mbecker6294

Sorry for the obvious sarcasm. Tank has been up and running about 6 months. Started off great and plants were doing well. Couldn't keep fish alive, PH was spiking. Used Eco Complete for substrate. Talked with Caribsea and they told me that some batches get calcium deep in their pours and then it can start leaching out. I'd rather not dump the whole thing and start again. No fish, no nitrates, GH 150, KH 120, PH 8.4 Will Easy Carbon work on this???

Got this at petco as a cultured container. Loving the pink tufts that are coming out, but what is the plant. Very delicate and hard to keep rooted. Any secrets for keeping it in the substrate?

I'm just going to go with Dwarf Val Chain Sag 😁 Love the plant, just hope it doesn't get too tall for my 10. Right now I have it foreground, but may have to move it to background once it grows out.. BTW, would you recommend I increase the light for the rotala indica?

Hey guys, bought this recently at my lfs thinking it was dwarf sag. Already half the height of my 10Gal. Any thoughts? Also, what is the shorter fuzzy plants off the the right. The culture cup it came in said rotala but I’m having my doubts. Thanks for your help

Still having an issue with the small plants getting pulled out and eaten. Just the very fine ones. Not sure what it is, but purchased at my local petco in the gel tubs. Was listed as a rotala, but seems to be a low ground cover. Will try to get the plant to establish or end up moving it to a new 10gal I just set up, see photo

Changed out half of the old bio max with new material and did a 25% water change. Retested today and nitrates with 30-40ppm. Will change out the rest of the bio max in 2 weeks and see if it eliminates the nitrate issue

Hey guys, I think I may have figured out the issue. The tank is many years established and has plenty of biological filtration. Nitrites running at zero with a moderate bio load. Something has to be a nitrate pump. The fluval biomax has been running a long long time, like 10-15 years. Breaking down ammonia and nitrite like a champ, but do you think the pores have collected enough detritus and food over the years that even though I rinse them off in tank water from time to time, can the media be acting as a nitrate pump?

HOB has 3 sponges, two are newer that I was establishing for setting up a new micro tank, 50 micron cloth, Chemipure easy green, and fluval biomax that has been running for over 12 years. when I clean the filter, I only rinse the media in dechlorinated water, so I would think there should be plenty of bacterial filtration. Don't have any ammonia test strips, didn't think necessary to have for an established tank, but wondering if there could be ammonia in my tap water? Only thing I can think of that would convert to nitrate so quickly. Has anyone else come across this?

I have a well established 35Gal tank that I've converted over to live plants. Fish and plants seem to be happy, but wanted to start tracking water parameters. Have 3 inches of inert pea sized river gravel, and have been using EG and root tabs. Water parameters with Tetra easy strips are reading: Nitrate Nitrite GH Total Chlorine KH PH 20 0.5 150 0 40 7.8 80 0 150 0 120 6.8 The top row of numbers is my tap water, 2nd row from tank. I've done two 25% water changes since 4 days ago and Nitrates still at 80ppm. Have stopped dosing with EG until the nitrates are consumed.. Any other water parameters above I should be concerned with? I'm nervous about the tap water having 20ppm on the nitrates and have thought about installing RO/DI. Thoughts?? I clean the HOB filter media sponges and water polishing cloth as to not build up organic waste. Dechlorinate with API Proper PH 7.0 on weekly 25% water changes

Thanks for your help, I’ll give it some root tabs next week

Thanks, that’s what I was thinking too. Do they benefit from root tabs? I just have pea stone river gravel with some root tabs. Also use easy green

Hey guys, got this from my LFS unmarked. Didn’t know if it’s AR/Scarlett Temple. Not really growing, but not dying either

I’m trying out the chemi green, mostly to pull out the Yanni discoloration from some new driftwood decorations. I did soak them 2 weeks prior to putting in the tank, but still made my water brownish. The chemi green has removed much of the discoloration, but not all. So I don’t think it’s as aggressive at pulling nutrients out of the water as chemi pure. Plants still seem to be thriving. Will update in a month. Using easy green monthly and root tabs

Thanks guys, ended bringing them back to my LFS where I bought them. Loved the fish, but haven’t noticed any more nibbled or pulled out plants since

I recently converted my tank to a planted tank. I noticed that the powder blue dg’s are always pecking at the rotala that is found magically floating at the tip of the tank each morning. The ones in the gravel are getting nibbled down to the stocks. Could the dwarf gouramis be the culprit? Some of the new leaves on my Amazon sword are also looking chewed on