nabokovfan87

The specs on this one are as follows: – Temperature accuracy +/-2 degrees F

Interesting, can you explain a little bit about what happened? There's usually a few things that go into parameter issues and it's often termed a "cycle crash," but I get the sense that sometimes it can be explained by a few things going on. Essentially, root cause analysis, what caused ammonia to spike? Did it get fixed? Is it safe for fish now? Those are the types of questions I would ask myself. If I had a tank with ammonia spiking on me, my first move would often be to do a water change, add air, and verify all equipment is working the way it should be. Sometimes a pump gets clogged, sometimes the filter isn't setup right, sometimes the bioload increased, overfeeding, or the plants die back and you lose balance of the plants helping counter the bioload. I would imagine that sometimes when you're testing you'll almost never see the ammonia spike, but you'll see the nitrite spike as a result. If the tank is "fixed" and all the parameters seem good to go, I would slowly add fish back and monitor it. Add 1/4 the fish at first or something like that. One school. then go from where. I don't think you need to ghost feed as much as you would just need to take it slow to ramp things back up to a full tank again.

Yep.... And a lot more conversations with support which is getting increasingly less helpful. My favorite is when it's shipped from, sold by Amazon and it ends up being a third party and they try to push the blame off. I push back on that whenever possible because whenever anyone posts a review on the sellers it's "this review was removed, item was fulfilled by Amazon." Over and over again. It's frustrating, because it's so hard to go to the local anything and get what you need sometimes. The last one was literally fish food and dechlorinator. Had to buy it online.

It's there, that default stuff that comes with the filter in the 2nd from the bottom tray. I also have additional pond foam that's very fine I can use to add to the red foam holder and try to keep the intake contained a bit better to that one side. I can sketch it out, but essentially..... There is no hard wall seperating the tray from the foams, the trays themselves are designed to act as the wall. The lid on the trays should fit tightly against the pump and stop anything from really going into that top media tray as well. The bottom tray is filled with ceramic "mech" style prefilter settling media which Should help to separate out the big chunks. If that doesn't do anything then I'll end up removing that and having foam there, no big deal. Next tray up is the fine foam that comes with the filter. If I was running a fine pad, it would go there as well. Then I have 2 media trays, more than enough biological for the entire tank even heavily stocked. The prefilter on the intake also takes a good bit of the load, hopefully keeping shrimp and plants out of the filter.

More big things happening this week! Just got done tearing apart the filter and replacing the media. I checked the sponges and the "ability" of the filter to actually filter things with the sponge. My guy tells me that this filter needs a pretty big overhaul on the design of a few aspects. Sponge is this dirty after what seems like a month of use. I see a lot of bypass. This is the media, top tray. I see a lot of the stuff passing through several layers of the tray, or bypassing the trays altogether and going right through the lid. I can't say why, but whenever I had the media in the tidal it was never this way. I would love it if I could find appropriately sized media bags (from seachem style fine mesh) that fit rectangularly shaped voids. The trays aren't a mess to clean, but it's just not a situation where it's as easy as it could be to keep the media clean as I'd like. Following that check on everything I added in some substrat pro that I got on sale due to clearance. It was like 50-60% off or so. Pretty nice to find it and be able to swap stuff out. I chucked the rings after I saw them and there are two types in there. One is the packet that comes from the aquaclear 110 and those seems to be fine, working well enough, but not great. Not nearly as good at matrix works for me. The other ones are the default rings that come with the base canister from fluvial. By comparison, visually, at least 60-75% less bacteria visually just from the way the different surfaces are compared to one another. One is rough and has voids, the other is flat, smooth, and pretty lackluster when it comes to performance from that brief test. I also emailed the place that I purchased plants from, it's been 1 month with no information and I basically scolded them for not communicating anything. Their response was that "soon" they will order in the tissue cultures and see what shows up and go from there. It's not something I plan to go through again, but it's a small shop with TCs that I basically cannot get from anywhere else. Fingers crossed it all works out. Checked nitrates on the fishroom as well. 40 in the big tank, perfectly fine. It's all fertilizer and my inability to feed normally, lol. 10 in the shrimp tank, again, all ferts and today is water change day for that tank anyways. We'll keep an eye on things, I added some clarifying and made sure all the systems are working as should be. It's getting there..... Moss wall photos next. Working on the shrimp tank next!

It really depends on what your method is. First. You can take some of the AC rings and toss those in the canister. Then, take half new media, half used media to seed your media bag in the AC70. That alone will seed everything as you need.

20 Long search time!!!!

Bentley has a person he's used and recommends. I can look it up. I am not sure if they have amano though. Local store have them, maybe the co-op is close enough?

~20-50 is about the norm for a planted tank. If you're running something fish only, overstocked, it can be pretty easy to get close to 100 without significant water changes. Studies have show that being above 40-50 ppm can do some damage to the fish and so I have tried in my own tanks to be mindful of that. For anything over 80, I would do a pretty significant one time water change of 80-90% to get things back to normal. If you have something rotting or leeching ammonia it would keep climbing high, quickly.

Nitrate being that high has proven to do harm to fish long term. That just means for "emergency situations" you can do as much as a 90% water change if you really need to. I do normal 50% water changes on my tank and it's ok to do so. Professional aquascapers will do 2-3 large water changes per week! The normal I think would be weekly 30-50% water changes for most planted tanks, but I'm not absolutely certain about that.

Looks like you're showing ammonia. So you'd want to do the appropriate water change, given that fish are in there. How long has this been used for? Has it been 7 days? Normally I would recommend dosing it following your water change to dilute the ammonia. Flourish excel is an algaecide and not normally required. As for the other ones you're mentioning, flourish complete and flourish trace and flourish iron would be the general 3 bottles to use for that line to give you what other fertilizer, all-in-one fertilizers would offer. I would suggest trying something that's easier if you wish, but if you're dedicated and you're detailed in your dosing you can do well with seachem's fert line. You can use that for top offs, yeah, but it's not required.

@Fish Folk do you want to take November? If not I have a pretty fun one in mind! I would love to give everyone a shot at making a pick. 🙂

Regarding how much water you're changing, I just wanted to share this so you're aware of it.

@Beardedbillygoat1975 wants a panda corydoras. I'll say a duplicareus one!

Basically, California water right there. Should be fine for a lot of things. Val has worked, bacopa, s.repens, microsword, anubias does awesome as well as moss. Because you're on a well, RO is recommended. That being said I wouldn't chase parameters, there isn't a lot of issues with the water right from the tap.

Hello @Mahi Selvamani! I wanted to pass this video along as it's always been extremely helpful for me whenever I hear a talk from Bentley regarding plants and their care. Let's dive into your questions, but please check this out too whenever you have the time! 1. Yes, the plant load in the tank is seemingly low. It's not extremely low, but I would say it's a low amount of plants and that just leads towards a technique called lean dosing. (more on this later) 2. Everything is a balance. Let's say you have the right fertilizer and the right light, but not enough CO2... the plants struggle. There's a lot that goes into getting everything going right and we should take a step back, verify everything, and then go ahead and decide if the whole formula is working. (more on this in the advice at the end) 3. Plants being relatively new, yeah you generally want to start with the lights being at a lower level, ramping up over a few weeks or months. Given the amount of diatom algae that you're seeing I can recommend some changes. The other thing that goes into play is your substrate (how easily can the plants feed from the roots), your water parameters+ferts (do the plants have the minerals they need?), tank height, and what intensity do the plants you're growing need. All of the plants apart from the carpeting plant look to be pretty close to the light. This also means that the plants may not be directly under the light and getting more of a reflected light (off-axis). So... something like reviewing the placement of the light might be helpful too. 4. No. You can add something like otocinclus, amano shrimp, rubberlip pleco, or bristlenose pleco that will help to eat algae for you. None of those are very necessary and it's always going to be a manual effort to remove excess algae and keep it in control. I want to double check my own light settings just for comparison sake, but I think you can cut the light down to: Red: 40% Blue: 5% Pure White: 50% Cold White: 30% Warm White: 35% Your duration for the lights seems ok, but kill the blue night light to 0% on everything. If you continue to see algae all over the glass, then you'd want to start limiting the duration of the light from 8 down to ~6 hours. For now, cut the light down, keep things consistent, but in say.... 3-4 weeks, then potentially cut the duration down if need be. Results seem ok. It's tough though. It's hard to see the color without the white/static background I would ask, if possible, can you test your GH and KH? Those two tests are relevant to plant care and can indicate some issues with plants struggling. What fertilizer are you using, how much and how often? As mentioned above, what is your substrate (the black stuff) and are you using root tabs? What kind of root tabs, if so? I would be sure to scrape the glass and use something like a toothbrush where you need to on the rocks. Try to do this at minimum once a week. Your prefilter on the tidal, unless it's modified it's not really doing a whole lot. The way the tidal is put together you have the mid-level intake as well as the skimmer doing a lot of your intake. There's a lot to say about the filter itself, but just note that it can lead to things like algae issues (specifically BBA) due to some of it's unique flow characteristics. I've ran the tidals for years at this point on a variety of tanks and setups, different sizes, different plants, and it can work just fine. The thing to note is that your filter is far to the left side of the tank, meaning that your circulation and water movement will be mostly focused in that area of the tank. It's just something to keep an eye on if you're not getting enough circulation around the plants.... which can also lead to algae issues as well. Also, welcome to the forums!!!

The same white spots are all over the wood. Just a note. One thing to keep in mind is that whenever you add salt (or meds) the water gets thicker. Because of this, adding 1-2 airstones to help with oxygenation as well as circulation is seriously critical. We need to find a way to get the corydoras to stop breathing rapidly. Gill damage from shipping could explain a lot of the extended "stressful breathing" that you're seeing. The other things like the white spots are also concerning and having the fish in salt for this length of time leads me to think that we really need to take a step back and get the necessary details before making the next steps. I hope things improve. Hopefully we can get this all figured out. I am very sorry for all of the struggles you've been experiencing.

Hey @tetra ! I am happy to hear that there is some improvement. I re-read through the thread as if I hadn't read the information previously and tried to view everything with a fresh perspective. I do think there is a few things going on and one of the main things might just be a confusion or miscommunication. I am sorry for this and let's hope we can get things going in the right direction. I will try to be succinct and clear and hopefully that helps get things on the way. First, you mentioned the fish in the mail and they were in the box for slightly longer than desired. The sign at the time was breathing rapidly. This is one of the single most common signs of stress with corydoras. I believe what may have happened at this point is likely some form of ammonia or nitrite burn issues. This can be common and it does happen and the best course at that point would've been to let the fish recover. The next thing that happened was they went through medications, furthering more stress and likely causing damage on top of those earlier issues from shipping. It's just a general thing, but sometimes it's best to let the fish recover as opposed to dosing meds too quickly. This could be 1-2 weeks or even a month if need be. Essentially, the best course may have been to give the fish a lot of air, some aquarium salt to help recover, botanicals, and good water quality that fits their needs. Second thing that caught my eye was when we were previously discussing KH/GH and you mentioned: " I just wanted to do an overview and look at each data point and how the KH and GH were changing over time. I want to make sure we're using the same terminology and not confusing ppm (parts per million) with degrees of hardness. KH: 4-5 ppm --> 11-12 degrees or 300 ppm --> 0 ppm GH: 25 ppm --> 150 ppm --> 4 degrees --> 25 (ppm?) My gut tells me that the water stability has been up and down. This sense that the already stressed fish was further stressed by other things like water stability. Acclimation for corydoras has always been a difficult process in my tanks. I feel the struggle and I hope we can figure things out and improve the situation for you and the fish long term. These days, I am much more comfortable with bringing in fish, doing things the right way, and being able to acclimate them to my water. @Colu please see the above... let us know your thoughts. Ultimately, my advice right now would be to take a step back and let the fish recover. The things I seriously need to understand before offering any real advice for treatment is going to be: 1. Full water parameters, clear results, for your tank as well as the tap water. 2. Are you adding an additional airstone (or two, or three) for the corydoras in any tanks where you see them breathing rapidly? I would discontinue use of the salt if they have been under salt for ~ over a month at this point. 3. What is your filtration in the tank like and how is it setup?

the small size from Aquahuna might be the go-to. You get a good amount, fair price, affordable shipping, and the co-op discount code helps out! I got some otos/amanos from them.

Hoping for the best! It's just one of those things, fish are the same way. I beat myself up a bit last tank I setup because I was really wanted to move fish. I wish I had given the plants a few weeks to take hold. Moved fish in and everything got tossed up into the water. Patience is just really a skill we all learn in this hobby!

basically just different types of bacteria and so you have to treat them appropriately. Some meds are designed to work with one and not the other. I found this, the abstract talks a little bit more about the structural difference. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857177/

Yeah, I had the same thing happen and I could not tell if it was slightly above 180 (slightly off the scale) or if it was ~100. Ultimately I ended up getting the liquid test kit and then going ahead down that route. If you have the liquid tests, it should be pretty reliable when it comes specifically to GH/KH. The other ones (some of the strip based tests) can just be really difficult to interpret. I would give it a re-test and if you are still having a major issue with the results, then take a water sample in somewhere and have the local store verify results. You can also potentially have a kit that is a little off (wasn't stored properly) and might need to get a replacement.

I would say give the tank an extra few weeks if you're planning on shrimp. Maybe at least 1 month is about the right "minimum" time.

I found it months after, but it fits pretty perfectly for this topic/conversation. Aqueon nutrinsect line of foods. The pellets/granules are extremely small that the corydoras can get them in their mouth and chew them really easily. They do go towards them and enjoy them. Nutritionally and through the ingredients it seems like a good quality food! I'm hoping they are a bit more prevalent and available locally in the big box stores (it's shown up in some). I did email them and ask about bulk sized packaging, but I believe it's one of those things where it's a matter of when (not if) that happens. They told me they have no plans at this time and it's all going to be one size for the time being. I still am planning on trying out other foods and we'll see what they gravitate towards. I realize that while I did have a lot of protein, the protein from veggie being different than that from other sources like bugs or krill. It's a balance, and I am hoping that I can really use things like spawn and grow (repashy) and some of these new foods to trigger them to spawn a bit more regularly.

Can you take a photo of the test strip? I actually had something similar happen, let me see if I can find the older thread.