nabokovfan87

@Streetwise I have a slight issue and I'm not sure which way to swing the parameters. Sunrise / Sunset: 1.5 hours slope. I prefer it to be longer, but trying to shorten it as much as possible due to algae (Staghorn / BBA) Lighting window: 7 hours, I just adjusted this to 8 hours. Here's my dilemma. I've heard that when calculating your "lighting window" you take the halfway point of your sunrise / sunset and that would be included in the total time. Meaning, my window is 8 hours + 1.5 hours so I'm at 9.5 hours total right now. What do you use to determine the total "lighting window" in your setups? The reason I ask, I have some DHG that just always seems to never get enough light if I don't have the light strong enough. I can either bump the power, the window, or add CO2. Right now I gave the tank a slightly longer hour, will be adding CO2, and then determine the intensity based on growth of the plants / algae.

@Seattle_Aquarist we need you! Would it make sense that this is caused by excess potassium? The paleness on the first photo is the biggest deficiency I see. Especially being a fast growing stem. @TeeJaywhat are nitrates at when you test?

I'll be honest. I was pretty confused and worried looking at that thing in the OP and then I saw the reply explaining what it was and had this massive wave of relief. LOL. Nicely done @Guppysnail

slow plants and plants in flow seem to love this algae. It's the one that took hold on my tank pretty severely. The backside of the hardscape I have that is opposite of the HoB output in my tank is where it usually shows up and then on stuff like anubias and new growth and such. Keep an eye out as best you can on new growth and try to remove it manually as much as humanly possible. Lean dosing, keep an eye on lighting. The reason why I mention the tidal is just because once that algae hits the water column, it's really easy for it to just flow everywhere with the bypass on the tidals. Just keep an eye out, especially after water change you might see it free floating.

Poor little one. I wish you the best of luck. It's a sad note, but I do want to say welcome to the forum. Glad to have you here!

Do you only see it on the output section of the HoB area? Looks like a Tidal 35.

~24 hours later. We have bypass on the entire right side, flow seems slow still, but we do have bypass on the key areas (right side handle, rear of basket)

Spilled about 2 gallons of water on the floor this time. Thanks laminar flow.

What do you mean by "growing back"? I am guessing it's tied to lighting. I don't know which is the correct direction, but... 1. It grows tall and then sprouts branches shown in your photo because it's trying to absorb as much light at the top of the tank as possible. 2. Plants will send runners when they're looking for light or resources. So if you're trying to get a plant to carpet, you trim it, and it grows outward. I've had the branching you're seeing right above the substrate, and mid water. I would trim it, plant the stem, and off it goes like a weed. If you want it to grow tall I would just trim off the branches and plant them into the substrate. It's a crazy well-growing plant and it's the biggest bush of stems I had in my tank. Hopefully this video is helpful.

I've had them cool and as high up as 78 or so. They do fine. Once they acclimate they are pretty easy going. For me, it's always been acclimation that's been the issue. Rubberlips I kept slightly cooler than I did my bristlenose. They were in the same tank for 2-3 years as well without issues. 70-78 was my range.

I'd just lift up the sponge, see what it does. From what I remember there's a little inlet hole that is to the top left of that chamber where the water actually pumps in. There's not really much / anything flowing in that chamber. It's just a pool, all the overflows like that are usually just tied to water level. Minanora is correct, sponge slows down the flow enough, water rises, welcome to the silly seachem tidal world. The ones like this though, you're talking such small % of bypass I would legitimately never worry about it. I'd be aware of it, but never worry. All I care about is whether or not the lid is getting wet. You're sponge is still doing 95% of the work for you.

Looks good to me. I'd try to shove the ceramic stuff so it's fully submerged. It's always annoying because it doesn't want to sit flat, but get it to sit flat against the plastic, you'll be good. You can probably run 2-3 bags of that ceramic stuff or a larger size one. This won't help testing for nitrates! 😂 I don't think it's an issue, honestly. You're either getting back pressure from the foam slowing flow down a bit, which is fine as long as it's a small amount. Just be aware you might have an issue where you find water on the glass top. It's very likely doing that because the media on the right side is just raising the water level in that cavity. I wouldn't worry about it while you're trying to cycle the new media.

What you're seeing might not even be ammonia but chloramines in the water. I would suggest running a test. 1. Take a sample of your tap water, test it for PH, KH, GH, Ammonia, Nitrites, Nitrates 2. Take that same sample of water and aerate it for 24 hours with an airstone. Repeat these tests. These are your "normal" water parameters after off-gassing. 3. Compare this to your tank water test results. These are the changes you'd expect to see during a water change. If you do have ammonia or chlorine in the water from the tap I would highly recommend setting up the filter to be slightly overkill as well as, if possible, some way to precondition your water before you do a water change with it. The biggest thing that needs to happen is to find out what is leeching ammonia or causing the results in the water testing that is causing concern. What substrate is being used in the tank, what is stocking, and what is your feeding regime like?

If you can, please post some details here! Do you have any secret to getting the water to flow downward or did you set it up to flow left to right?

Yeah, the rainbows might want ones that are floating? I might just be mixing up rainbow and rice fish.

This video explains really well the interaction between dechlorinator, ammonia spikes, and water changes.

I wanted to add this. There's a few threads this would be helpful for, but needless to say, if you're using prime like this please check it out!

How are things going @Martin?

They have pea gravel, stuff like that in the garden section too! If you attach it to the sides of the tower, something like anubias nana or nana petite it will be something you can eventually wrap it around and it'll look pretty awesome. I wouldn't put it on the top of the tower. Something like Hygrophilia pinnatifida might be a good one to try to find and put on the towers also. It would be able to handle the light as well. I would encourage you to find a tissue culture of that plant to make sure is responsibly sourced. Hm.... a feature plant for the middle or just a feature plant in general. Because of the background it has me wanting to encourage something that would stay low. Maybe micro sword carpeting across the middle of the tank, out and around the towers? I would have 3 or so swords on either side of the tank. I don't know how fast they grow as I have not kept them, but having 1-2 varieties and making them a very unique feature plant as you have planned will look really cool. Maybe even something like a buce with a slight difference in texture / color as a foreground plant would contrast well with the swords!

One of my favorites, best of luck! To be honest, I actually prefer to order plants online. It speaks to how terrible the local selections are for me. If I was into corals, I'd have a lot of options, but I just don't have many decent plants available. Plants in the big box store always look chewed up and dried out, too old and deteriorated to even sell. Plants from the Co-op are typically very nice quality, they care, they are trying very hard to push the hobby in the right direction and I think that's a big reason for me to support them. I have gotten plants from other places, been frustrated a few times. Whenever I have had issues with anything from the Co-op they always go out of the way and make things right. They WANT TO do it the right way and do the job well. That's why I can without question say that I don't might buying plants and having them sent out to me. Check water parameters, understand that some plants won't do well with a big shift in parameters and might melt into nothing. It happens. Even if you buy one locally, it can still happen!

I took it as they were all under the shade / cover of the heater. Interesting question! I think Colu was just saying make sure it's putting out the right temp itself. I have had issues too, sure we all have, heaters get older and just all kinds of calibration goes haywire.

A lot of them are super cool. I dig these ones. We all started with non-natural stuff and that's just sort of what the stores teach us to use! (Besides that moment when we find the co-op 🙂 ) A lot of these super bright reds and some of the delicate aesthetics are really difficult to pull off in a tank, especially for me! I would try to encourage a moss tank, little bit of anubias, some easy stem in the background or something. Pop in some plastic plants in his tank for good measure! You'll have a lot of extra plants from the growth in your tank. You'll have so much going on you won't know what to do with it all. Cool stuff though. Just be sure you don't have any that are super super sharp and can cut a fish easily. One of the main reasons I got frustrated in my first tank was that the fish were so easily stuck inside the decor. We would have fish go into the fake wood and just hide, get stuck. Not sure why the decor manufacturers think that the holes for air to flow need to be the size of a swordtail, but I did some research and found out it was a massively common issue with that specific item. I still cringe every time I see it in the shop.

I kinda dig the bright colors and bright red plants! Some cool plastic decorations. definitely keep some around for a rainy day! Your Anubias in the tank is absolutely awesome, very big, and looks gorgeous with the texture on the leaves. I can't wait to see how it grows out. ........ I finally was able to head to the local store. Unfortunately, it's a big box store, and unfortunately due to the way the world of ehiem works I wasn't able to find what I actually needed. I was pretty shocked by how different the store was. It's not a well run store and I go there about once a year, if that, just for emergencies. I wasn't driving due to not having a car, it was totalled a bit ago, and this was closest so I went there. I did the scavenger hunt and totally got distracted by my own fun little game that I forgot to look for half of what I needed to. I got a new variety / brand of blood worms to try and some mysis shrimp to attempt to see if the corydoras will eat it. They had an issue with the last brand (omega 1) being too big for them to eat. One of the fish got it stuck in his gill and the poor guy freaked. They haven't eaten worms since! I did some research and found out that they definitely vary in size depending which ones you purchase. The pandas definitely don't care and love their worms, but the black corydoras are still having the fear issue. I got home, cleaned the tank due to the seachem HoB telling me it's been 24 hours and I need to clean it again. ( 🙄 ) When I cleaned the tank, lights were about to go out and I have a decent handle on things so I decided to treat with the second dewormer. This could explain their behavior ever since owning the black corydoras, but it's just something I need to go ahead and do for the sake of removing worms in the tank and potentially the fish as well. There was a lot of acclimation issues when I brought these fish in, I'm very thankful for the ones I do have left, and I am very concerned at all the stress of treating for illnesses like this. I setup things for another test in the HoB (Seachem Tidal bypass experiments) and made sure everything was set. Wrapped the tank in two towels and made notes in my phone to record time/date of when treatment started. I unplugged the light just to make sure things didn't go awry, removed the skimmer because it doesn't work, and I have things soaking so I can add CO2 when meds are done. Yet again, another stress item for the fish and I hope everything goes ok. I was at the shop, had this bag of $30 sand in my hand and just struggling to decide if I wanted to purchase it or not. The boost of quality of life of the fish it would add is something I really wanted to be able to provide. Maybe next trip or I'll find the pool filter sand stuff and give that a try. One of the biggest things that weighs on me is trying to provide the fish with food they like, crave, enjoy, and that is good for them. I have repashy I need to use up before it expires and I think pretty soon here I'll end up feeding that fresh a few times a week. I cleaned up the coffee station that has the kettle I would use to make it in the mornings, make my coffee and then make the food for them. The second concern I have is the amanos and just the amount of stress they've been under. I have to check the bottle of repashy I have and see if any of them has calcium for them, potentially get some nano blocks or something just so they can graze on it and get a boost. Leaving that filter on the day before has me just spinning, wanting to do everything perfectly and make up for my mistake.... Just a final note, having to black out the tank might be nice and potentially cut back on some of the algae issues. Not a big deal, and I know the plants are doing well enough, but it might be the little push to knock some of the diatoms out that have been trying to thrive. Wish me luck!

I'm guessing the substrate is leeching for ammonia to be that high. Waiting to hear details 🙂

Out of curiosity, what kind of sand is it? @Greggle