nabokovfan87

I believe it has to do with surface tension. The density of the water changes and the bubbles have an easier time sticking around. This is a very cool stream and helps a lot to break down a lot of different issues someone might encounter.

Hello @Zenzo and ACO team! Hello everyone, I had a bit of a "moment" this morning. 😂 I was checking my KH/PH/GH on my semi-daily testing and I ran into a question, led myself down a rabbit hole, and I really would love to know a few of these questions. I feel like a lot of hobbyists might have some of the same questions, so I'll share them here. My hope is that eventually this makes it's way to the website or potentially sparks an idea for a video to help people out. First tip, if you have ever had any issues reading test results, I have heard a few people mention converting the results to grayscale to try to interpret them. Here is a really good website where you can do this and potentially save yourself some guessing. https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/ Second, If you are having issues with the colors having a different hue around the edges, it is very likely there was some sort of contamination from the other pad. I just had this happen when I tried to take the photo, the pad itself absorbed a little bit of water on the KH pad from the GH pad. You can see discoloration on the KH as well as the PH pad 😕 To avoid this, the tip is to let your strip rest on a towel instead of a non-porous surface when waiting the necessary 60 seconds for results. This really tends to help keep things like that from happening and was a tip I saw from this hobbyist! The third tip I would give people is to use an app like aquarium notebook or a notepad to log your results. This is helpful if you are trying to adjust something in the tank over time or simply to have the data available to look back on when you need it. If a fish becomes sick, or you see a nutrient deficiency on a plant, that data might be invaluable. My questions I'd like to understand: 1. Can you talk about the development of this product and what the process is like to determine what colors end up on the color chart? 2. The directions say to wait 60 seconds before reading results. Does this matter for every test or just nitrite and nitrates? 3. What if I accidentally walk away for 2-3 minutes, are the results valid? Would the results be valid still for some of the pads? Are the results accurate if the pads haven't dried up? 4. If someone is using the ACO strips in comparison to a liquid test kit, what factors determine accuracy? (For instance, which one is newer?) 5. Generally speaking, are strips more accurate because they result in less error performing the test? Meaning, you dip it, wait, and then it's down to understanding the results (Question #2-3) vs. a liquid kit where you have to shake the bottles for a specific amount of time in a certain way. 6. If you have "weird results" what is the best thing to do? (Ex. I had my water reporting very low GH because I forgot to aerate the water thoroughly enough, and/or because I forgot to add dechlorinator. I repeated the 24 hour aeration test with more aeration/dechlor and the results were normal) 7. If you are trying to use something like crushed coral, equilibrium, alkaline buffer, Epsom salt, etc. to buffer your water, is there a general guideline of time to wait before testing for "valid" results? 8. When it comes to planted tanks specifically, I tend to track nitrates for my dosing schedule. However, I am finding myself struggling to read 10 ppm results. Is there any lighting condition that these tests were designed for to be optimal for clear reading? Right now I use a LED flashlight. 9. If a color is "off the scale" it just means it's over the edge of the value indicated, right? 10. How often should I purchase test strips once I open the container? If you have any other questions you think might be useful for this type of a list, please post them below!

Very sorry for your loss. RIP little buddy.

Update #2 for the week. This is going to be, by far the MOST COST EFFECTIVE way for seachem to fix this product in-line. In terms of the production cost, you remove a cutout, which saves manufacturing time and money. Second, this is the easiest thing to mail to customers without costing the company itself an arm and a leg to fix. You would mail out a small envelope of sealant, a small piece of plastic, and directions. In terms of engineering time, you're talking 3-5 days of testing (if that) and then you're talking about what amounts to 1 day of paperwork and a few months of planning/production cost. If they modify the hard tool and incorporate this into the design itself, you coordinate with the tooling manufacturer and they rework the tool (if this isn't done on the manufacturing floor). You then are improving the strength of the part, improving tolerances, improving flow of the part in that area of the tool. It's a very minor improvement, but the point to drive home here is how minimal effort this actually takes. Anyone who knows how to use the program could get the paperwork done in 2-4 hours and have it released by the end of the day. This all assumes they verified the testing results and accepted them as an improvement in the design. This gives you downtime of about, 4-8 weeks and samples are sent for approval. In total, you're talking about VASTLY changing the flow of the basket, easily modifying something, cheaply fixing it in the field, and reducing cost to make up for the change as a result. Tier 3a (prep): I couldn't find my sheet of scrap lexan anywhere so I opted to use a piece of scrap trim from an aquarium lid. We all should have some of these sitting around, and so it's an easy way to patch this hole. I did use the black silicone here, I do not know if this will hold long term. Worst case, I can remove it and then use superglue that is fish safe. I just used a piece of scissors, cut it to size with overlap around the edge and glued it internally as to not disturb fit when loading the basket inside the HoB. It doesn't look great, I would prefer clear, but for the sake of not making a trip to the store for something I won't see, I'll allow it. For now, I did opt to leave those other slots open to allow bypass through them. If they are an issue long term, it won't be difficult to patch them. I'd like to run some tests at this point after it cures before progressing to fill anything further. Edit: I forgot to mention, if someone has one of these and a 3d printer, might be a nice little side project and take about 10 minutes to measure it. The "drawing" won't take too much effort in the CAD software and you could easily print these and mail them out if you feel so inclined. 3d printing them gives you the nice added bonus of being able to fill the thickness needed with some precision compared to what is lying around. I'd probably shoot for .063 thick material if I had to guess. Update for the sake of the curious: I was checking on the filter flow, bypass, etc. and I noticed the "often rare" bypass by the input chute of the filter. Here is the video showing off the bypass, demonstrating the cause of the bypass by removing it, and then restarting the bypass to verify that this is the cause. I'm thankful that I was able to capture this because it shows how detrimental some of these design choices have been for the filter basket and how much it would benefit the design to fix some of these issues.

Sidenote. Netflix show travelers discusses this topic. Very fun show. Hit's a little close to home now because of the past few years, but they run into a situation where they RODI'd the water so much that you couldn't clean it anymore. The remineralization might overlap into coffee making territory and there might be some industrial machines / designs to handle this. I definitely approve of using the waste elsewhere, but again.... beware of the whole travelers concept and what that slippery slope leads to.

Out of curiosity, what was the ppm? If it is above 20, I'd say keep doing daily 50% changes. Did you happen to check nitrites and ammonia? I'm really excited to hear that about the corys. I love my pandas! They are such unique, fun little fish. I'll end up making a video and adding some lofi. LOL. There's a reason I think it's so easy for everyone to recommend corys here, and it's not just because of how much they love tacos.

Such a unique plant! I am intrigued on this one. Some green plants can get red under specific lighting conditions, but I don't know what exactly is causing this. I was curious and so I looked up FishForThought's tank where he added some on the surface. There is one ^^ slightly off color leaf, but I definitely don't see much. I see your light / settings above. I don't know if that is doing something to the plant. I wouldn't think that light is too strong.

Well this is my night. This video. On loop. 😂 and feeding! LOL This is a super shakey video, but it's a really beautiful pond for them in terms of the hardscape and I can see them darting all over the place.

The hybrids and yellow looks cool. When I see WCMM I really, really enjoy the reds they produce. I think it would be interesting to have both paths in progress. It reminds me of Greg Sage and his Odessa Barbs. He has such a nice fish after all the work he's put into it.

That looks awesome, the stand is gorgeous!

You should be able to just add seeded media to the canister without having to run both canisters. If this doesn't make sense I'll try to find a video that explains the process for having a filter on "standby" without having to actually run it.

I got to here, and my immediate reaction was, "alright, this is going to be good, I like this a lot!" 😂

it's not "too warm" but I would think the BN will appreciate it slightly lower if possible. 74 or so should do fine. If you have the stuff to do it, I would potentially add one/another airstone for the time being as well.

I know you guys are saying this tank is "hopeless", but I think there is some hope here. There are issues. I have had some of these same plants in the same situation as the OP and I can tell you it's frustrating because plants are not cheap. Especially when you're spending what little bit you have for the sake of trying to add more plant load. I think there's a few things we need to get right here to help out @DrwHem, but we also need to get some clarity and make sure some things said above are making sense. 1. Fertilization being used isn't sufficient. 2. The tank is dirty and needs to be cleaned 3. The lighting may/may not be sufficient or needs adjusted. 4. Some plants may not have specific requirements met and other plants will be easier to grow given this specific tank setup. I see a few things here I think will help to an immense degree and they also speak to a few systemic issues that need to be fixed. Exhibit A: There is a lot of detritus. This is likely here because you're worried about the plants releasing from the substrate when gravel vacuuming, but the cause of all of this detritus is pointing towards the types of things that let algae (especially BBA) take hold in the tank. Exhibit B: Your stem plants have a lot of bare stalks and dead areas. I don't see a lot of root growth, which is pointing to the lack of nutrients and/or other things the plant needs to grow. Exhibit C : Plants that are close to the substrate seem to be struggling pretty hard. This is due to a few factors, namely their location in the tank (indirect light), fertilizer issues, and potentially just a plant struggling to take hold in this water chemistry. I am not trying to say "do this" and guarantee it will be fixed. As someone mentioned, this isn't something where we can give you a single line of text and fix the issue. I do however want to say, let's talk this through one by one, and make sure the OP really does know what to do with each situation, how to move forward, and what is causing/contributing to these issues in the tank. I want to reference something that I didn't have any clue on how to handle when I first started with stem plants. I did not know how to actually care for them, trim them, and keep the bare stems at bay. Part of this goes down to maintenance and I found a really good video that helped me to understand how to care for them. I'll link that below.

What is the temp by chance? If it's decently high (say 78+), you might give him a slightly easier time by moving him to a QT tank setup, slightly dropping temp, increase oxygenation (airstone) and then by feeding something like repashy soilent green, repashy community plus, or vita chem. It looks like fin rot and bacterial issues where erythromycin will help and the added high nutrient food will really help.

My otos prefer it cooler. What else is in the tank for stocking? This is a good tool to try to figure out where to set the temp too! https://aqadvisor.com/ you can remove the filters you don't need (or run less) and just put the ceramic media in one filter. That might help things out, but it sounds like you have a TON of flow. Maybe the fish is trying to escape that and needs a cave. Is the oto having issues staying on the glass, getting blown around? What does the oto do when you turn off the canisters for a moment. I'm re-watching this just for the sake of it, here's the link as well.

I have some off brand one, but yeah. Mine was exactly the same way.

I would absolutely recommend a tiger barb species only TUB. I had my 75G with as many as I could stuff in there, I would purposefully have the lids open on the tank and watch them feed like it was a pond. One of the most hilarious, fun ways to spend the morning. They just make you smile. Having a pond style (or tank with a big opening) lets you spread the food out a bit and they go bananas for it. They LOVE that part of the day and it gave me something to look forward to. I also was amazed at the personality of my RTBS. Just such an under appreciated thing when I saw her in the store and brought her home. Truly a majestic little fish. Every morning I stick my head towards the tank and she pops out and says what's up. I swear she knows when we call her out, and she most definitely has her moods where she will do specific things at certain times of the day. I managed to record this last night, video is still being edited, but I'll link it here when youtube decides I can fix the audio volume. Warning. Turn down your audio. I'm sorry the quality is terrible. YT is being extremely weird. This x100000000

I'm guessing I had an episode of my dyslexia? It's definitely not an all in one. The point being, I don't think you can use seachem flourish without flourish trace. Let alone some of their other bottles. It's a bit much and it's not a easy fertilizer regiment to get right. Edit: Here's a video. Also, Bentley's above.

That makes sense. Maybe the issue is light, not even nutrients? What do these three plants look like?

I know there's going to be a.... push for high light because somewhere the chart says these need high light. You might have 1-2 plants in the tank do very well, but then all the others are struggling. I would opt for a lower light to start at first (50%) and then monitor the situation. If the high demand plants melt harshly, then location of the light may play a critical role in addition to the intensity. There's a lot of factors that could help, or hurt, the situation. Play it slow, give the tank time, your patience will be rewarded. We do need to clear up a few details though and have a better understanding of what is causing the issues and how to monitor/alleviate them. Reacting correctly is how you beat the algae back.

I've had a 55G/75G with 25+ tiger barbs and they didn't really bother the amanos. The amanos will tend to come out in full force at night. When they are out during the day, the tigers are mid/high water and are very active, especially in larger groups. With the amanos they are bigger, not really the size a tiger would try to eat. They might swim and spook the amano and it'll just swim around. That's been my experience with them. The main thing is just going to be time. Are you seeing things get worse or improve? It's going to take months to truly fix the issues. It's something I've been fighting for quite a while. See attached 😕 (this tank I purposefully avoid trying to maintain because it's going to be broken down, but it's been algae ridden for a long time. All of the Anubias in my 29G journal used to look like this, then I moved it, and it's much improved.... There is hope!). One of the biggest factors with BBA/Staghorn is going to be nitrates. If the tank has high nitrates due to waste, you're just going to have a lot of issues. This also means that cleaning it off during each weekly WC is going to be impactful. As you can see in the photos above, every surface of the mopani, the sidewall, it always looks that caked with algae. I've started to "try" to fix it. I fixed light settings and I'm performing more detailed deep cleaning on my WC days now. Essentially, scrub it off as best you can on any hard surface. I use a dish sponge (no chemicals, just a rough sponge) and a toothbrush. I scrape the glass, excluding the back glass, and then I just observe parameters. Because this small tank has too much bioload right now, it's difficult to really thin out the algae but considering what it looked like 24 hours ago, and my other display tank changes, it's definitely a matter of time and effort. A photo would really help us out to be able to see what's going on. But generally speaking you can turn the light off and cover the tank for a week if you really had to. The issue you're running into right now is mentioned above, but it's purely based on what the plants need compared to what is going into the tank. They need light..... check. They need Aeration/Co2..... check (filter does this) They need macronutrients.... check (seachem flourish) They need micronutrients..... this is where you have an issue and something like easy green might be a better solution for you longer term to make it easier. Bentley Pascoe has a very good video regarding the seachem line, I'd encourage you to check it out and ask any questions you may have. (linked above) Generally speaking, you'd want your light at 40-60% power range to start off, algae and such under control and new growth showing, then slowly increase it over time. As long as your plants are successfully growing and algae isn't you're winning the battle.

Welcome to the forum! In my tank I am testing my water basically before each WC to try to keep track of how things are fluctuating. That being said, that's my metric for how often I'll have to swap mine out. In the filter box itself it's going to need to be changed more frequently than if it was passively in the tank as a substrate medium. I am intrigued though, you said your water always tests hard? What do you mean by that? Crushed coral is to boost KH generally, and so it won't reduce GH (General Hardness) in any real way. I don't know if you've seen this before but it might be helpful so I'll share it! https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh

I've used it all. Doesn't much matter. I prefer the seachem stuff, but I've used Tetra, Aqueon, this random black bottle from Petco. I've used a variety and they all work fine.

Ironically, I saw some of it showing up in my QT filter again. 😂 I'm glad it worked out for you, sweeeet!