nabokovfan87

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!

What deficiencies / plants with them are you seeing? I would've thought the powders would last a lot longer than the all-in-one solutions. I do have bottles of iron I've had for a long time and never used. I had red plants, but that tank is long gone. In my view, some of the individual dosing for some liquids like iron, mag, etc. using the seachem stuff (or ACO versions) is really easy to get into. If the plants need it, of course.

you can upload to youtube on private/unlisted and then just link it here if you wish!

What is the temp on the tank? He might be going in there to try to get more flow, oxygenation and such. I'm very glad the little one is ok!

Just clarifying here. You have water in a bucket for a week? Was it Aerated? Yes. It's very likely just due to the water sitting without flow. The major thing is going to be the interaction between KH, PH, and CO2. I was running a test this week, I had my tank reporting 300+ for GH and then magically I had soft water. Depending on setup, your results will vary. How was the bucket setup? I think there might be some confusion here, but I want to clarify the above first. You're cycle is going to be based off of filtration and other factors. Water chemistry swings do happen and that's partially why we do water changes. Edit: If you are having PH swings like this, it's going to be useful to report out KH, GH, PH data from: A. Out of the tap, test B. Sample above, Aerate for 24 hours, re-test C. Take a sample from your tank, test. If you are mainly concerned about cycle, that's a different issue/question to dive into.