Ghost_Council

awesome thank you for the in-depth analysis of the situation. I am going to leave them in and cut CO2 until my levels drop back down, as is, they are not gulping at the surface or anything like that, i want to get to homeostasis with all the elements introduced, I feel like id be more likely to kill everything in the tank via moving it around and disturbing their natural order of things tbh. I was just to ham-fisted with the CO2 once i got it hooked up. Cool new toys and all that... In your opinion, should i taper the CO2 off slowly? or just cut it out all together for the time being while i let the N cycle complete itself? I dont want to jerk the fish back and forth between diff pH / NH3-4 ty

Hello, I am testing my water and I was wondering if ammonium being present in my water would contribute to the readings of the ammonia test in the API water parameter testing kit? My tank is fully cycled (tank has been set up for probably 2 or 3 months at this point) and I am working on getting it heavily planted. I would say that roughly a third of the canopy is covered in water lettuce and frogbit, About half or a bit more of the floor is covered in amz sword, moneywort, val, and dwarf sag. I have small tetras that I am feeding regularly to get them grown out. I know that the amount of food is the likely culprit for my increased ammonia levels. I am just wondering if the plant life is converting ammonia into ammonium in a way that is throwing my test readings off? date pH Ammonia Nitrites Nitrates temp Ferts? 09/21 6.4 2.0 ppm .25 ppm 5.0 ppm 74 F dosed 09/20/21 09/22 6.4 3.0 ppm .25 ppm 0 ppm 74 F dosed 09/20/21 bonus question if anyone cares to venture a guess/soluition: I recently started dosing with CO2 and my pH use to sit at around 6.9 to 7.0, its now sitting around 6.4; while i welcome my drop in pH i dont want it to bottom out on me while I am dosing the plants. The tank has tetra in it and they dont seem to mind. My kuhli loach is a bit of a recluse so i dont know how he/she feels about the drop. I am wondering if i should add some bone rock to the tank to try and organically bring the pH back up while still dosing CO2 for the plants. For reference my drop checker is still showing blue/green (i.e. still not sufficient levels for the amount being consumed by the plants in the tank) As always thank yall for lookin.

Very good. Thank you for letting me know. I’m gonna pull the pot for tonight and scrutinize it thoroughly tomorrow. I appreciate the perspective.

Enlighten me, what’s a VOC. I wouldn’t want to poison my aquatic friends. Should I pull my pot and do more research?

I’ll go sniff the bark tomorrow. I test parameters weekly, just started dosing the plants in the tank with simple green so I’ll be watching my numbers like a hawk as is, add this new variable to the pile lol. Glad to have someone’s first hand experience to help calm my concerns. Thanks for lookin.

Good deal. I’ll probably just keep an eye out for mold over the next day or two. I don’t mind the dark water, and dropping the pH is actually preferable. (Raising tetras). Thanks for lookin.

Hey all, question for anyone who may know I have a hanger back slotted orchid pot resting in the back of my tank. I have my pothos planted in it with orchid bark loosely covering the roots. I looked up orchid bark and it appears to be a high quality fir bark. I was wondering if it’ll have any long term negative effects on my tank? It’s untreated so there aren’t any extra chems that would leech into the tank. Has anyone ever used it before and to what affect?