Mmiller2001

I keep my tank at 76 and in the summer they hit about 78.

It's lovely, I think I want to try it.

I'm embrace them as pets now. Rather...slave labor! 😆

I wish my 4.9pH would have killed my snails. But it didn't.

Ph should be mostly ignored and is pretty much irrelevant. Fish don't care, shrimp don't care and most plants don't care. If you are happy with GH and KH, focus your energy elsewhere.

Set it however looks best color wise, but 30% less intensity from your current peak. Correct, however you set it, that photo period is on 8 hours.

Drop light intensity by about 35 percent and reduce the duration to 8 hours max. Use 30 minute ramp up and down. Improve flow throughout the tank and try to get tank turnover to around 5x to 10x water volume per hour without blasting the fish. Discontinue root tabs, continue dosing easy green per directions. Start 30 or 40 percent water changes daily but dose the the incoming water volume with easy green. Example, if you change out 20 gallons, dose easy green for 20 gallons. You want the all NO3 to come from fertilizer, not from the tank. Clean filters, lightly gravel vacuum, just clean the surface, don't jam it down in the substrate. Target an over tank of 20ish ppm NO3. KH is high and I would research how to slowly lower it some. GH can be boosted with readily available products. Just do some reading. Ignore pH completely, it means nothing. This is where I'd start. If a substrate swap is soon. Just water change for now. The tank will reset after and algae phase will restart.

Perfect, thank you.

Yeah, that's forming that look that's so hard to get! Very nice.

Difficult?

Anyone know what moss they are using in the middle foreground? @gjcarew @Patrick_G

Hygrophila Polysperma, hands down. I'm not sure why it's not more popular with non CO2 tanks. It would probably grow in a swimming pool.

Just buy dry salt. They are dirt cheap.

That's what I do. Purigen works way better than carbon and can be recharged many times.

I would save your money and put it towards improving flow and water turnover.

Did some digging, maybe Hygrophila angustifolia? Ah Willow hygro is angustifolia.

Here's a shot of our recent fish in substrate swap.

Perfect, ty.

Funny that you posted this. I saw a video too, so today I bought a cigarette off a coworker and ripped the filter off and have it. She looked at me funny and I chuckled 😁. Did they use regular super glue or the gel to cause the reaction? I bought both but only have the one butt. I also bought reef epoxy that dries brown. I figure the screw method is the nuclear option!

I actually did a bunch of reading today and thought about you when I came across some discussions about DYI CO2. It confirmed its problems that I mentioned; basically they can't maintain the stability we need to rule out certain algae triggers. But, if I remember correctly, lowering light a bit more can help a good bit. Something to think about. And absolutely, if it's fun, do it. I'm committing a sin right now. I'm running my light for a 12 hour duration. Why, because it's cool and it's fun to try. It will probably fail, but when I offer light duration help, at least I actually tried it and have the experience. Right? 😆 Also, some of those new setups you mention are not to bad. The equipment is coming up in quality.

So, I completely missed his dosing information when I posted Greggz tank. "Here's the latest. Currently targeting NO3 : PO4 : K at 30 : 10 : 40 in the water column. Everything seems to be on autopilot at those levels."

Okay, I couldn't find ATP iron information. But can confirm NilocG OG has both EDTA and DPTA iron. I'd go with that. It's a bit high on Nitrates but not too bad. One last option is to mix your own fertilizer, but requires measuring powder. It's also way cheaper to do it this way, but more effort.

What PH does your tank run at?

Personally, I would try the ATP over NilocG, But NilocG has a DPTA version. Let me do a bit of research and I will post back.

Can you get NilocG? Or APT?