[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

I forgot about those!!!! Yup. That's happening.

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

On 4/12/2022 at 2:16 PM, Jack.of.all.aquariums said:

Have you been dosing all of this regularly?

From the Easy Iron description: "Watch for signs of overdosing such as an increase in filamentous or hair algae. Excessive amounts of iron can be attributed to algae overgrowth in planted tanks."

You are super dosing Iron since all 3 products are adding some.

I'm getting antsy. Did I just do a big no-no? Or can I wait to change water until Thursday? It's a lot of work to change 40% on this tank with a "small" python and five gallon buckets over my shoulder. >.<

[Is this a form of algae?]

I'm glad things are going well otherwise though. I look forward to hearing about the homemade food.

[Is this a form of algae?]

Hmm. I know the bottomfeeder wafers from xtreme leave pulpy stuff behind if my fish don't polish it off within a few hours. Maybe you're having a similar thing happen with the tetra wafers. Is community crave a flake? I can't remember... I make my own blend with the spirulina flakes and krill flakes.

[Is this a form of algae?]

Probably shouldn't fertilize the tank with Simple Green. I mean, it's green, and biodegradable..... 😛 I couldn't resist. We all know you mean Easy Green. 🙂

What kind of fish are in there and what are you feeding? Maybe it's fibrous material from food or poo mixed with algae and wood decay.

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

On 4/12/2022 at 2:16 PM, Jack.of.all.aquariums said:

Have you been dosing all of this regularly?

From the Easy Iron description: "Watch for signs of overdosing such as an increase in filamentous or hair algae. Excessive amounts of iron can be attributed to algae overgrowth in planted tanks."

You are super dosing Iron since all 3 products are adding some.

Nope. First dose of iron since early December. I had not been fertilizing regularly until the new planting. With how sparse the tank had become I was worried about just feeding algae.

I agree that the dose total is high on iron. I did however dose at about a .5 rate for each except the Gro+. My plan is to omit the Gro+ and easy iron when I change water on Thursday. I thought it was a good idea since our tap water has such a high pH and GH/KH. My plants in the garden always enjoy a good dose of iron every now and again, same with magnesium and sulphur. Maybe not such a good idea for the aquarium...

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

Before water change:

After water change and manual removal of excess algae:

[Roots Above Gravel?]

I do the same thing @Widgets does. Though depending on which tank I'm cutting from, the cut stem may only produce one branch from below where I cut it. While in other tanks some of the plants start branching without me even cutting them. Same species and sub varieties. Kinda fun to see the differences between tanks with the same species. 😃

[slowed egg development]

I was going to mention light as well. It's amazing what that can do to growth/hatch rates.

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

On a side note, I'm quite certain that my corydoras are spawning every time I water change the 75. Since I have the spray bar the water hits the surface like rain as I am removing water. Then I generally drop the temp from 77.6 to 72 with the water change itself. I'm just thinking about this because I am watching them pair up, chase and do the shimmies.

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

I manually removed as much stringy algae as I could with my water change today. I also scrubbed a bit of the furry green algae off of the wood just as a gauge. Same with the empty (I'm still super sad about this) nerite snail shells. They're placed in various areas of light/shade to gauge growth.

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

Interesting.

I changed about 40% of the water. Got the nitrates down to just under 10 with that.

Decided to go ahead and add 10mL of the Fluval Gro+ Micro, 4 pumps of easy green, 4 pumps of easy iron. 20 minutes later just about every plant in the tank is pearling. Not like a wicked stream of bubbles but everything is bubbling. Is this just a coincidence @Mmiller2001? 

I've been running CO2 all day but the plants weren't pearling before. The only pearling I'd seen since adding the CO2 was a bit of the algae pearling and the Stargrass did a tiny bit.

On 4/12/2022 at 1:24 PM, Streetwise said:

Your lighting changes will probably take about a month to show an impact.

About half of my plants are medium light. I feel like they should be good with this new schedule. I don't have a PAR meter so it's just a game of "sit and wait"... I am not super patient but really hope I'm not just encouraging algae.

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

On 4/11/2022 at 4:54 PM, Streetwise said:

Your first screenshot actually has more information! I still want to try a proper CO2 setup with my Apex.

Please keep sharing!

I'm a bit obsessed with the 3.0 lights... The fight with algae continues. 30% water change happening today. Then another on Thursday, and another on Saturday. Reset button, activated! I need a better water change system. 5 Gallon buckets and a small ID python suck so bad for the 75.

[Root tabs only?]

On 4/12/2022 at 9:53 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

You can do that, but this style usually has problems. Nitrate production from fish load also brings excess organics (soluble and insoluble). This can complicate things quite a bit.

That is a valid, and good, point.

Alright. Thank you. End of hijacking.

[Root tabs only?]

On 4/12/2022 at 9:09 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

You don't want to omit Nitrates. If you are generating nitrates from stocking loads, then increase water changes so you can dose properly.

That said, for micros anything will work. Flourish is fine. Some will work better than others with certain pH's do to various chelates.

The nitrates are coming from the fish. The plants aren't established yet. I'm scooting them along with CO2 injection.

So I should be changing water out to get to a lower nitrate level and then dosing something like easy green to add a broad spectrum? I was thinking I could let the nitrates be from the fish, and only add micros and supplement the P and K values for macros as needed.

Or are you saying just change out water and add micros with something like regular Flourish?

[NERM sticker]

On 4/11/2022 at 11:38 AM, Corbidorbidoodle said:

I was having a fan boy moment and made those a couple weeks ago. Just a little Photoshop (graphic designers cringing now), and cut them out on my Cricut (I love that thing).

Of course... I'm ORD.

Super cool! Now I just need to decide if I want to deface my 75G by turning this into an acid etch stencil for the glass. It's probably going to happen.

[Root tabs only?]

Okay, okay, okay. So I've just read through all this information. I'm going to highjack for a moment, sorry.

@Mmiller2001 My 75 and I are fighting algae; hair algae and staghorn algae. What is a good micro fert to use to omit Nitrate addition?

I have Flourish Advance, and I also have fluval Gro+ Micronutrients liquid. I'd like to use a liquid micro supplement for now, at least until we're back from a two week vacation that is coming up very soon.

[Any reason not to cut hole in UGF?]

ORD...

I was once worried about poos clogging my UGF a long time ago. I was a kid at the time. My dad thought it would be a great idea to use the air compressor to blow out ALL of the mulm. He took off the cartridge part of the uplift, pulled out the airline and cupped his hand around the uplift tube and created a seal with the air compressor nozzle blowing into his hand.

It was a huge mess but it suspended all of the mulm into the water column and scared the kuhli loaches half to death.

There was a pretty big bacterial bloom afterwards. So now as an adult I don't think I'd worry about clogging or cleaning under the plate. The tank was crystal clear before the experiment. It took several months for the tank to restabilize and the flow through the uplift tubes didn't appear to increase afterward.

I mean you could deep clean by making uber suction with a power head though.

[Low maintenance denitrifying tanks, 5.5 gallon with nearly zero nitrates.]

ORD. I dig it. Thank you for the information. I really am enjoying reading about your projects.

You need to make yourself a "signature" and have links to this thread and your jar experiment!

[Low maintenance filter system for 1 gallon fry container]

On 4/4/2022 at 9:58 AM, Fish Folk said:

I get mine from Chick-fil-a

Are you like, buying bulk superfood salad or? That's a rather random source for large capacity jugs. 😛 

[Breeding Sakura Orange Neocaridina Shrimp]

OH YEAH! I ALMOST forgot!

I watched shrimp mating for the very first time. It was not as fast as people say. She was there, minding her own business; then a male came up to her (a dull, less pretty one of course)... He got on her back, then she jumped, he latched onto her abdomen right below her face and they stayed like that for probably 30 seconds. Then away he swam. It looked like he had her trapped. If I didn't know any better I would have thought it was aggression.

[Breeding Sakura Orange Neocaridina Shrimp]

Alright. So I actually did a 50% water change today. Finally. I can hardly believe how long it's been since I changed water in there. SO this is where the story is going to get very interesting in terms of breeding and overall shrimp keeping.

I checked the parameters of the water I took out of the tank so I could make sure I wasn't going way off with my new water.

The water they were in:

pH: 8.0
KH: 9 degrees
GH: 18 degrees
Temp: 73 degrees F

I hadn't changed water in several months. I had been topping off with RO water. Even when I moved them from the bathroom, I returned the water I took out to the tank when I finished.

So somehow the pH was going up. And the KH/GH. I've only had 3 deaths in the tank in the last month. Anyway. I think the "Mineral Junkie" food helps buffer pH,KH,GH.

I had been testing the water with the easy test strips but I thought mine were bunked because of how high the pH was showing on this tank. Guess they're fine! I used the API master test to do the tests today. I always use this and their GH/KH test kit when I do the shrimp because I like the accuracy. 

Moving on. It's no wonder that the shrimp are thriving and breeding in the 75... The water parameters were almost the same! I acclimated them for pretty much no reason. lol.

 

This just goes to prove that they are very adaptable and will proliferate in high pH, hard water. And it's probably why my Rotala Bossii is dying lol. I was wondering!

On Wednesday I added two Crypt Patchii, some S. Repens and a Alternanthera Reineckii 'Mini'. All seem to be doing very well.

Also the water wasn't cloudy! The glass was! NOW the water is cloudy. Haha.

I added a black background today. Here are the before and afters of the trimming and water change + new background.

 Before:

 

After:

I love these little buggers. They're just so cool.

Here's two mamas basking before the pruning.

[First time aquarium owner! Need some help with brand new tank.]

Super exciting! I really like your tank so far! Once the ammonia is close to zero I recommend giving it more ammonia to keep the bacteria alive. I use the "ghost feeding" method these days. Once they appear, nitrites go up really fast, stay (what I once thought was concerningly) high for a while, and then settle back down at a pretty quick rate once they start to drop. It'll be awesome to get it seasoned and full of life! Tanks without fish are very interesting. You will see tiny copepods and maybe even some tiny detritus worms before you have fish. Totally harmless and honestly very interesting critters. I look forward to reading about your adventure.

Welcome to the community!

[What does your background look like on your tank and what did you use?]

I've used paint, spray paint, old school car window tinting, poster board, painted foam core (kept the tank a bit warmer which was nice), I sand blasted the back wall of a tank once to try that and it was okay with the media I was using, acid etched attempt did not work well for me... Recently I used blackout window cling on my 75 that is already against the wall. Nightmare to install but it looks okay. There are some bubbles but you can only see them from the side so I don't mind. If I ever move the tank I'll re-stick it and do it right.

My favorite background was the foam core just because it helped keep the tank warm in the winter. I had it on a 10G in my bedroom that was right in front of a window. I may put foam core against the back of all of my tanks regardless of background. Kind of forgot about it. 🙂

[CO2, Algae, New Plants. Need guidance on strategy.]

Thank you so much guys

Alright. I'll extend the time for the CO2. I did change my photoperiod as well. It was almost 10 hours between the two photoperiods...... *Facepalm* It was long because I moved some time so my husband could watch the fish and feed the cories when he gets home.

So of course I just turned it into a totally different light schedule. Kind of like the shrimp sanctuary dual siesta.

Thoughts? CO2 schedule changed. Still on at 3:55 then off at 17:00. Still an okay schedule for the CO2? Too much light?

 

I just realized what the overview of the light schedule shows. Sorry for the previous schedules screenshot on the first post that's way harder to understand. Lol.