RadMax8

How long are you letting the food stay in there before they won't eat it? Is it a deal where they don't touch it at all and after 5 mins you take it out, or does it just sit in the tank for an extended period of time and it breaks down itself? In my experience, my cories eat just about anything. Granted, they definitely have preferences. Hikari bottom feeder wafers? Love them! Xtreme bottom feeder wafers? Meh... That said, they do get eaten, especially if I let them soften til lights out. Everything is cleaned up and good to go a couple hours later. I also like to let them explore their natural behaviors; I'll bury a cube of frozen bloodworms just barely under the substrate and let them snuffle around and find it. It's very fun to watch, especially as they try to get the last bits. Good luck!

To help limit fungus issues in the future, I've heard that you can put a couple cherry shrimp in with the eggs and they will eat the eggs with fungus, but not the viable eggs. Might be worth a shot if you're going to separate the eggs from the parents. Plus, the shrimp can help keep the tank a bit cleaner in general. Good luck!

Roy, so funny enough, I hit a bit of a busy patch (three kids five and under will do that...) and I didn't get to refill my fertilizer reservoir. I had initially calculated my ferts would run out around July 30th, with probably a week or so in reserve. Well, it's been three weeks and I think a few of my plants are actually reacting better to more lean nutrients. All my hygro still looks like I'm low on potassium (still dosing 40ppm at water changes though... go figure!), but my bacopa, ambulia, and blyxa have all been growing well, and my GDA has seemed to clear up a bit (it was not really too noticeable except in that closeup to me!). My plan is to cut back on other nutrient this next batch, likely iron because I never have iron levels below 0.50ppm before water changes. I have also made another change to a different light setup. I know, changing more things than once. I do use a drop checker to monitor CO2... I think I was at a higher range than you but I've backed down a bit. Pepere, I had two of the Finnex lights on my tank, it was purchased before there were four options! The light would be analogous to the KLC... No 660nm lights, regular housing, 24/7 timer. I learned long ago to ditch the 24/7 mode and instead I used a smart outlet to control my photo period. Shocked the fish a bit, but it worked.

It’s an aesthetic thing… a background helps hide the wall and all the wires behind your tank. Also, it can provide a sense of comfort for your fish. One less area to have to worry about predators. Plus, fish who tend to change color based on surroundings typically show better colors in darker environments.

@Seattle_Aquarist Thanks for confirming my calculations on my calcium and magnesium... I was going off a German-language site and doing my best to understand the translation. In regards to reducing my photoperiod, I would be taking it from 8 hours a day to 5 and a half... That seems awfully short to me. Or am I just putting too much light in? I will look to increase my PO4 dosing and see if I can stop the GSA. It's not awful in the tank, but it's not great either. The reason I am pushing so much CO2 is because certain people in the planted tank realm are really subscribed to the "never enough CO2" theory *cough tom barr cough* and so I thought, ok I'm getting weird growth and BBA, must increase CO2. My fish are ok with that much gas, so I guess I thought more is better. pH drop is a way to control how much CO2 you have in solution, right? Thanks for taking the time to work through this with me!

@JoeQ The eye test was referring to the chart that @SkaleyAquatics provided. I'm growing major BBA on my snails, so I can definitely agree there. And I always get BBA on my rocks in there, too. How do you like your Aquasky?

That is quite the eye test. I will need to study that to understand it a bit better. Is there a link to an article that this came from? Thank you! Dug out my (nearly forgotten) TDS meter and it looks like I'm about 390 ppm in the tank, which seems a bit high. I think a full filter clean is due. The tap water measured at 140 ppm I am looking to make a change; the light doesn't have the 680nm red LEDs that people seem to have nice success with, plus I'm not wild about the way the plants and fish look. Recent measurement of my tap water was a GH of 7 and my calcium is between 38-43 ppm per the water department. I use 40 ppm as a good calculation that can be confirmed roughly by my API test kit.

Hello, and welcome to everyone's favorite gameshow... NAME THAT DEFICIENCY! I'm your host RadMax8. Please join along as I describe a tank and what's going into it, then show some photos and then you can NAME THAT DEFICIENCY! Tank Equipment: Aqueon 40b Two Original Finnex Planted+ 24/7 set to run 8 hours a day CO2 injection with a Griggs reactor and a Milwaukee controller Fluval 407 Filter Parameters: Temp - 79F pH - 7.0 dropping to 5.8 with full CO2 dGH - 12 dKH - 5 NO3 - 20 ppm PO4 - 2 ppm Fe - .58 ppm Ca - 40-60 ppm (tap is about 40) Dosing: Macros and Micros dosed 3x per week alternating days. Values shown per dose. CO2 - 30+ ppm PO4 - 1.4 ppm K - 9 ppm per does plus 40 ppm added at water changes Fe - .12 ppm via Plant-Prod Micro Mix with trace amount of Mn added Mg - 12 ppm added at water changes (Ca:Mg ratio is at about 3:1) My plants show signs of Calcium deficiency (AR and Ludwigia) as well as Potassium (any Hygrophila and my Staur repens). My parameters and dosing seem to indicate otherwise. What is going on here? Thanks for your help!

I may be wrong, but I believe they are attached to the glass we are looking through, so we just see a green dot and some “legs”. Towards the right side of the photo there are some classic hydra shapes.

You’ve got hydra. They can grab shrimplets. If you want to kill them, squirt a little hydrogen peroxide on them. If you squish them or scrape them off, they will regenerate.

Cycled and given enough time to grow some biofilm. Shrimp don’t do well in “young” tanks typically. Just plants should work ok, even better if you’ve had them growing submersed, again so they’ve had time to grow algae and biofilm.

Main thing is to keep them fed and away from other fish. If you set up the 10 gal (and let it season for a few months) you’ll have a shrimp explosion!

Honestly I don’t think you can go wrong with either… Super Green is vegan, so no meat. Soilent Green has some people… I mean animal protein in it. Keep in mind, even though we think of Otocinclus as algae eaters, they actually feed on a lot of biofilm, which is bacteria and such. I guess what I’m saying is, either one is good. Your Otos will get nutrition from a combo of the food and the goodies in your tank.

I’ve got a tank full of CPDs and a couple weeks back two fish came down with what I thought was dropsy. Bloated, pine cone scales; classic hallmarks. Into hospital tank they went. I added salt and dosed with Kanaplex. No change. I went on vacation and when I came back, one fish was in bad shape and the other one wasn’t too hot either. And a third was affected in the main tank. This one isn’t bloated like the others were, but the scales were pushed out just the same. Is there anything else I can do for these fish, or should I euthanize when I see symptoms.

Those are likely pond or bladder snails. If you like snails in your tank, they will multiply if they can find some food. If you don’t, you can squish them and give your fish a snack or remove them manually and chuck them. Have any friends with puffers or loaches? Those fish will eat them up! In regards to the swimming thing… what does it look like? A worm, a speck, something else? How does it swim; jerky, wiggly, smoothly with purpose?

Aqua Huna ships them young. Make sure you give them a low-stress, well-fed, clean environment to grow and develop in! Last time I bought a batch at my LFS I paid $45 for six of them, or $7.50 per. I think they had them listed at $8 per. From my understanding, they are relatively easy to breed and raise, the main issue is volumes. These aren’t fish that are popping out a few hundred eggs a day. Hm, seeing these prices maybe I need to invest in breeding these bad boys…

@MattyM it’s also known as dry ferts, basically you’re taking the stuff that’s in the Seachem bottle pans adding it directly to your tank, rather than buying it mixed with water from Seachem. K2SO4 I believe is the common compound that most of us use. You can get a pound of the stuff for what it costs a single bottle of Seachem. I’m by no means bashing on Seachem, it’s fine for beginners and folks who don’t want the hassle of dealing with various chemicals and measurements and Seachem provides a premixed solution. But if you really want to dial things in and save money doing it, dry ferts is the way to go!

My goals are as follows: Re-automate my fertilizer dosing and make sure check valves are doing their job 🙄 Re-scape my main display tank for better visual flow Add favorite plants that have died during my recent tank neglect

In my personal experience, all plants I’ve tried in the Hygro family are potassium hogs. If you can find some potassium salt, I would start adding that to the tank.

@JB Fish MamaMy technique is to take a pipette, fill with H2O2, and spot treat. Just a little bit on each area. I always make sure any filtration is off, with no flow. As long as you don’t go nuts, you shouldn’t hurt your fish. Good luck!

I’ve got a 20L with a bunch of CPDs and Red Cherry Shrimp. I do my water changes the old fashioned way… just have a regular siphon and do about 5 gallons at a time. If a fish or shrimp get into the “bell” of the siphon, I gently kink the hose and let them swim out. They’re usually aware that something isn’t right. If they do end up taking a ride, I’ll net them after I’m done. I use a white bucket now so they’re easy to see. Hope this helps!

I wouldn’t put the API in, it’s active ingredient is gluteraldahyde and that can be harmful for crypts. Otherwise, I think you’re on the right track with removing the worst affected leaves and the changes to your lighting schedule. I’ve also had really good luck getting rid of BBA by spot treating with peroxide. Might take a couple treatments but it will eventually turn red and die.

I’ve got a StingRay on my 20L and it works amazingly. I can’t really make a comment on the color, it looks good to me but I can’t speak for you! I’m growing low light, low maintenance plants. I would imagine in a 20H you’d have some good results.

When you say shorted, what happened? Did the filter spark or indicate there was a catastrophic failure? I know sometimes the impeller will get “stuck” and not spin unless you take a straw (or other soft poking tool) and move the impeller out of that spot. Then it will start working again. If you’ve noted a catastrophic failure, I wouldn’t try this though. If it’s just sitting there humming instead of working, give the other method a shot. Sorry that this happened for you!