[Preferred tank disinfectant?]

Some people may not like this but I wanted to know. I’m redoing my tank and while some decorations were out a few plenaria worms came off. I decided this would be a great time to test how effective each disinfectant is against them. 
 

white vinegar - less then 1 second

peroxide - 3-6 seconds

70% iso alcohol - 1-2 seconds

I also repeated this test on both rams horn and bladder snails for an effective way to dispose of them when I get them out of the tank so they don’t escape and infest my local ecosystem. Tests were about the same except peroxide took 5-8 seconds. Alcohol and vinegar causes immediate hemorrhaging of the rams. 

 

[Preferred tank disinfectant?]

I use white vinegar for the tank and for te equipment 70% iso alcohol. I hear bleach is safe as long as it has no additives and you rinde it out and use declorinator. What’s your guys opinions?

[Blackworms in my tank idea?]

Okay thank you guys. I just wanted to make sure the planarias  wouldn’t kill them off. 

[Blackworms in my tank idea?]

Morning to all you fishy people. I was thinking of introducing some black worms to my tank to give my Kuhlis and other fish some hunting fun.
 

I know they’re not harmful or anything and the worst I’ll get is a carpet of wiggles. I don’t mind that but I do have white planaria in the tank. As I don’t have shrimp I don’t care and they can have all the snail eggs they can eat.

The question is will they bother the black worms? I see them near the detritus worms a lot but never see them eating them. 

[Substrate opinions?]

@Seattle_Aquarist Your tank is gorgeous! My only thing is, this next tank is going to be built specifically for Kuhlis or Dojos. So I was going for a substrate that's not rough and they can burrow in. How often do you use root tabs?

[Substrate opinions?]

What’s your favorite brand or do you mix your own? 

[Substrate opinions?]

I’m sure there’s as many opinions on this as there are on plants and fish but what is everyone’s favorite substrate?

I’m using large gravel with fluval stratum. My next tanks going to be a mix of fine gravel, sand, and something like fluval but with out the balls. My Kuhlis love digging to much. 

[Smart Ramshorn snail]

@Guppysnail I ran to the store and was gone for an hour and it was still there so it got saved and put in the breeder. 

[Smart Ramshorn snail]

So I have an big infestation of ramshorns and bladder snails so I got some assassin snails. Just to make sure they’re healthy and not gonna just dig their own grave Im feeding them. 
 

However this one ramshorn keeps getting on the shell of the assassins and not letting go. I’ve detached it several times now and then just boot scoots and boogies right on another one. Kinda thinking about sparing it and putting it in my 10 gallon rams breeder. 

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

@Mmiller2001 well I have a new development. My Anubis Nana just bloomed. I read that this happens when the tank is well established and phosphates are a bit high. So completely counter to how everything else in the tank is acting. It sprouted the stem for the flower last week and I thought it was going to be a long leaf but bloomed today. 

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

Okay. What’s a normal level for all 3 in a tank? 

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

Okay thank you for the help. Do you know a good resource to study up about this? Like a good YouTuber or blog? 

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

So would you recommend the macro and micro or something else? I’ll eventually do C02 and dry fert but that’s a bit to much to get into just yet. 

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

Thank you for the help. I’m curious if I can dose higher and when this is out I think I’m switching to the macro and micro 2 bottles. Thrive -C definitely worked great until my tank went belly up but I wanna make sure my tank gets what it needs. 

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

I appreciate it. I use the python no spill directly to faucet to take out and add back. I’ll start trying that. The bottle says to dose 1-2 times a week at 1 pump per 5 gallons and to change 25-30% water. 
 

I’ll hold off on the water changes to once a week unless the ammonia goes over 1 ppm and keep using 3 ml of prime and 1 1/2 caps of stability every other day until it recycles. 

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

I take out roughly 10 gallons. Gh is 7-8

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

@Mmiller2001 

 

• Cardinal Tetras x16
• Harlequin Rasbora x10
• Pygmy Corries x12-13
• Khuli loaches x12
• Ottos x4
• Assassin snails x2
• Ramshorn and Bladder snails for days

[Is this phosphate or iron issues?]

I know I need to get the phosphate test kit but it’s on order now. This plant was fine a couple weeks ago but noticed 3-4 days ago that leaf going yellow and overnight it went from yellow to melting away. The second pic is of another one and that’s what it looked like a few days ago.

I have a 29 and dosing with thrive-c at 10 pumps and 3 tablespoons of gh booster for calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Also using prime and stability to get the nitrite cycle back to normal and changing 25-30% water a day. I dosed thrive last night and haven’t changed the water since. 

The other pic is of the Mayaca Vandelli. My old stuff died off so I got some more and it’s going from light green to yellow now from top to bottom with the tips turning a little brown now. 

 

Water quality

temp- 78° 

ph - 7.2

ammonia - .75 - 1

Nitrite - .25

Nitrate - 10-15 (goes to 20 through the day)

Gh - 9-10

KH - 2

 

 

[Will snail infestations raise ammonia?]

@Chris I agree about the plants. This was just a thought provoking question. I was mainly curious if any had ever noticed any spikes in ammonia when they had a spike in a snail population.
 

If I was more conservative and said 4 snails to 1 cardinal and I have 200 of them then that’s 50 cardinals in my 29 gallon on top of my existing fish. If I told you I had a spike in ammonia after adding 50 cardinals you would say well there’s your problem. Just something interesting to think about as most people just don’t consider them in the bio load equation. Also which causes more ammonia? Decaying food and plants or decaying snail waist?

 

@GuppysnailI take most out. If I crush 20 bladders I leave 4-5 in

[Will snail infestations raise ammonia?]

@Gator I have 12 Kuhlis in the 29 and they only eat the snails I crush and maybe their eggs sometimes. Over te last 3 weeks I’ve been going through my tank and crushing every bladder snail I see to the point that I would see about 100 at any given time at first and now maybe 10 out in the open. I decided to let them build back up as my Kuhlis absolute love eating the crushed ones. The problem is the ramshorns. I actually like them. As for the Alum, I’ll have to try that. Thank you. 
 

@ChrisThe issues mainly came from my tank not getting any food for 2 weeks due to the auto feeder messing up while I was away for work. This caused all the nitrates to plummet. I had a crap ton of anacharis, spiralis Crypt, and a few other plants that started dieing back and the rams went to town and bred like crazy so I went from like 50 rams in a 29 gallon to a plague of them. 
 

I wonder if there’s a formula out there for snails to fish ratio of waste. Mysteries are like goldfish from my understanding and make a lot of waste. How many rams and bladders = 1 cardinal tetra in waste. 
 

if 3 rams = 1 cardinal and I have 200+ Rams in a 29 gallon then that’s a lot. 

[Will snail infestations raise ammonia?]

@Guppysnail  actually going through and collecting the best specimens this week and putting them in a 10 gallon so they can breed then getting a couple assassin snails for the main as a reset button on the snail plague.
 

Gotta evacuate the essential personnel before dropping nukes in the zombie infected city. 

[Will snail infestations raise ammonia?]

@JettsPapa snails are messy and they went from maybe 20-40 snails to over 200 pretty quick plus a huge for off of plants which the rams then devoured. I was thinking it would be like having an over populated tank. 

[Will snail infestations raise ammonia?]

Looks like its assassin snail time. I don't mind Ramshorn and I like bladders for getting into the tiny crevasses and also crashing a few and leaving them for snacks for my Kuhlis. The question is, how effective would just one assassin snail be at keeping them in check but not wiping them out?  

[Will snail infestations raise ammonia?]

So I’ve looked into it and it seems that if you have a high enough snail infestation it could. I have probably 200 ramshorn and bladder snails in my 29 gallon and recently the ammonia spiked up again. Now this can be attributed to a mass decay of plants recently but I’m curious if the snails would cause it too? 
 

And yes I know to get that many snails I had to be over feeding them which would also attribute to the ammonia but that was stopped a month ago and these are all left overs from eggs layed at that time and recently hatched witching the last 1-2 weeks.