem plants. The faster the plants grow the faster they consume nutrients such as nitrates. 2:) floating plants like dwarf water lettuce, amazon frog bit, or red root floaters are all nitrate hogs. Keep in mind floating plants are a pond plant, so if you have a lot of surface agitation from filters and airstones you may need to make a simple floating corral out of air tubing. 3:) pothos from the top of your tank. Pothos is not an aquarium plant that can grow submerged, but can be grown hydroponically from the top of your tank and is a big nitrate hog too. 4:) lastly you could spike your water changes with a couple of gallons of store bought distilled water. It will cost a few bucks each water change but the idea here is to dilute your tap water just a bit to take the edge off. Walmart where i live sells 1 gallon jugs of distilled water for $0.80. Just remember distilled water has no minerals in it and will dilute everything else too, such as calcium, magnesium, etc. if you go this route, keep an eye on your plants as they are a tell tale sign of nutrient deficiencies.

Prime will do the same thing ammo lock does it binds the ammonia making it temporarily safe. By temporarily i mean 24-48 hours, i cant remember off the top of my head. Do add your quick start as soon as you can. That will start to rebuild your colony. After 2 weeks of steady readings of 0 ammonia 0 nitrite, you should be fine to change your filter media. You can even spike your media with a few drops of quick start to really get things going.

Ah ha! When you changed your substrate that can cause a mini crash in your nitrogen cycle, as your old gravel substrate is prime real estate for beneficial bacteria. Your bacterial colony was likely still fledgling since your tank has only been setup for 5 weeks, then you removed half that colony with half your substrate. You can get live bacteria cultures like Fritz Zyme 7 that Aquarium Co-op sells, there are other similar products out there that can boost your bacteria colony back up. Under normal circumstances your colony will rebuild itself, but it will take some time to catch back up. Using bacteria starter will speed up that process. API also sells a product called Ammo Lock that binds the ammonia and makes it temporarily safe until you can reign in the problem. As always follow directions on the bottle what ever product you use. You should be fine once your colony builds back up to your bioload. On a side note, this situation is an example of why i like reusable filter media like sponges over disposable filter media like cartridges where you end up throwing away some of your bacterial colony there too.

Question 1: How long have you had the tank running for? Question 2: do you use liquid fertilizer for your plants? Question 3: what type of filtration do you use? At first glance it would appear your tank is fully cycled, however if you dose liquid fertilizer it will give a reading of Nitrates in your tank. If your tank isnt fully cycled that could be one cause of the ammonia source. Second cause could be your source water. Have you tested your water out the tap? It could be contaminated with trace amounts of ammonia, meaning your are introducing it into your tank with each water change. Lastly dont worry about your plants. Plants do consume nitrate but they prefer nitrite better and ammonia the best. If there is ammonia in your tank they will consume it first before making do with the less desirable nitrate. Until i can get more clues to accurately diagnose the problem my gut instinct is telling me your tank isnt fully cycled or contaminated water source.

Thats thinking outside the box, what a fun idea. I might try that trick.

So i got some new fish food. They are bottom feeder protein pellets, and they have increased the fishy smell of my fish tank. So i was wondering drawing on experience from our community here, if anyone had any cool, neat, tips or tricks for reducing fish tank odors? I know the obvious is to add activated carbon to filter media, but thinking outside the box, from wall plug in fragrance dispersers to who knows what else, might be a fun topic of conversation.

Thanks for the tips. Ill try the tums trick, been a while but i think i recall a video of @Cory demonstrating this technique. My water changes are a bot on the heavy side, about 25% one week and 50% the next week alternating. (I have very messy eaters). But again i dont know the calcium content of my source water either. Thanks again, for the tips. I also look forward to finding out which fruity flavor tums is best, lol.

Technically yes, in a low flow environment the theory is that anaerobic bacteria will form deep inside the pumice stone that will eat nitrates, thus creating a denitrification cycle. However if a low flow environment cannot be maintained it is still a great environment for aerobic bacteria which is your traditional nitrogen cycle.

I shall look into this. My source water is pretty hard. My tank parameters for right now are ammonia =0, nitrite =0, nitrate = 80, GH = 11dkh, KH= 6dkh, and PH = 7.4. Of that hardness i cant tell how much is calcium, and how much is other dissolved solids. But they do live in my 55 gallon ever growing army of guppies. Perhaps maybe the bladder snail population is peaking and petering out. I just have never noticed the white spots on their shells before.

There it is, your current stocking is quite a low bioload. Your 3 shrimp and ramshorn snail have an extremely low bioload that you can virtually dismiss at this point. 1 guppy isnt much either. Your main bioload right now is coming from your 1 mystery snail and 5 cory cats. In a 20 gallon tank thats not much, in a 20 gallon planted tank thats even less. Dont fret though, your bioload is about to change when you add the other guppies. If you have male and female guppies your bioload is about to steadily increase as they do what guppies do best and make baby fry. You might even find yourself in a position of too many nitrates in the near future. Not only that but feeding baby fry from my experience is not necessarily more food, but more feedings. I feed my guppy fry nano pellets twice a day. If however you have all male guppies then your bioload will stay at a constant 6 guppies, 5 cory cats, and 1 mystery snail. In which case you can offset by dialing back on your water changes just a bit or by adding more fertilizer. Otherwise i wouldnt fret too much. Guppies are little piggies and they will definitely help you fertilize your plants. p.s. i would love to see your bamboo shrimp, i think they are super cool. Sounds like you have a great tank setup.

Technically they control their own population. If you are dosing too much food they will breed to the amount of food available to them. If you are a light feeder and not much food gets past your fish then the colony will stay small and manageable. “Too many” is sort of subjective here. I have hundreds helping me keep my messy guppy farm 55 gallon tank clean (guppy fry require not so much more food, but more feeding times). Some people may think my tank looks unkept and over run with bladder snails all over the place. I however find them to be excellent tank cleaners that clean up “my” mess by occasionally over feeding my tank for the sake of the fry. If you want a show tank, then get rid of them, if you want a better balanced ecosystem then they will be your best friend between tank maintenance.

So, I love my colony of bladder snails. I love watching my army of tank roombas roam around cleaning literally EVERYTHING. Recently i have noticed a number of my bladder snails shells looking a bit bleached instead of the normal dark blackish sort of color. Is this normal? Is it a sign of aging? Or could this be a sign of calcium deficiency? Its not all of them, but maybe 10% of the population are showing white edges on their shell, some worse than others. I want to keep my bladder snails healthy and happy so they can keep doing the awesome job they are doing for my tank.

Interesting. I had a school of black neons, and over a short period of time they died one by one. To this day I still have the one last black neon, and he has been fine ever since. Might be a coincidence i dunno. My regular neons have had no problem. I jokingly call my one and only black neon the black sheep of the family.

FYI. Shrimp and snails will eat biofilm.

Hmm, thats sorta what i was thinking, calcareous rock like limestone can continuously drive PH up. What type of substrate do you use? Like @Fish Folk said get a GH and KH test kit, this will provide more clues. I would not normally recommend using PH down product, but API does put out a PH down, and a PH up product that can temporarily adjust your PH until we get to the bottom of it. I look forward to your response to @Fish Folk’s post, so we can figure this out. Do test your source water like he suggested, that will be a big help as well.

So, yeah, those are mystery snail eggs. There is no way to tell if they are fertilized or not, you will have to wait about 3 weeks for babies to pop out to tell. They need to remain moist, but not submerged. You might splash or drip some water on them while performing tank maintenance if you are concerned about them drying out. As far as moving the babies it sorta depends on what livestock you have, but honestly a lot of fish will attempt to eat defenseless baby snails if they can fit them in their mouth.

If attaching to a decoration i use fishing line until the roots take hold (which for anubias takes a while), then i cut the fishing line and remove it. For substrate, i would suggest plant weights. The sell them pretty cheap on ACO. Place a plant weight on a stem above the rhizome, and carefully bury the roots with your substrate making sure not to bury the rhizome. Again once the roots take hold you can carefully remove the plant weight.

Whats your bioload look like? How many wet pets do you have in the 20gallon? With a low bioload, and heavy plants that are outstripping the nitrates this scenario is possible. How often do you perform water changes? How much water do you change each time? Typically nitrates, along with detritus or fish waste are the main 2 things removed in a water change. There are other things that get removed too, but your plants prefer ammonia over nitrites, and nitrites over nitrates, and beneficial bacteria will reduce ammonia to nitrates in its final form. Your tank maintenance may be too much for your bioload, thus diluting your end result nitrates. Adding more surface area for bacteria doesn't grow more bacteria. Adding more food for bacteria like ammonia in the form of fish food and fish poo does increase your bacterial colony. A bunch of media in a low bioload tank is sorta like an empty hotel, there are plenty of rooms for them to stay in, but not enough bacteria to fill up the entire hotel.

I do not have experience with crypts, but as a general rule in most carpeting style plants the lower the lighting the more they grow up to reach the lower light. The higher the lighting they are satisfied with the adequate light source and grow outward instead of upwards. Other general planting tips include dialing back on fertz just a bit, and pruning techniques. Trimming the outsides of the plant encourages them to grow taller, where a topping technique in which you cut the main trunks in the center mass promote outward growth. These are just some general techniques not related specifically to your crypts ( the topping technique admittedly i learned from growing cannabis a long time ago when i was a misguided youth) and may not necessarily apply to this situation. I look forward to another forum member with more specific crypt related tips, and to learn alongside you. But hopefully those generalized tips will help you as well.