Isaac M

@HisMineandOurs I have never done this before but in general, less lighting is a great way to combat algae. This method of a light break during the day is commonly called a “siesta” and is typically used in planted aquariums to combat algae.

40 Gallon Reef Update: The aquarium cycled incredibly fast in my opinion, it cycled in about 10 days which is actually longer than what the bottled bacteria claimed at 7 days. I had nitrite within 2 days and quite a bit of nitrate after 5 days. I have quite a bit of diatom algae growth as well which is to be expected. Ammonia and nitrite have now been zero for a few days. As a result, I went to a pet store and bought a locally bred ocellaris clownfish! I also got a little zoa frag just because impulse buy, I think you guys can relate 😂 I also found a cool little hitchhiker, I believe it to be some kind of porcelain crab. I am leaving him in the aquarium as he appears to be a harmless filter feeder. It is really cool to watch him eat, I tried spot feeding him some tiny pieces of mysis shrimp but my turkey baster did not work very well. He was able to eat though. I will be buying a different little feeding system to spot feed him and the corals with.

Quick update on the 40 gallon breeder riparium, I went ahead and trimmed up the crypts at the front of the aquarium. I am not going to lie, I was very nervous to do so as I love the jungle look but I was losing a lot of the visibility to the back of the aquarium. I ended up trimming a ton of leave, maybe somewhere in the 30-50 leaves range. The leaves were very large, the biggest I have ever had from a crypt species. Here is one of them for reference in my hand. Here is the aquarium after the trim: I was very pleased with how it turned out. It still kept the jungle look but I can now see the back of the aquarium. Another thing that I saw was a corydora fry that has made it so far in the display tank. I knew I did not grab all the eggs as it would be impossible for me to find them, but I imagined that the adult corys or shrimp would have ate the eggs. Very happy to see this little guy, hopefully he can survive to adulthood!

My best scape is my 40 Gallon Breeder! The reason for this being my best scape is that it is the initial reason for me joining this forum and my favorite fish, Sterbai Corydoras love it in there! The Sterbai Corydoras are also the reason for the breeder box in the aquarium, it does not exactly make the scape look better but baby corydoras do look pretty cute I must say haha

@BettaBlake Hello from the Central Valley in California! Given that your bioload is so low with the betta, shrimp and snails in a 20 gallon, I do not think you will have much of an issue with this process as long as you keep the same filter. I would move everything to the spare 10 gallon (the inhabitants, plants, decor you want to keep and filter) while the cloudiness from the new substrate in the 20 gallon settles. Then I would move everything back over to the 20 gallon. Good luck with the process, I think your aquarium will look great with the black substrate! Just make sure to thoroughly rinse the substrate and pour the water into the aquarium slowly so there is less cloudiness!

@CalmedByFish these are some very good questions. The difficulty in this is that the chemistry does not seem to be well understood. I personally do not know the chemistry behind these claims either but here are some screenshots from Seachems website under the FAQ section of Seachem Prime.

Hello @Saltinthedesert, I have the aquarium co-op autofeeder on my 10 gallon with neon tetras and neo shrimp. You can just add a piece of tape to limit the food that is dispensed at once. I an not sure if this method would work on the Eheim ones you already have but it might.

@prashant here is a link to an article covering nutrient deficiencies in plants: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/plant-nutrient-deficiencies Maybe you can look through it and figure which deficiency may have occurred by comparing your observations with the pictures/ descriptions in the article. I hope that helps!

Your bioload is relatively low and pogostemon stellata octopus likes a lot of nutrients as it is a fast grower. Seachem Flourish provides micronutrients but not macronutrients (Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorous). Do you know what your nitrate level is?

@CT_ they do contain lead, it is written in the last sentence of the product description.

All I could find was this uk based website, not sure about the shipping though.

@Fresh I believe it is the other way around, the plant in the back is water sprite and the stem plant close to the glass in the front is water wisteria.

@Fresh I believe the plant that is bending is water wisteria, not water sprite but it looks similar. Trimming water sprite vs trimming water wisteria does differ a bit because of how it grows. I would trim the wisteria the way @Patrick_G said. Given that it also grows roots at the nodes, I would often cut it below the root so I can plant the root into the substrate as well to help keep it from uprooting.

@SarahO I assume that the tank the betta and corydoras are in is cycled. If so, you can grab some of the filter media from that aquarium and add it to this aquarium you are attempting to cycle. This will help speed the process up greatly. If you do this and it does cycle the aquarium, you can do a 50 percent water change to clear up the water a bit. The tannins are just coming from the wood. You could even use activated carbon to clear that up if you would like.

@Expectorating_Aubergine I have pothos, peace lilly, lucky bamboo, areca palm and others. I love it as they help keep my maintenance low! Haha

@DebSills 3 pumps of easy green in a 29 gallon aquarium will get you around 3ppm of nitrates. Given that you only have 8 ember tetras which is a very light bioload, I think it is likely that you do have some nitrates but they are so low that they are not easily read on the test kit. Another thing to keep in mind is that it is important to shake the second bottle of the nitrate test kit as per the instructions (cannot remember off the top of my head but I think it is 30 seconds minimum). If you do not, you will get a false zero reading every time.

Thanks @Patrick_G! I am discussing this with @Ilovebettas through the personal messaging system now. Congrats on the care package by the way!

Hello @Ilovebettas, there is a lot to unpack here but we can take it step by step. First of all, welcome to the hobby, you picked a great one! Haha lets get started! As far as the cycling process goes, typically you want to dose the ammonia as per the instructions. Generally you do not want ammonia to test over 5ppm as that can stall the cycle as the nitrite will become too high. 2ppm of ammonia is the most common “dosage”. From there, the beneficial bacteria should begin using the ammonia and produce nitrite which is what you saw in your test. Then a different beneficial bacteria from the one that consumed the ammonia will have to use the nitrite and produce nitrate. This part of the cycle normally takes longer than the ammonia to nitrite part. Nitrate is not toxic to fish in lower concentrations unlike ammonia and nitrite. The most typical recommendations is to keep your nitrates under 40ppm. This can be achieved with plants and water changes (there are other ways as well but we will keep it simple). Since you added the fishless fuel along with the beneficial bacteria, you just have to wait now for the bacteria to become established. You will know you arrived here when you test and the ammonia is 0, nitrite is 0 and nitrate is increasing. This will take some time and the time it takes varies with temperature, ph, etc. Given that your ph dropped so much, I would test your water for kh. Kh is known as a buffer as it helps prevent your ph from dropping like it did. Something that happens during the nitrogen cycle as ammonia is becoming nitrite is that the water will become more acidic (lowering ph). If your water has low kh or resistance to lowering ph, then the ph will begin to drop. Fish typically do not handle ph swings all that well so we want to make sure you have enough kh to keep the ph from dropping so suddenly. A lower ph also makes the cycling process take longer(this has to do with ammonia vs ammonium but we can discuss that later). So it would be very helpful if you could test your kh so we can determine if something needs to be done to increase the kh in your aquarium. Sorry if all of that information at once is overwhelming but it is not very difficult once you get the hang of it. I hope that helps!

@dasaltemelosguy again, I have no data but I would imagine pothos would consume more, just based off of how fast it grows in comparison to the lucky bamboo and the shear size the pothos can grow to. I am not sure if I will do another freshwater aquarium without riparian plants ever again, they just provide so much benefit 😂

The 40 Gallon Reef has cleared up nicely. This aquarium will be a fun learning experience for sure, I cannot wait to get some more life in this aquarium haha I used a little ammonium chloride along with the live rock and some bottled bacteria and wow, just a day and a half later and there are already nitrite readings. They are still on the lower end but it is truly amazing how much quicker and easier it is to cycle an aquarium now with these products. Should be ready for fish and possibly a very small clean up crew soon. Overall, the fish corner has come together well after these last few weeks of “remodeling” if you will. The aquarium stands have become much more functional and organized. The new 55 gallon is already looking like a stable ecosystem and has begun to add beautiful tannins to the water. The 40 gallon reef took the place of the 29 gallon very well and it is very cool to see how different yet amazing both of the 40 gallons look side by side. The 10 gallon and 40 gallon planted tanks are still as stable as can be.

From California, more specifically the Central Valley. Currently have 5 aquariums, 4 freshwater planted and just recently started a reef tank. Locally I do not have access to fish stores but there is a Petco and Petsmart that I do not go to. Luckily I have a few good fish stores within an hour drive. It is nice to meet you! It is also so cool to see where everyone is from, the nerms are all over the place! 😂

@dasaltemelosguy I have no data or rules for riparian plants but I have yet to add too much that they die from lack of nutrients. But I agree, they do wonders for eating up nutrients in the aquarium. I utilize them in almost every single aquarium I have and my nitrates stay under control.

@CT_ you can give it a shot but what typically happens with slow growing plants in high light is green spot algae, at least in my experience. I find this very common in anubias plants especially.

Update: The 40 gallon breeder soft coral reef has begun. The setup is very simple in my opinion with lighting being 2 AI Prime HD lights. The flow is provided by 2 Tunze Nanostream circulation pumps and Tunze internal filter. Background light is the serene lighting from Current USA. There are 10 pounds of aquacultured live rock from KP Aquatics mixed in with dry rock. They have been glued together for stability. There is also 40 pounds of fiji pink dry sand. The cycle has started with beneficial bacterial from Brightwell Aquatics and some Dr. Tims ammonium chloride. This will be a fun journey getting back into reef aquariums!

@Goldfish god I will be setting up my new reef tank tomorrow so if you would like to see a soft coral reef tank progress, check out my thread for my aquariums. The link is in my signature. I last had a reef tank 9 years ago or so and technology has changed, but honestly, not all the technology is necessary. It really all depends on your goals. Same with the challenges involved with starting a reef tank, do you know what fish, inverts, tank size, live rock or dry rock, type of corals (softies, lps, sps?) you would like to keep? All of these things and more matter as to what you can expect. For example, a soft coral reef tank is the easiest of them all as the water does not need to be as pristine (low in nitrates and phosphates), lower light requirements, no coral feeding and likely no additional dosing needed. There are also some soft corals that are extremely beginner friendly like xenia, mushrooms and green star polyps to name a few. Think of it similarly to a low tech freshwater planted tank. Matter of fact, I started growing the corals mentioned above before I ever grew a freshwater plant. Typically however, an “ugly stage” can be expected as the tank is becoming stable very similarly to freshwater tanks with diatom algae and other algae. But I was able to keep a 10 gallon soft coral reef tank going for years successfully when I was 13 or 14 years old and had little money. If I could do it then, surely almost anyone can. This is the only picture I have of it: I am no expert but please do not be afraid to reach out to me for any questions, I would gladly do my best to help!