Will Billy

Yeah, im going with @gardenman man on this one. It takes time for your bacterial colony to mature. To answer your question, yes your goal is to achieve 0 ammonia, and 0 nitrite. Your nitrate readings is just showing that you do have bacteria and that they are doing there job. Again coat tailing off of @gardenman’s above answers your plants, and poly pad will assist your bacteria in reducing ammonia and nitrite. Continue testing like normal, but yes the answer here is to just wait it out for your bacteria colony to mature.

Your nitrate levels are showing that your tank is cycling, however your ammonia and nitrite levels tells me that your bacterial colony isnt quite mature enough yet to handle its current bioload. I would give your fledgling bacteria more time to grow. If you are showing 0.25 ammonia and 0.5 nitrite and you have those 6 monk tetras in the tank already i would do at least a 25% water change and retest. That can dilute the ammonia and nitrite for the fish while your bacteria continue to grow.

Its all good @cclements, we all get nervous when we try new things. Its normal for plants to melt a bit when first planted, they will grow back. Typically once your tank has fully cycled and the beneficial bacteria have taken over the main task of reducing ammonia and nitrites, Most people do between 15-20% water changes a week and maybe a 30-50% once a month. A lot of that depends on not only your bioload, but also your tank inhabitants. Me for example, My display tank has turned into a guppy grow out tank with an ever expanding army of guppy fry and 2 large dojo loaches that are quite honestly glutenous piggies. My tank gets 30-50% water changes a week depending on nitrate levels. I have a huge bioload with fish that can handle large water changes. Most people that keep shrimp for example do smaller water changes as shrimp dont do well with big water changes like i end up doing with my tank. You will get the hang of it, no one set in stone method is right for everybody. Someone with a Walstad tank with few fish will definitely do far less water changes than my heavy bio load guppy farm i have going on. Like i said you will grow to know your water with experience.

A few factors to consider for this question. #1 it depends on your source water. My tap water from my municipality is quite similar to yours. It all depends on what you are starting with. 4dKH is a little low but not too bad considering your PH is a little high. That means your KH is doing its job keeping your PH up. As your KH does what its supposed to do it is used up which is why it makes sense that your KH is low, its buffering your PH. The reason why tannins, fish activities, bacterial activities, plant activities, a.k.a. eating, drinking, breathing, pooping, and peeing, all reduce your KH over time is because they are putting more and more acidic substances in your water, and conversely they are removing ever more minerals from the water. Both activities adding acids, and removing bases from the water column are lowering your PH causing KH to be eaten ever faster which maintains your PH level until its all gone. Some people with good quality water for the aquarium hobby can maintain KH through simple water changes. The rest of us have to add minerals to adjust our chemistries like seachem equilibrium for GH or seachem alkaline buffer for KH. Some people have water chemistries so out of whack that have to add RO or distilled water to cut back on both and then boost one or the other. I think in your case as you are somewhat new to this and i dont know your bioload, i would just test and monitor to get a feel of how much and how often you should perform water changes. It just takes time, you will get to know your water and what it needs and before long you will be doing it almost automatically without any thought. Good luck luck to you and i hope you enjoy this wonderful hobby. Any more questions please feel free to ask.

Just a quick rundown of PH, GH, and Kh. PH basically is telling you how acidic or how basic your water is. PH 7.0 is neutral, lower numbers mean its acidic or soft water, higher numbers mean it basic or hard water. Water is sometimes referred to as the universal solvent. Water dissolves solids like calcium, or magnesium for example. When it does those dissolved solids give you your GH. The higher the GH number the more dissolved solids there are and vice versa. If water has a low general hardness it will leach those minerals out of everything it touches. If it is fully saturated it wont leach out those minerals. Sorta like sugar in tea, just a bit of sugar mixed in tea will dissolve, if you put too much sugar in tea, tho some of it will dissolve, you can still see sugar granules swirling at the bottom of the glass. Your KH is your carbonate hardness. Simply put its what your acidic water will begin to dissolve first. The more basic your water is, the longer your KH will last. The more acidic your water is the faster your KH will drop. After all your carbonates and bicarbonates are eaten by the acidity of the water meaning KH = 0. Your buffer so to speak is now gone. As the carbonates and bicarbonates get eaten by acid it cancels out that acidity. With nothing left to calm down the acid ( like when you run out of tums tablets) your water will continue to get more and more acidic meaning your PH will get lower and lower. Thats why low KH crashes your PH.

Awe look at that round tummy. I almost want to rub on it lol. That is one cute lil momma you got there.

Great idea @Chrisdis, I will be looking into the extract myself too. It seems easier and cheaper than replacing cholla wood and almond leaves to keep my tannins up. Thank you for that post.

My wife doesn't understand my fascination with the hobby. I have only the one 55g tank, and her most common question in regards to the tank is “what are you buying for that fish tank now?” Admittedly i am a tinkerer, so the one tank is probably a good thing. My 4 year old daughter loves it tho. She always wants to help daddy feed the fish or do tank maintenance. She is my role dog with everything i do, but the fish tank is such a great bonding experience. My wife may still roll her eyes at me from time to time, but she cant hold back that smile as she watches me and my daughter tinker with and enjoy our fishy friends.

For a 10g tank to have a few tannins like you are wanting i would start with 3. Indian almond leaves do impart tannins but at a much lower and more stable rate than driftwood. That is part of the popularity to them because it is much easier to control. Polly pads do remove tannins, albeit in my experience it is the weakest of the 3 tannin removal methods with activated carbon, and purigen removing the most in that order. in my experience, as I am big about my tannins, i have found that overtime through water changes and filtration it is more difficult for me to keep my tannins than it is to remove it. There comes a point where drift wood and indian almond leaves stop secreting tannins, but water changes never go away lol. Knowing that, i usually try to overshoot my tannins just a bit so long as PH changes are not that critical, and ride the tannin wave till it stops.

So i have some pretty mature java fern. About a month ago they started to develop plantlets. I left the plantlets attached to the main plant because all my mature java fern is glued to some slate decorations for easy maneuvering when i do my deeper gravel vac maintenance. Now one of my plants has some old leaves dying off with healthy plantlets still attached. Should i try to pluck the plantlets off and propogate them? Will the wilting leaf affect the plantlets on top? And lastly if i do attempt to propogate them, how can i go about attaching the little offshoots now that my slate stones are submerged? I know super glue is out, but im not sure how to go about stringing up such tiny plantlets with fishing line where they will hold to my stones. Here is a pic of the wilting leaves. You can see some dying BBA that tried attacking the plantlets. It seems to only be targeting the plantlets on this java fern, and not the others (for now anyway).

Wow, thank you for sharing that story. Surely that will save someone else from all of that.

That is an interesting observation. That might explain why Seachem phosphorous has a small amount of potassium listed in the ingredients too. My java fern and anubias are growing like gang busters while my poor banana plants seem to starve. It took quite a bit of head scratching to figure out i was lacking in both, as well as a slight magnesium deficiency to boot i solved with some generic non scented epsom salt.

Lol 0% on duckweed.

I agree with @MJV Aquatics on that point. Once established there is no need to keep adding “X amount with each water change”. That is just a marketing gimick to get you to use it all up and buy more. I do however wonder about the shelf life of such products? Do they ever expire, or go bad after sitting on my shelf for a long time?

Seachem flourish phosphorus is what I use. I also have to add potassium to my tank as my java fern and anubias suck it all up and my poor little banana plants are the first to show signs of potassium deficiency.

If you do what i did way back when i restarted the hobby, and crashed my bacteria cycle with some chlorine contaminated water, fritz zyme 7 got me rapidly back on track with minimal fish loss ( i lost 2 pygmy hatchet fish). My poor fish rode an ammonia wave followed by a nitrite wave as all i could do was add the bacteria and watch my fish closely. So it was great for an emergency situation. I keep a bottle on hand in conjunction with a nano sponge filter in case i need to rapidly set up my hospital tank i store dry.

I think @Wes L. hit the nail on the head. It takes time for bacteria to populate in response to increased bio load. Follow his advice in gradually increasing your fish and you should be fine.

I wish i had some advice for you. I love my bladder snails. They are the best tank cleaners in my opinion, so ive never attempted to get rid of them. Maybe someone with experience ridding bladder snails could help you out. Many have noted, and my observation of keeping bladder snails holds true, that they only breed as much as the food source allows. They are a check engine light for over feeding. Your population will explode at first, but over time they will eat themselves into a stabile population so long as you dont overfeed your tank.

Yeah that doesn't sound like mystery snail babies. That sounds like bladder snails to me. They usually hitch hike in on plants.

No crucial need to start a heavy water change program. Small water changes can reduce nitrates, and add minerals back in. Overtime small water changes can add up. Just remember plants help with nitrates not remove the problem all together. Sorta like anaerobic bacteria, they help with nitrates but thats all they do is help. Anaerobic bacteria cant be expected to remove all nitrates just by themselves.

I have recently added pothos to my tank too. My surface agitation is a bit to strong for floaters unless i made up some floating tube fence.

As a quick rundown, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are bad in pretty much that order. Low levels of ammonia and nitrite affect your fish more because they have a much more acute toxicity than nitrate. Which is why higher levels of nitrate i wont say is necessarily good, but are not as toxic as the first two. Coincidentally plants prefer nutrients in that order too, they metabolize ammonia much easier and faster than nitrate. Back to your question, fish can survive in much higher nitrate level than you have. Some reports as much as 800ppm. To reiterate they can survive, that does not mean its still healthy for them. So i dont think your nitrates are too out of control, however i would advise testing for nitrates before you add easy green, as it does spike your nitrate level. That way you get a good baseline of what your plants are absorbing, and you are testing for remaining nitrate, and not whats in the easy green. Testing before you dose in conjunction with visually inspecting plant growth should give you a better idea of what your plants are doing, while simultaneously keep an eye on fish parameters. If they are high before you dose, then you may consider a water change soon.

Algae grows really well in stagnant water. My aquarium is in my man cave and gets no natural sunlight. From time to time i take a clear cup and scoop out some tank water and set it in a window sill and give it a quick shot of easy green fertilizer. After a few days it starts growing fresh green algae for my critters to munch on, and then i just add it to my tank.

My brothers oscar would play with gravel. He would cary gravel around in his mouth and spit it out and watch it fall. He did it a bunch, not sure if he was just playing, or if he was sucking stuff off the rock like a piece of hard candy.

You are sorta right, it does move water front to back. Like @ererer said it wont leave dead spots, the entire volume of the hob will cycle out. You will however notice that water on the top will flow faster than water at the bottom, seemingly giving you the impression that only the top water is flowing. Armed with that knowledge you can use the differential water speeds to your advantage. I find that bio media works better in a slower flow. Thats not to say high flow wont work, but if you are trying to use bio rings to boost surface area for this particular hob, i recommend putting them in the bottom, then sponge on top.