Mitch_ScruffyCityAquatics

I have a panted tank and I don’t vac the substrate. I want all that poo to get into the gravel and feed my plants. I do still change water, but I would live to get to the point the plants take care of it all.

It would definitely depend on your plants. Heavy root feeders would most likely struggle, but column feeders would be fine.

I’ve always wondered how an under gravel filter would impact using root tabs. if you aren’t doing a planted tank it shouldn’t be a problem, but that was my first thought.

Thank you @Cory I’ll give it the five days recommended. If it does look worse would you take a Corydora to level 3? Again, thank you. I am so grateful for Aquarium Co-op and the many ways you and your team make the hobby better.

@Cory should I take this Corydora to level 3 salt? Or try something else? And if something else, do I need to lower the concentration of salt from level 2 first?

Looking worse today. I’m trying to find if I can use Paracleanse (the same ingredients as General Cure) with aquarium salt.

Well, that is my main tank. The qt gets a 50% at least once a week. The nitrates have never gotten above 5ppm.

Water parameters: ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 30 ppm pH 7.4 I change at least 20% every week. I always see people say to keep clean water, but I’m not sure what they mean. It’s a planted tank. @James BlackI may have tried General Cure in the past, but wasn’t thinking about it because I normal think of it for parasites. Can I use General Cure with the salt? I see this same thing every few months with only Corydora. The tank is a 75 gallon and has Mollies, Rasboras, Neons, Otos, Red Cherry Shrimp, and a few snails.

For over a year I have had this pop up every few months with my Corydora Paleatus. It starts as a spot around the head, and then it spreads. I’ve tried treating with Erythromycin and Furan 2, but I have always lost the fish. This little guy had a spot about a week ago. I moved him to the qt tank and added 3 Tbs of salt. This morning it looks a lot worse. I did a 50% water change and added 2 additional Tbs of salt (1 Tbs per 2 gallons now). I know that if it doesn’t get better in 4-5 days I should increase the salt to 1 to 1g, but is that safe for Corydora? Does anyone recognize this? Any idea how I can prevent it? I could really use some help. I love my cories but I hate losing a fish to this every few month.

Do you space them out or push six in at one time. I have a couple of large Amazon’s that are struggling currently. I’ve been putting a couple of tabs a month in the substrate, but I think I need to increase how many I use or put them in more often.

I made some changes on my lighting. I’ll be cutting the overall light period to 10 hours. 1 hour ramp up and ramp down and 8 hours of full light. If the GSA doesn’t begin to recede I will lower the full light period. 11 am 5% 11:30 am 20% 12 pm 100% 8 pm 20% 8:30 pm 5% 9 pm Off I’ll be testing water parameters on my lunch break.

My 75 gallon appeared to be in pretty good balance for a number of months, but once I introduced two tiger lotus to the setup I began to loose control. It started with some green spot algae, but the black beard algae quickly began to show up on the endow of leaves and in my gravel/rocks. I have tweaked my lights and and pushed my ferts to the point that the bba is dying, but now the green spot algae is covering leaves. I had hoped solving one would solve the other, but the GSA is getting bad. My research leads me to believe lighting is the number one factor for GSA? So now I am trying to determine where to adjust to find balance. Here is a snapshot of my tank. Temp 76 degrees Nitrates 40 ppm (before yesterday’s water change) pH 8 I am currently dosing Easy Green 8 pumps on Sunday after the water change and on Wednesday morning. I also have root tabs for my Swords, Crypts, and Vals. Light is a 48” Nicrew with a timer. The current settings were tweeked while trying to get rid of BBA. 10:00 5% 12:00 20% 13:00 100% 16:00 20% 18:00 5% 20:00 0% That is a total of 12 hours at various intensities. I can’t find recommendations online for how the lower intensities may be impacting the algae growth. I’m considering cutting it down to 10 hrs total. With you not 30 min of 5, 30 mins of 20, and 8 hours of 100%. But at this point I would live to hear from some of you. Oh! I do have algae eaters. I want some algae, but not GSA because the otos don’t want the hard lettuce. LoL

Thanks Rudd! I had to pick them up when I saw them. I’ve wanted more orange in my mollies. Really hoping all four are females. I have a BUNCH of fry currently in the 75 gallon, and they are a little drab. I am looking forward to getting these beauties in the main tank!

We’ve decided to embrace the Gold Dust Mollies. After some sales and deaths I ended up down to one female and too many males. Last weekend when I bought the 10g I moved the lone (very pregnant) female over to it. I knew I would have to keep her in the 10 until I bought more females or got rid of some males... so I am doing both. This tank is salted to help her with some stress she was experiencing from the boys. Everything has healed up nicely, but I will probably keep salting it for the next couple of weeks while I make sure the newbies are all good. They are gorgeous. The orange is much more vibrant and the black is very deep. They are extremely young. I tried to pick out four females. I am a little worried that one is a male (could it have a fan tail because it is young?). The one in the second pic is a fan tail. The end of it is orange and the rest of the fan is black so it is kind of hard to see. Apparently someone moved my black background when I had to get rid of my leaky 10g. So the background has junk in it and looks bad. I’ll get a new one soon.

If you pull the rhizome out of the substrate give it a little squeeze. If it is still firm you should be able to leave it in the tank. Just don’t bury the rhizome again. if it mushes I think it may be too far gone. Someone else may be able to help answer that.

The great news is that much of your bacteria is found inside your aquarium on the substrate and decorations. What I have done in the past is run both for awhile. It worked perfectly. However, recently I upsized my prefilter on my canister’s intake. Since I was replacing a very old (smaller) prefilter I wanted to seed the new filter a little. So I took the old prefilter and squeezed the junk out of it next to the new prefilter. Because most of the stuff was small I doubt much of it was caught by the coarse prefilter I doubt it caught much of it.

Thank you. It is a work in progress for sure. kH is the measure of carbon hardness. It impacts how easily you pH can change. I know your level is considered high, but I’m not sure how that impacts plant growth. I’ve never measured my KH. But I know someone more knowledgeable will come around and be able to answer.

My pH is 8.0 and I don’t have problems with most plants.

I received the Corydora sticker in my last order. It’s like you all KNOW me!

I wanted to say that Cory would say this, but I figured he would do it himself. Haha.

I’ve never had issues using it with Prime, but I think people say it isn’t safe either. I think the same company that makes Ich-x makes Ultimate and they recommend it. When I researched Ich-x I found that Prime’s sulfur salt wasn’t the same thing as the ingredient ich-x warned about. Both companies say they cannot say because they can’t guarantee the others ingredients haven’t/won’t change. I haven’t noticed an issue, but do your research.

One of our first fish was a school of neons. They eventually died off and we were left with one. We kept her by herself for months (maybe a year) thinking she would pass too. We felt bad for her and bought more. She is still swimming around with the young’uns. We are glad we gave her another school.

The Amazon Sword is going to prefer root tabs because it feeds mostly through the substrate. You don’t have to put them throughout the substrate just close to the swords. In my experience hair algae can be common early on, and BBA could be from stopping the ferts. Now your plants are getting less food and they are using less, leaving more for algae which uses what is in the water more easily. If I were you I would do a large water change (30%?) to clear the water. I would get some root tabs for the swords and go back to dosing easy green (maybe two pumps instead of three initially).. If you can remove the hair algae with a toothbrush (unused of course) that will help. For the bba, I’ve seen a lot of people have success with multiple methods. I would try to balance things first and see if it dies. I just realized, what animals are in this tank?

Hello, Dialing in Plants, Ferts, and Lights can be complicated sometimes. What kind of plants do you have? How many? How much Easy Green were you dosing and were you dosing anything else?

I know I just added to this journal today, but I noticed something this morning while watching the tank on my break. I haven’t been using Flourish Excel recently, but the black beard algae on my Amazon Swords has turned pink and it is dying off! Hopefully I am close to finding balance in the tank again.