Mmiller2001

5 degrees should be good then.

What kind of fish do you keep?

Before you spend too much money on a Fluval 3.0, I would take a look at a WeekAqua P or L series lights. There’s no comparison. Pick any substrate you like that looks good to you. Keep grain size in 1 to 3mm range. White is nice, but can take a bit of extra work to keep it looking its best. Having a bit of color is nice. Look at Super Naturals Jungle river sand. See if you have a pond supply store near you for rocks. Fish stores are a rip off on rocks. Bottom line, a proper CO2 system with compressed CO2 is the better option. Keeping CO2 stable is extremely important and the generators struggle to keep CO2 consistent. Here’s my tank with Ace Hardware pool filter sand. They have a few colors available and it’s cheap.

Very few plants are actually “heavy root feeders” as the internet loves to say. Plants will take from both areas and the truth is some plants are just heavy feeders and they don’t care where it comes from. I wouldn’t cut back on column dosing. BBA is an issue with CO2 and general poor plant health. I’d up the tank maintenance and water changes. Here was my competition tank with pool filter sand and only column dosing. I just don’t see, or have found a reason to use root tabs.

It’s really that good?

I just want to add my 2 cents of Nerd. PH is not an indicator of water hardness or softness. I would ask the supplier for their GH and KH and compare it to your own. If it’s wildly different, a slower acclimation would be ideal. But I just plop in these days with tank bred fish.

I’ve never had a problem with any livestock.

It looks like it. So I’ve read lots of the different reasons why, some say too low of nitrates and truth be told who knows. Honestly, when I had some spots of it, I just do the H2O2 and it never came back. I also increased my tank maintenance and just never saw it again.

Spot dose H2O2, 15ml per 10 gallons. Turn off all pumps, use a larger syringe and just paint the areas. It will vigorously bubble after a few seconds, let it do its thing and after 20 minutes turn all your pumps back on, you can repeat this process every 24 hours.

If you see Sprite water everywhere, you should be good to go.

You want it placed in an area were flow is best for distributing the CO2 throughout the tank. You actually want to off gas CO2 as best you can and increase injection to compensate. This creates a stable CO2 level during injection.

It should be fine. But per above, knowing the individual Ca and Mg will really help. Maybe give there customer service a call and just ask them the ppm range for each.

Should just be GH, but most boosters have potassium. I’d personally would just chose CaSO4 and MgSO4 (epson salts).

You can dose both on the same day. It’s at higher concentrations when things can be iffy.

Oh boy, I almost died, getting one ready tomorrow would definitely kill me 😀 As long as it’s non toxic, you can use anything. Yugang has another type of reactor called a CO2 spray bar, would work perfect for yeast type CO2 generation.

Did you add a gasket when connecting?

You are correct, I had too many. The fish should not take away from the plants.

That’s one of the rules. Minimal fish and usually just a few species, I lost points for too many. 🙁

Front loading removes the every other day dosing. It's one dose of Macros and done. Just dose Micros, and you can choose how often you dose. This is the true problem. We are dicussing as I type this about getting a 40 gallon....again. Truth lol, she hates it, but loves the end result so she does it. At the end of the day, it's a piece of art that all our house guests are mesmerized by. It's a conversational piece for sure.

Yes, just get a water report from your local water source and adjust appropriately

Indeed you can. Just have to lower the totals a bit.

I would recommend it to everyone. It saves you a ton of money and it's so easy to do. Do you use CO2?

Thank you so much. So the above chart was for my older tank I no longer have, just FYI. To answer your question, I trust the dosing math which is then controlled through water changes should anything slide out of range. I use RO/DI water so I can start from zero on all parameters. I front load all my macro nutrients (N,P,K) and then dose Micro's (trace elements) throughout the week. Front loading means all of my macro's are refreshed and reset water change day. I have 2 Brute grey trash cans (NSF safe) I fill with the RO water. The advantage here is I know the exact amount of water. I fill them to the brim and then remove 1 gallon of water. 1 Brute is 44 gallons and the other is 32 gallons. So I know I have exactly 43 gallons and 31 gallons of water. There is/ are online nutrient calculators that will allow me to select a specific ppm for each nutrient. Ca, Mg (GH) and then (N,P,K). Basically, I'm dosing the storage water just like anyone would dose their fish tank. No mater how much water I change, the incoming water matches the outgoing water. This is how I maintain near perfect water stability. As for KH, I had been dosing none but have recently started to dose a small amount (.7KH). Reason being when I ripped this tank up, something happened and my pH was nearing 4.6. Needless to say, my fish definitely did not enjoy 4.6. I prefer to not dose any KH as it's just easier to work the tank in this manner, but until this strange occurrence ends, I will continue to dose KH. I use to believe my tanks were 0dKH, but recently @Galabareducated me and water by nature has a very small amount of KH via the whole science stuff that goes on. It's a very small amount so near 0. As for micro's, this can be a bit more challenging. I do use a "professional" mix I receive from Joey Harvey (BurrAqua). Unfortunately, there is no good micro mix available at a lower cost and his micro's are the most cost effective and balanced correctly. I target a weekly total of .45ppm Fe as proxy. I dose 3 times a week, the first being immediately after my water change so I can get Fe off the floor. I then dose the following 2 a few days apart. So basically each dose is .45/3. Each dose is .15 Fe as proxy. As of today, I'm seeing a micro toxicity in 1 plant so I'm going to reduce micros. This week will just be 2 doses for a total of .3 Fe as proxy. Hopefully the plant will respond well and the others will remain happy. As for test kits, I really just don't test any more. If you do 50 or more % water changes, I just see a reason to test. If something weird starts showing, I just use my TDS meter to make sure everything (nutrient wise) is in line with what's expected. If I dosed correctly and didn't forget to add something, my water always shows about 170 to 190 TDS. If I see lower, I forget to add something, if higher then something died and I need to find it or possible I overdosed a nutrient. Kits I have on hand are GH/KH and Nitrate.

Thank you. First placed definitely deserved it. It was well executed. https://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2023/show692.html

Thank you so much. I have a confession, I have never successfully grown a Java fern. They always turn black and die. I’ve given up on them. 😃