nabokovfan87

I would grab some of the aquaclear sponge from the local big box store if you can to remove the need for using the cartridges. There is also stuff like a pre filter sponge you could use that would keep the betta fins from getting too close to the intake and add that mechanical filtration. You can also add in a little bag of ceramic media to the container, if you haven't. Yeah, the infection slowing could've been the result of the salt too! But I want to keep things simple and easy. It always took at least 2 treatments for me with fin rot. The method of daily water changes when cycling is a tried and true strategy that does a few things. It works and is basically the go-to method if someone gets in a fish in cycle situation. You remove the water, removing the ammonia and nitrite, lowering those levels to a safe range. Then, you dose in your dechlorinator and it binds the ammonia and reduces the risk of nitrites causing issues for at least 24 hours. (Some say up to 48 hours). Then, you add in your bacteria after that water change is completed and wait 24 hours.for the bacteria to take hold on the media in the filter. Rinse and repeat that until the cycle takes hold. I just had.to do this recently, tank was cycled in 3-4 days.

That's the nice thing..... Less bends in the pipe, so flow is improved. They have shrimp intakes which are fine mesh. I have a pre filter sponge as well if I need it. I take the tube cleaning brush and jam it into the pipes and I can clean them really easily now. The ribbed tubing is fragile and holds a lot of gunk. So it would attract shrimp. Having the sponge on there also attracts them. I can see in the tubing now and can add that to the maintenance routine. It takes a minute if that, very easy to handle. @Guppysnail had mentioned issues with the intake on the x07 breaking off as well, so there's that. With the 75G rim there's just not much holding it on and it was a situation of need it to be secured more than anything. I'll shatter glass, so I didn't trust myself there. Steel it is. Eheim has green tubing to try to hide things like algae, but it's visually very bright. They do have solid black tubing, which would have the same impact as the ribbed tubing, but remove the algae internally.... At least the photosensitive stuff. With the BBA in there, I was waiting months for the smoke tubing to come back in stock just so it wasn't as clear, but also not as visually distracting. I can also just easily see if there's a leak, so that's another plus too. I checked this morning and the CO2 flow seems pretty good. The drop checker "looks right", but I'm not measuring CO2 with a test kit. The kelp is blowing towards the intake, which is the first time I've ever seen the intake do anything like that. It would be interesting to test the flow differential between the two setups. I'll say it now, but we'll see years.from now. I am pretty certain the new fluval canister version, x08 maybe, series would eventually switch the tubing for something else.

Ironically, the way that PFS is designed as a filter is also why it "always" will get dirty, "It" meaning sand. We were talking about it in that last shrimp journal post about how stuff like mulm, botanicals, and those "fines" will mix in the sand and make that substrate more bioactive by feeding copepods and all of the little meiofauna. ... always learning something new. Here is today's tidbit. "There are several size groups of organisms that live in or on the sediment: microfauna (< 63 μm in size), usually bacteria or protists that live attached to sand-sized (0.125–2 mm) grains or larger particles; meiofauna (63–500 μm) that are about the same size as the sediment mineral grains amongst which they are living." At some point it could be cleaned, rinsed, but there is a point of no return. With a lot of people using sand, it's about how to handle it, accepting that it does change over time. With blackwater setups in particular it is absolutely part of the process and it takes a while for the substrate to adjust. It's interesting, it's a unique little part of the hobby I didn't realize, but it makes sense.

If it says to do a WC on that med, that's perfect then. My apologies for the mix-up! If it says to do a WC and you do more than 25% that is perfectly fine as well and won't cause issues. It's just meaning, minimum of 25% water volume to be changed out. What is the filter you're running, how is it setup?

Co-op sells one called ultimate from hikari that fits the bill. I've used prime. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/water-care/products/ultimate-16oz

you should always have the filter running, especially when treating with meds. The only thing you'd do is remove carbon (or the cartridge) inside the filter. Preferably there is sponge in there and some biological media. If the filter is off, that explains the issue of water parameters. Awesome. The directions say to dose daily, basically you have to build up the levels of the meds in the water over a week. I don't know if doing a water change messes that up.

It's definitely not a thing of "that's just how sand is." I understand the frustration and I get it. A lot of people will avoid sand for the fear of not being able to keep it clean. Aquascapers will keep a bag of sand handy, siphon the old sand, then put a layer of bright fresh new sand. I just tend to siphon it really well and go from there. I have had the sand you're using and I was able to keep it really clean for a long time. I have 3-5 plecos in the tank and a lot of corydoras. One thing to note here is that the 407 doesn't have the best intake suction in the world. It probably is intended for a 3 foot tank, not a 4 foot tank (I am running one on a 75G) and basically you're just dealing with a few things here. I mention it because I don't want you to assume that all of the waste/debris on the sand will end up getting sucked into the canister. It has to be in the water column for that to happen. You can take something like a chopstick, hand, siphon, or pinsettes and get the debris into the water column to help the filter out. As far as how to siphon sand, that sand in particular is pretty easy to suck up and it will get into your pumps. Keep that in mind too with the 407. I would recommend spot cleaning the sand, start in one area one week, then do another the next week, etc. if you find yourself with too much to clean at once. Have you ever tried the spraybar kit?

I LOVE that I got this stuff so fast. I think SF --> Here took about 36 hours. I am excited, because they have some cool stuff and it's nice to have options. Plastic parts removed, ribbed tubing removed. Smoke tubing added, new inlet/outlet added. I have no idea how much or how drastically this will impact the tank overall, but there is less surface tension and there is a single output (pointed diagonally towards the opposite corner of the tank). I am less than impressed with canister filters. They are a bit of a hassle and they do take some getting used to. I hope this all works great long term and it not gives me the ability to do in-line CO2. Whenever that time comes it'll be fun to have it. I am hoping that removing the spraybar actually helps, but this setup is such a way where if I need to I can add that bit back in. The intake itself is slightly shorter than I would like. I couldn't even tell you what size tank this is designed for, but the trend continues that it's not meant for a 75G. As far as "how" one thing I saw / copied was this method. using suction cups to hold things in place isn't optimal, but it works. I have the intake on the back glass with suction cups inside the tank to hold that in place. I have the outlet pipe held externally. It'll be a lot easier to maintain for me now that it's on the floor as well. (...and yeah, I am trying really hard to save that ZZ plant, but it's not working too well. It is still alive, wintering, but it's not growing or thriving in any sense of the word. The empty pot has a bulb. Might be rotted, might sprout leaves, so I've just left it for the time being.)

PrimeTime Aquatics has a tour / video of a barb breeder as well as Dan's fish with an expert (highly tuned/advanced) setup for breeding barbs, egg scattering fish. I JUST got these as a rescue from a local and I'm in a bit of awe with them. Females are less bright red, males are like tomatoes. Cooler temps then tetras, but the main thing is always going to be oxygenation. They don't mind flow, don't need a ton of it, but don't mind it at all. Excited to see what you do with them! If they have 6 more, I would snag em. I think the way barbs are, the more the merrier and keeps things calmer with aggression. I'll reiterate, I haven't bred them, but the females get pestered a lot with barbs. These guys are slightly more chill than others I've kept.

You do the water change to drop your nitrate and remove it. You can always add more ammonia. It's built up, change out water to reduce nitrates. Doing water changes when cycling is very normal and happens often. There's a lot of mixed messages and back and forth over multiple threads, so the main thing is to literally make it simple.... Treat the tank like normal, nitrate is high, do a water change.

Yeah, so the low GH and KH levels are in play here regarding plant overall health. Certain nutrients the plants needs are minerals, like magnesium and calcium (GH). If they are showing certain deficiencies, it would just mean that it's probably a good idea to check them from time to time. This is also where using a buffer like crushed coral, doing large water changes, would counter the buffer that you're trying to proceed forward with. If you're doing weekly 50% water changes, consider doing them bi-weekly or reducing them to 30% volume as opposed to 50%. It's all relative here to your water and your situation. In my case I use KH buffers, GH buffers, and things like Seiryu stone as needed to keep the tank from crashing. I'll go ahead and do my filter cleaning this week, verify GH level, add in some buffer if need be. It is likely I don't need to add anything, but the weekly check or monthly check just to monitor things in that situation is highly advised. I use equilibrium as a plant nutrient buffer. I am sure there's something better out there, but the logic for my use is exactly what you're going through. There's two plant charts that would be good for you to have on hand to reference. First one is for macronutrient plant deficiencies. The other is for micronutrient plant deficiencies. I can send you the ones I have in DM if you need.

You want to read the ammonia test, any strip test, based on the directions on the package. Normally you read them immediately for accurate results. Any sort of discoloration from 0 ammonia would be of concern. Essentially there's two or three things you want to avoid here.... 1. Don't jump from med to med to med chasing a disease. We know what the issue is, we know how to treat it, so we just want to focus on proper method. Mainly what I am saying here, you need to always follow the directions on the package. Given that it's fin rot, salt is highly advised in addition to the meds. 2. You don't want to crash the filter, causing more issues via ammonia or nitrite. Daily testing, sometimes twice daily testing can be mandatory in a situation like this. If you see ammonia or nitrite then your focus would be to have daily 50% water changes, dosing dechlorinator, and then proceeding to continue testing the water parameters. At that point, you also verify your filtration is adequate, oxygenation is adequate, and/or consider something like a bacterial additive such as seachem stability or fritz zyme 7. 3. You don't want to overstress the fish to the point where it cannot recover. If you need to stop treatment to fix #2, then that might be the correct thing to do. It's a call you have to make. With temps up high, meds in the water, adding an airstone is helpful. The viscosity of the water changes and it's more difficult for the fish to respire and intake oxygen. The signs of stress your seeing is basically akin to feeling sick and having the infection and the fish's immune system fight off the disease. We don't want to do too much or miss something to help keep the fish headed towards recovery. It may or may not fix the swelling. As far as the disinterest in flaring, see above. It's pretty normal given the situation. Reduce lighting, reduce stress as much as possible, and make sure that the fish has good water parameters, oxygenation, and filtration right now. As for feeding, reducing feeding may help keep water parameters in check and reduce any discomfort from the treatment. If the fish is eating, it's a good sign.

yes... You would want to do one time waterchange of large volume to drop the high parameters back towards normal. Then you would get into normal maintenance routine so that you can maintain the parameter levels that are acceptable. You can do so with daily water changes if you need to, if you see things still spiking high levels.

Thanks! It's because that 10G gets all that protein! Interestingly I have the same shrimp going in two different setups, one is the actual shrimp colony and the other is the cull tank. Basically, one gets all the nice food, the other has a ton more surface area and would graze off all the surfaces a lot more regularly. They get the leftover fish food a lot, shrimp sticks once a week or so, but it's mostly the same care. With the shrimp only tank filtration is purely sponge, but the big tank has much more biological filtration. More flow, basically. I have had a lot less breeding in the cull tank with the fish food diet. One of Mark's shrimp tank original videos was about how goldfish flake is a good shrimp food.

You can change anywhere up to 90% of the water and everything would be fine. This doesn't affect your cycle, you're just removing the nitrate, and lowering levels of the ammonia and nitrite. It sort of depends. Basically you would follow the directions on the bottle. The other method is to "feed the tank" just fish food every few days untill you add some fish. Once it's cycled, you shouldn't have ammonia. It should be converted to nitrate pretty quickly. You're going to be doing multiple water changes. Not just one. Whether it's weekly.or however you end up maintaining the tank. You'd want to start replicating that process at least.

Correct. This is lowering your nitrate levels. So basic math. If it's at 90 and you want it at say.... 50, then you do a 45% water change. If you want it at 20ppm then you would do 75% or more. Correct, after the water change, after dechlorinator.

Ok. Makes sense. So yep, do a big water change, then add in your dose of bacteria for the day after you add in the dechlorinator and bacteria, wait a minimum of 24 hours before the next water change.

It's just because the most common method for accuracy would be the liquid tests. One drop means 1 degree, then you can convert that to ppm. One thing to always keep in mind is your KH levels in the tap vs. the tank as well as your Gh ratio (compared to KH levels).

Yes this is very normal. Basically it's an indication that you're cycling the tank, not fully cycled, but haven't done water changes. You should start with an immediate big water change to drop the nitrates way down, 75-90% is normal in this cass as a one time large water change, followed by daily 30-50% water changes. Even with the tann cycling, this is normal practice for what is known as a fish in cycle. If you see nitrite above a certain level it would trigger water changes. Ammonia over a certain level would be the same reason. However, if you don't have fish in there, then a lot of people just let nitrates build and do so after they see 0 ammonia and/or 0 nitrite. Basically any of them work. Prime is fine. Stress coat is fine. Topfin is fine. Etc. you just pick one and use it after water changes. When you say Dr. Tim's, I assume you mean ammonia source? Everything you're doing is perfectly correct, just takes time. (And sometimes water changes)

Correct! But you also feed things like veggies and the snello stuffs. That's part of what mine might be missing? One of the things I had discovered after all this went down was how much they really devoured some leaves.

What are the GH and KH levels in the tap? I would expect KH to be minimum 40-60 and GH to be around 80-120 as a minimum for the sake of stability. For future ref, basically whenever you're cycling you can do water changes. If you're adding bacteria or ammonia you would just do so after those water changes and wait 24 hours.

Thank you @CiderLovesFish! I was doing some late night research and I am just always researching the topic. I've done a deep dive and I have read these articles from this source before, but for whatever reason tonight things sunk in. I wanted to share some tidbits and then go ahead and try to make sense of some adjustments I need to make for my tank. But first..... I got the shrimp a new thingamajig. I'll use it and give some semblance of my thoughts. Initially, I will say I wish the handle was steel, it's carbon fiber.... which sort of freaks me out. It has a very fragile ring on the net, but the net itself is really nice. The handle is a little "dry", but I am hoping it will be fine over time and not splinter or anything like that. This is the tank after the move and all the rework on the tank. The anubias is in the corners, the moss wall and the potted plants will have the focus on the light, and so hopefully that changes things around a bit. There are floating plants, which are in the top right. Better photos eventually, but I wanted to share just to say that the tank feels a lot more open with the new layout. I hope feeding is a bit easier too. I don't plant to move rocks / lift things as much for cleaning. I am going to let things build-up a little bit in some areas. Alright, so I was reading this article about shrimp molting issue: https://aquariumbreeder.com/dwarf-shrimp-and-molting-problems-the-white-ring-of-death/ I wanted to pull up a few tidbits that are mentioned to make it a little easier to digest the key points. How it happens... Expanding on this, here is a video of a shrimp molting that has a very pronounced white ring on it's body. It is not a deathknell. I can find a lot of tanks from youtube shrimpkeepers that are showing this on their colonies. As much as we have this mindset that it's a "ring of death", that just is not the case. I prefer to use the term molt issues when discussing this phenomenon because it removes some of that misleading verbiage. Molting issues and the concept of protein in the diet as a cause: (note: there are a lot of shrimp foods that use protein as a main ingredient, not algae) ...about halfway through the article this next topic is mentioned, which sort of put things into perspective. https://aquariumbreeder.com/how-to-supplement-shrimp-and-snails-with-calcium/ From the note about Shrimp King Mineral: So.... that's the crux of it then. Am I feeding enough "complete foods"? Or, better stated, is feeding complete foods alone enough for the shrimp themselves to molt properly every time? Do they specifically need mineral additives to eat off of for the sake of their overall health. Is a mineral additive food something that I can use for the sole sake of times of stress, like once a month or after water changes, perhaps... I saw these, and I think this might be the route to go, given my current setup. I have to look into ingredients and decide on things. There is also a nordic food version, shrimp king version, but I think this is a good place to start. There is one other things to consider though, and this is basically my dilemma right now. ......😞 I tried to find the sentence, but it's basically that shrimp need a lot of different types of minerals to function properly. Diet plays a huge role, having a varied diet also plays a role. I noticed issues when I ran out of bee pollen. Is this one of the main reasons I was experience the deaths en masse? I added a secondary food, I improved the food, but perhaps there are some key vitamins or minerals missing. Everything I am finding for shrimp diets can be split into 3 main categories. -Calcium/Mineral supplements -Nutrient supplements (aminostix / specialty foods, botanicals) -Bacteria supplements (to build biofilm in the tank or probiotics) I don't have any real idea if I need to have both nutrient and mineral things covered or if those complete foods supply everything the shrimp need. I did check the shrimp baby ingredients and it is one I will be adding whenever that can be possible. Bee pollen is another that I think will be a mainstay in my tanks. Current foods: -Dennerle Shrimp King Complete (stick and powdered) -Nordic daybyday (stick) -Repashy powder (mix of things, mostly omnivore food) -botanicals/mulberry leaves Future plans: -2 Complete foods on rotation -1 baby/powder food -1 mineral food -Bee pollen -mulberry leaves / alder cones (potentially: 1 nutrient supplement or biofilm type of foods) I am just mulling all of these things over. I am not sure what is correct, so it's purely a research stage and pondering everything.

Pretty much anything is fine. A lot of people use the nicrew planted 24/7 lights, Co-op light is also a good choice if you prefer those features and warranty. Curling leaves is a part of a deficiency showing, I believe it would be calcium based on my references. I would just recommend tabbing this plant and not changing anything else to see if that helps. You mentioned 2 tabs, try doing 3-4 because of the size of the plant. (There's also yellowing, so it's just a nutrient issue basically) What is your fert of choice, tab of choice, and maintenance routine? I would also check your GH and KH levels.

From the other day.

For plants I tend to do 4" in the front, 6" in the back. Especially swords. 3 inches is about the minimum. You could be having issues with things in the water column. Staghorn was fixed for me by correcting circulation issues. BBA tends to grow based on nutrients and rotting debris for me.