nabokovfan87

Warm the suction cups in hot water, attach them, then use one hand on either side of the glass to push and try to get the air out from the suction cup. Either it's because the cup is too stiff or because it's such a shape/size that the air is difficult to get out.

Nitrates are really, really high. If that's from waste (not dosing) then you're talking about that also being an issue. I would be doing daily 50% WCs to drop nitrate to at least below 30, preferably 10-25 range as a limit. Gasping for air, I usually almost habitually add salt + airstone and do a 50% water change. For some instances, bad test result, I will do a bigger water change to correct things more quickly. The fish deaths could also have spiked the nitrates pretty bad on you too.

They grow when there's an imbalance. Higher plant load fights the diatoms. Depending on what is out of wack (usually nitrates for brown diatoms, for me) then you'd just clean it and do what you have to do. Dropping the light is just a way to let the plants get hold if you don't have enough, that's the logic. So depending what your testing is showing you, that's the two methods I use to fight the brown diatoms. (intense cleaning vs. lean dosing/time)

yep! Basically all I would expect is a noise from the shaft moving (not sitting in fully, that is why the new shaft is slightly larger so it can seat better in the cavity) and the impeller blades to hit the lid / cover.

There's always "a few things" going on when a tank gets this way. It's unfortunate and it's always difficult to figure out perfectly, but let's break it down. To your question. and there is definitely other people that can explain this a lot better than me, algae requires a certain amount of time (duration) to grow and reach a certain size. It can do so at what we would think of as relatively low light. Some algae can thrive under very intense light conditions (like greenwater). Funny enough, if you just put a light over a tank, you might not get any greenwater. It happens and it's not so straightforward. That being said, plant like a duration, longer exposure of light, but can grow under relatively short exposures of intense light. Think rainforest and how the plants on the canopy block out the other plants, but they still can grow and adapt to that environment. So.... sometimes when you want to fight algae your best bet is to reduce exposure time (duration, 4 hours or less) and intensity (your intensity is fine, I have one tank running at 15% right now). Next we have to consider the plants themselves. Something like anubias, java fern, might need nothing more than to be in a room with a window and that alone is enough light. Some situations, that's perfectly fine. That being said other plants like pogostemon stellatus octapus or jungle val really do well with stronger light. Again, not about duration, but that intensity you might need for those plants to do well. Some carpeting plants will want very strong, intense light to reach the substrate and allow them to grow outward instead of trying to grow tall towards the surface of the water (towards the light). There's little tricks to lighting, but hopefully that helps things out. I learned a lot from this talk as well as many other channels on youtube. I'll toss the link below and hopefully that can help you out to understand your light settings. For my own 29G planted tank, these are my two profiles I've used. The 36" I have had as high as 55% without much issue, but much like your own situation I am dealing with a very severe (and difficult) algae right now. I have my window down to 4 hours, staying with the current intensity, trying to get rid of the BBA/Staghorn I'm dealing with. Prior to upgrading to the larger light, this was my profile on the 24" light. Once I went higher than this intensity the algae took off. I had it turned up to try to reach the S. Repens on the substrate. I ran the light at this intensity for ~3 months and was at or near this intensity (flipping between 65%, 75% and 85% for about a year). I would not go higher than 75% for this specific light. If you have higher demand plants, then get the 36" version and start at about 30-40% (33% more powerful)

You definitely might not need max light with CO2. The tank has to acclimate to the light as well as to CO2. Turning both knobs to 11 and dumping in a ton or nutrients means you'll get some very nasty algae. There is a ton of great aquascapers and plant geniuses on the forum, so hopefully some of them can chime in with their methods on new equipment! @Mmiller2001nand @gjcarewbeing two that I can recall off the top of my head but I know there is more! Definitely won't hurt. Pushing back the light reduces algae for the short term and the plants can catch up. If you see deficiencies on the plants, then we'd look at turning the lights up. Slow growth is growth.

Looks good. Run it for a month and see how things stabilize for you! Awesome. That's great news. That one is usually the one I ignore along with green algae on the glass. It's very normal and perfectly fine. Worst case it means just siphon and clean slightly better. Toothbrushes are awesome for that during the filter clean out. Apart from that it's the type of thing that otos and other fish LOVE to eat.

Definitely misleading. You can add it if you're doing something major. Like a major deep clean and adding water. The bacteria is on surfaces. Any bacteria in the water is negligible and it isn't going to cause any issues by changing any amount of water. Meaning, if you're doing a WC, things stay wet, you're likely perfectly fine. 100% Sounds like you're doing everything right. You might need to change 50% water given that you're changing once a month, but that's hard to say without testing things out for certain water parameters, TDS being one of those indicators. KH, GH, PH. Etc. There's a video on the ACO channel about OTS or "Old Tank Syndrome" that is very informative and helpful. There's a few ways things can accumulate over time and that's one of them. Just a note. I think you're doing everything fine right now!

@dmurray407 from the design, My guess is that the ceramic shaft might be bent or it might not be in place fully. Beyond that, it's likely air or something that was making the noise. The old impeller design looks a lot like the Aquaclear impellers which have a lot of issues with the shaft, this impeller shaft is a different material, which is a good thing.

As long as it's brown diatoms (not a scarlet red color) then you would just brush them off surfaces and filter them out. Keep up with the filter cleaning for now while you have this excess gunk floating around. If it's red in color, that could be a bacterial algae. I would research that specifically, under BGA - "Blue Green Algae" and see what you can find that might match what you're seeing.

I don't really understand what you're asking. PH is normally acidic, sub 6.3, now the tap is 6.8? What you're talking about sounds like, low KH and then you had a PH crash that's resulted in....

I don't know what a "fresh greenhouse" smells like. Maybe the garden section at a big box store? I have had "smells" from food, from nitrates, and from things like the above post mentioned, algae (and other muck) on the lid and rim.

You definitely want movement. Maybe an air stone or a few of them gives you that. Interesting question. I'd run the filter, I would totally add some shrimp too.

Welcome to the forums! There is a thread with a lot of tips and setups for the 3.0. I don't know if anyone have anything specific for a 90-125G, but that would be a place to check. You should see it on the top row of the general page (where it lists all the forum categories). Start with things lower just to gauge how the light is doing for you. I'd probably start with: Pure white: 65% Cold white: 35% Warm white: 45% Red: 40% Blue 5% Once you see things doing ok. You can either expand the intensity slowly (5% at a time) every few weeks or go ahead and increase your window from the one you have now up to ~8-10 hours. What color diatoms?

Amano shrimp!!!! Do a week long blackout of the tank. That should help them to fight it and catch up. Feed the amano every few days to keep them pushing on the algae. That should do a majority of the work for you if it's not a massive infestation. If the algae is prevalent then we can look at light settings and stuff. The common thing is 4 hour window, cut your light power by half. Then let the tank fight the algae and slowly increase things as it makes sense. Awesome advice!

I do once a week, 50%. Some do multiple. If you're having issues with certain types of algae the water change can remove the spores. The plants you have waiting to arrive, put them in a bucket next to a window potentially until all of them arrive. Then swap them out. If it were me, I would remove all the fake stuff once the next batch arrives and then add in them whenever they arrive. The fish typically won't be stressed by adding plants. Maintenance shouldn't stress the fish out. Take your time, go slow, they should be fine. Look up fin rot. Because of temperature and flow I wouldn't think these species would be compatible with the Betta. Something to look into, potentially QT the Betta right now and reduce the stress. Petco has the sale right now. Should be a great time to go grab the tank if you can. Even a small one.

In the case of some pumps it's the actual shaft grinding itself away. (Aquaclears) It's such a bad noise. Like nails on a chalkboard to me now. 😞 Using Fluval 405, impeller from a 307? I'm just trying to get it straight so I can look up the specs.

So weird to me! I need to research this. Hm.

The plants in the tank wouldn't really care what filter you're running with the exception of circulation and CO2 dosing. If you're dosing CO2, try to get a spraybar. If you're using floating plants, run a sponge on each corner and make sure you have something to leave an opening on the surface.

If you want to, try erythromycin. You're going to be dosing more than once, so "treats X gallons" isn't really clear. I would expect anywhere from 4-8 treatments depending on severity. Try to siphon out what you can after each treatment too. Part 2:

Thank you so much, this helps a ton.

I need more Hygro's in my tank.

My plan was to move her by herself, clean water. Some peace and just see how she does. That is basically what you recommend? The only thing I could think was the fry was a male, it isn't, but it's just always been doing that. I don't know why they seem to pick on this female. Working on getting more salt and just going to hope to see improvement. Would you expect the white edge on the fin to improve already or not yet?

I recorded an update video. redness looks better, but the frayed edge looks worse to me. Thoughts? Also of note, one of the fry keeps pecking at the fish right near the dorsal. You can see the clamped dorsal and she is generally just not having an easy time getting around while getting pecked at. I am trying to get a 5-10g tank from petco so I can move her for the time being and let her recover a lot easier.

That plant in the back left (mounted in the glass holder) looks really nice. I can't wait to see this tank go full jungle.