RadMax8

Sorry to hear you gassed your tank. I’ve never had a situation like that, but I’ve come very close. Just some thoughts/questions to avoid future mishaps, do you run your CO2 at night? Reason I ask is because you said when you woke up the tank had been gassed. Do you run your CO2 solenoid on a timer? I used to use a standard rotary timer, but I’ve since moved to a Kasa wifi timer. Also, have you ever considered a CO2 controller, like from Milwaukee? I use one and love it. Not trying to beat you up in a crummy situation, again I’m sorry this happened!

@NOLANANOgiven your previous luck (or lack of it), it may be a good idea to quarantine your GBRs before placing them in your display tank. Give them a dose of the med trio recommend on this site and feed them well. Good luck! Love those little fish!

I requested 1 male and 3 females at my LFS and ended up with the opposite. While I was expecting some squabbling, I have noticed minimal. There’s definitely a dominant male in my tank, as he’s bigger and slightly more colored up than the others, but he seems to be fairly laid back. I do have 5 females (I hope) in my QT tank now to add to a new tank, as I don’t think my Pearls appreciate the higher flow in my 40b community tank, which also houses about 17 green fire tetras and 13 cories. So I made the executive decision to start a new tank haha. Your fish look good! Definitely got a boy on your hands, your last photo shows how different the marking intensity looks side by side. Feed them well and you’ll get to enjoy them growing into even more beautiful fish!

You ever just have a string of bad luck? Bought two female Pearl Gouramis to go along with my group of three males and one female. Got them set up in my quarantine tank, after about a week I lost one unexpectedly. No sign of injury or illness, just woke up one day and she was gone. Fast forward to today, and the second one made it through QT. During drip acclimation, it decided that it didn’t like the cories in the acclimation bucket and jumped out. Of course, I didn’t find it until it was too late. Super bummed I lost two beautiful fish, at least there’s a lesson to be learned in that I need to cover my acclimation bucket.

How big is the tank? Clown loaches live a long time and can get huge, so I don’t think that’s a viable solution. I’m more surprised the yo-yos haven’t been feasting. What kind of plants do you have? I have a significant amount of ramshorn snails in my high-tech heavily planted tank, and as far as I can tell the only issues I have plant-wise are of my own doing, the snails just seem to work on algae and extra food. Perhaps you could harvest the snails and keep them in a container until you get them all and see if someone wants a package of snails to feed their hungry critters. I think that would be a pretty good way to get rid of them without “wasting” them, so to speak.

I like to attach them back to the piece of wood the parent came from, or attach them in other tanks. I actually just sold a guy a large plant package with some Java fern, so that may be an option, too. Java fern aren't meant to be buried in the substrate. They like to be attached to hardscape so the roots are free to absorb nutrients directly from the water column. I suppose if you have large enough substrate it may work, but you run the risk of rot otherwise.

I use dry fertilizer in my main display tank… measuring spoons and salts. It’s easy to make specific does changes. If you’re uncomfortable with that, I’d look to liquids.

Well, time to burn that tank. Hope it had a good run… Seriously though, duckweed can come from anywhere and is hard to kill, plus it can reproduce from just one spangle. I’d be willing to bet it came from a plant and you’re just now seeing it, as implausible as that sounds. I’ve had it hang out in the area behind my HOB, only to shake loose after weeks of clear surface. If you want to get rid of it for good, try the Eheim skimmer. In conjunction with manual removal, I’ve had success eradicating it from a awfully infested 20 long.

In my experience, anything in the hygro family are potassium hogs. Lacy holes are a tell-tale sign of potassium deficiency. Remember, plants only grow to their limiting factor!

What are you looking for in a centerpiece fish? Big color, big personality, larger size? Most fish you would consider a centerpiece fish will be on the larger side and may snack on some shrimp. I have a group of four pearl gourami in my 40b and I love them, but they might munch some cherry shrimp.

I’ve been reading this research and I must say it’s absolutely fascinating! I do have a few questions as it relates to the mechanics though. Please bear with me as I am a technical person, just not in this field. How long does it take the seltzer to “go flat”? Gas always tries to equalize pressure, right? Has anyone done readings to see how quickly the CO2 leaves the system? Might be interesting to look into. The pressure in the water, how did you measure that? I read where it’s 3x atmospheric pressure, but is that just in the bottle? I don’t really know what pressure from carbonation does in a liquid exposed to air. To this point, I wonder if the eggs which shattered didn’t do so from a pressure differential, rather the eggs had a high amount of CO2 from the seltzer water, and when placed in normal water the rapid diffusion caused catastrophic damage. Please let me know your thoughts on these topics, I am always interested to learn more! Excellent work on all this.

I did have it all the way down, but since I changed my settings I put it about 50%. You’re right, it looks a little odd with no blue light.

Looks like it could be a little fungus, but honestly I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Rinse it off like Cory suggested and it should help. It’s VERY common when you get a new tank set up or add new wood to get some fungus growth. Typically, it goes away quickly or it provides a nice snack for your fish! Out of curiosity, how do you plan on starting your cycle? Without adding anything to create ammonia, you’ll likely be waiting forever to get any sort of bacterial colony rolling in there. I like to buy some pure ammonia, dose it to a certain level, and let the magic happen. That way I know how much ammonia I have and can calculate how much nitrite and then nitrate I should get. You can also add some bacterial colonies via a supplement which you can get from AC. I don’t mean to tell you you’re doing it all wrong, just throwing my $0.02 so you can get to enjoying your tank quicker!

I have a very similar setup in my bedroom, I run 2 sponge filters and a HOB though. I love the tank, very low maintenance and looks great for how much work I put in it. Is the tank cycled? Do you have another tank you can borrow some filter media from that you can use to kick start the cycle? I’ve started 3 tanks using the ammonia method and it works pretty well. You can also use a Fritz product that is basically bacterial cultures. Also regarding ferts, I wouldn’t add them until you’re cycled, the appearance of nitrates helps confirm the second bacterial culture has taken off. Plus your plants will enjoy the ammonia. As far as livestock, feel free to start adding fish after the cycle is complete, but if you’re adding a cleanup crew let the tank mature for a few months so there’s something to cleanup! Also, please add pics! It’s nice to compare and see how others imagine their tanks. Here’s an older picture of mine: It’s actually way different now, but it’s lights out so I’ll update tomorrow 🙂

Hey friends, just wanted to share a quick update with you all, since you took the time to help me. I’m working on making a lot of the changes that have been recommended, firstly I cranked both of my Finnex Planted+ 24/7 lights up to max intensity, minus the blue channel. Next, I’m working my way up from a 6.5 hour photoperiod to an 8 hour. I’m at 7.5 now, in a couple days I’ll bump it up to a solid workday for those lazy plants! I’ve also reduced my macro dosing down by half. On to the update: my water change day is Sunday, so naturally I started making changes during the week. To my surprise, I started noticing some positive changes. There’s some new healthy-ish growth on my AR, my blyxa perked up a bit, I noticed some newer looking growth on my bacopa, and my one little twig of staur repens has gotten (marginally) larger. During my water change this week, I checked nitrates and they were in the 10-20 range (I have a hard time telling the reds and oranges apart), which tells me the plants are working harder. I trimmed out a ton of algae-affected leaves and H2O2 blasted ones I didn’t want to cut out. Some negatives of the extra light include some newer hair algae growth on my tall driftwood, which I wish my Amano shrimp would get to work on, but that was removed. I also need to keep an eye on the BBA propagation. I know it’s still early, but I’m hoping things keep trending in the positive direction and I can just make tweaks moving forward. We’ll see in a few weeks. I will try to get some photos for you all to look at instead of imagining my tank. Thanks again for your input!

I would probably need to look into getting an RO system, I don't know if I could keep up with 10 gallons of distilled water per week. I will also start decreasing my micros, which should be easy enough to just cut in half to 1/16 tsp per day (I'm dosing dry for the time being). I read in your journal that you said NO3 from fish causes issues. Do you have an article or something I could read on that? I find it interesting and would like to learn more about what the issue is. Seems to me NO3 should be the same regardless where it comes from, but like I said I'm interested in learning how that assumption is wrong!

Normal water pH is around 7.1-7.2, when I’ve got CO2 fully going it’s at 5.9.

Hi all, thank you for taking the time to respond. I will do my best to answer some of the questions below: It's a 40b tank, so there's no support bar. I am using a glass top, but the plant is located closer to the front of the tank, and it's got direct light. Tank has been running continuously for almost 5 years now. I have tried AR multiple times in the past, but never had great success. The last time I put it in this tank was about a month ago. Started off ok, but has struggled a bit in the last 2-3 weeks. In regards to the light, I've got them placed roughly an inch from the glass top in an effort to get more punch from my lights. As far as NO3 consumption, at the beginning of the week after water change I'm at about 20ppm, by the end I'm closer to 40ppm so I don't think that's an issue. I put Brightwell Aquatics Rio Escuro in this tank when I started it 5 years ago. I've not done anything with it since then. My GH is around 7 degrees (125ppm) and my KH is roughly 5 degrees (90ppm). I'm using CSM+B for my micros. The kicker is I've had good luck with blyxa and rotala bonsai in the past, I just feel like I'm doing something wrong.

I don’t know how well this will work, but I want to give basil a shot in my tank. I know you can grow it hydroponically, so I’m thinking about attempting something like that. If it helps the water quality, great, but my wife loves basil so it’d be nice to have around!

I have been working to dial in my settings to get my plants growing in my high tech setup. I think I’m at a point where my CO2 is on point, as I run a controller and confirm with a drop checker. I feel like I’ve dialed in my fertilizer reasonably well (30ppm K, 6ppm PO4, and about .74 Fe per week with my fish providing the NO3) because some plants grow well, such as my Amazon sword compacta, my ludwigia natans, and my hygrophila. The mystery to me is that while those plants thrive (and Pearl like crazy), many of my other plants are almost dormant and grow algae. I am trying to grow AR, blyxa japonica, rotala bonsai, staur repens, bacopa carolina, and ambulia, but their success seems to elude me. I know these aren’t quite beginner plants, but it’s something I should be able to figure out here… many people have grown more with less! As far as my tank goes, it’s a 40b with two Planted+ 24/7 lights on it which have been set at about 70% output for 6 and a half hours per day. I feel like I’ve made some improvements lately, but my tank is still a bit of a mess. Any advice is welcome!

That’s what it looks like to me. Next molt and she’ll have the boys swimming like crazy to find her. Good luck!

GH and KH are good to have on-hand as well. If you want to get crazy, Potassium test would be nice to have too.

An API Master Test Kit would be a good starting point. They cost around $40 and make you feel a bit like a mad scientist, but as you get used to testing, it becomes easier. That should help diagnose your issues.

What kind do you like? They’ll probably work. I would look for some of the smaller varieties since it’s a 30 gal. Panda cories are pretty, as are false julii cories, and I’d love to get a fleet of Corydora habrosus.

Yes there are. I use a spring-ball type purchased from McMaster (along with some other stuff) that works great! Here’s the link if you’re interested. McMaster is a pretty good resource for getting some oddball stuff anyway! https://www.mcmaster.com/6079T55/