nabokovfan87

Try bacopa Caroliniana, as well as just propagating out the stem you have on the left there. It's actually a really fast growing plant. In the foreground of your tank, something like pearlweed, microsword, etc., would do really well for you and fill in a lot of that space. My biggest suggestion apart from propagation would be to add root tabs. The substrate you have is marketed as "planted tank substrate," but it's more of a place for detritus to go and to have that feed the plants. Basically, you're looking at inert rock that contains minerals as opposed to soil. Especially around all of the crypts and the others, you'll have much better success by tabbing the tank every 2-3 months. Substrate looks pretty good to me.

Sometimes you finish up a long day and just think to yourself, "man, it's been a long week" and you realize it's only Monday. It's been a big like that this week. I am not sure I've posted in the other journal for my main tank, but as far as shrimp is concerned.... today is their day. I wanted to make a concerted effort to better clean out the mulm and detritus. I did a deep siphon the last 2 times and both times I was pretty shocked at the amount of debris in the tank. I lifted up the wood and the clown pleco, little Luigi, she had a pile that was pretty massive under there. In some respect, yes that is food for the shrimp to enjoy, but it's also just encouraging worms and other things I would like to limit. I have plenty of food, plenty of algae in the tank, and it's all about getting things back to where they should've been and to get the tank just that bit nicer for me to sit and enjoy. I also realized that I just dislike scraping algae on the glass in this tank. It's very hard green spot algae that is forming and I need to find a holder so I can use a blade, a hard card, or get a mag float that works for me. Right now, I'm using an old style blue cheap "algae scrubber" that I got for when I first got back into the hobby. It's something that works, but it takes a lot of pressure for me to scrub this stuff off. I want to look into getting one of those long handle "aquascaper" style holders and use that. I think it just may make the job a bit easier. Of note as well, last night the shrimp were going a bit nuts when I popped the light on to check on them. Part of that surely is due to the light being a bit jarring, but I watched them under dim light conditions and they were acting like 30+ female shrimp were spawning and all the males were going a bit crazy. I assume it was due to my messing with the hardscape and a shrimp getting stuck, but I did find a dead shrimp. It was mostly just a tail and it looked "cooked". The water isn't nearly warm enough for that to happen, so I assume it's just been in there since messing with the hardscape last week and was stuck under the wood. 😞 For the sake of it, I checked the GH, everything seems good! I will "feed some mineral food" tomorrow by adding just a scoop of the GH booster I have. It won't do much, but I enjoy that process and giving them the calcium additive to graze on. Honestly, this tank feels a bit like an experiment right now. I have the two feeding dishes in there and I spend the mornings when I feed checking to see where they all go. It's sort of like left hand vs. right handed people, I swear some of the shrimp just refuse to move all the way over to go eat out of the other dish. I still find myself enjoying and learning new things with these shrimp. They stopped breeding for about ~1.5 months It seems like. I was expecting to see a massive boom in population when summer hit, but they actually slowed down. Now that things are cooling off just a little, they definitely seem to be back to normal and they are going through food like champs. We'll see... Another deep clean, another good size water change, and they got a late meal, but they are eating their "breakfast" for dinner. I'll keep an eye out and try to spend some time watching them tomorrow. We do have a few baby shrimp growing up from a recent spawn, which is great to finally see them again. I am really trying to look for adult shrimp, max size, max coloration, and trying to really understand what the "final quality" of these shrimp are. I have one that I see all the time, a big female (she's right handed) and she's just very vibrant and deep red colored. I am looking to see more get up to her size. Hopefully by December I have a lot more adults!

Put a fine mesh net at the output when you turn it back on. Then just take the net out after it blows all the debris.

Run tests on the tap for KH and the off-gas test mentioned above. Report back, we can go from there. We need to understand if this is a tank issue a tap issue, or a mix of things.

There's a different version of fritz bacteria that will work better in your PH. Anything with low KH, the turbostart 700 stuff (live bacteria) allegedly won't work.

Aquarium, Hydroponics, etc. Here locally we have "SCAPE", maybe that is something you can find for your club at school. A word that fits the hobby and you have the acronym to make it easy. Scape = So cal aquatic plants enthusiasts "FISH Club" Maybe there's a good acronym for FISH that works?

Any idea about temperature or other factors wrecking havoc on plant growth and causing that to slow down? Maybe that accounts for more ammonia and stress? Are you running an airstone in the tank at all by chance? Yeah, you don't really want to mess with KH until you have a full breakdown of what is going on. Test the tank, test the tap for KH. Take a sample of water from the tap and aerate it for 24 hours, then test it for PH. Compare that to your PH test on the tank. If your PH is really low, that could be the factor there. (low like 6 or below) Which one? Ideal parameters for FritzZyme® TurboStart 700 nitrifying bacteria: Temperature: 77-86 F (25-30 C) pH: 7.3-8.0; nitrification is completely inhibited below pH 6.0 Salinity: 0 - 6 ppt (1.000 to 1.0045 sg); active up to 15 ppt (1.011 sg) Alkalinity (KH): minimum 4.5 dKH or 80.5 ppm KH Phosphate: above 0 ppm

That all comes down to bend radius at some point. Having a "straight shot" with gentle bends is the key there. What was "a bit weird" in the spec sheet above is that the 107 and 207 both have the same height, but different pump specs. So... maybe those have the same pump with a different impeller design? (aquaclear does something similar, from my research) The height measurement is also a bit funky. From the canister base, but the canisters are all different height. Maybe that is why the numbers are the same? On the fluval's you have those brackets on the tank rim so that hoses don't get kinked. It's "fine" but it's pretty dissimilar to something like lily pipes in a few ways. First is that you have a slightly larger volume of water (good thing) and you have a slightly modified series of angles. The fluval is pretty close, but I think it's more like two 90's instead of a single 180 degree bend. So you're trying to push slightly more weight, with a bit more restriction due to the ribbed hosing, and potentially that all plays a role in what you can do. Best case, maybe swap the hosing out or something with a smooth internal surface, but I understand that's much less than desirable to do so. If you're "on the margin, that would be one thing to consider. The goal being, and the only reason I mention it, keep an eye on how the tubes go into the canister itself. Trying to keep those angles ~15 degrees or less, below 30 if you can, all of that does play a role in how well the pump works. My favorite example of "head height" is Graeme just being a goof in the driveway holding a hose above his head. Maybe a small sidetable with a bin next to the tank? I use something called a "hallway table" for my fish stuff and it's about the same height as the stand with a table top and lower shelf. ^^ Longer distance = less flow, basically.

Hm.... So there's 2-3 things that play a major factor here. KH/PH, and your filtration setup. Certain bacteria just doesn't like certain water conditions. I would start by going ahead and modifying your filtration. With a prefilter on the intake, you're looking at ~4-5 layers or foam filtration, which should be more than adequate without that second basket of foam. 1. Prefilter 2. Internal foam filter (blue foam) 3. Internal foam filter (white foam) 4. Internal foam (bottom basket) ~5. Fine pad / polyfil That should be enough mechanical filtration without any issues. Then you can go ahead and add another basket of biological media. Depending on what media you have, that's another factor, but generally speaking you'd want the bottom tray with foam, the other 3 with media, and anything chemical based on the top tray with ~1/2 of that top tray at least with your biological media. I imagine there's just a lot of waste. Might even be worth adding a second canister. You mentioned having a secondary pump on the filter as well, which you could replace with something (canister or otherwise) to boost up the biological side of things. The big thing that stands out as far as waste is the snails, frogs, loaches. Everything else is pretty low I would think.

I don't know how to create a thread, but I would LOVE some help overall. At the top of the page here click where it says "general discussion" that will take you to the main section of the forum threads. On the right hand top of that page you'll see "start new topic".

I forgot to mention.... check your tap water for nitrates as well.

I would think the height is from head height more than anything. @Pepere I think previously posted the formula for it, but from an engineering side that's what that requirement should correlate to.

I've tried a lot of root tabs, done a lot of research on the contents, viewed testing on them as well. I think tropica has some good ones, but we don't really have those here... and I always go back to the seachem tabs. Just so much easier to use and work better than everything else for me. That's awesome. Would be cool to see your process when you make a batch one day.

Can you post a picture of what the tank looks like focusing a bit on the substrate? Is there a lot of organics in the tank? I think one of the bigger tasks here is to identify your ammonia source. 1. Is the tank highly stocked? 2. Is there a ton of food being fed? 3. Is there just a lot of organics?

Black = seachem flourite black white = caribsea crystal river or Torpedo Beach

Got into my first accident in my car driving to get lunch at work with a coworker. Passenger to my right hand side and the first impact was on their door from two cars going well above the speed limit, then we got spun a bit and pushed into another. Needless to say the intersection has a light on it now after several more major accidents and a likely death. I wish that the cars in question weren't speeding...... I have asthma, got out of the car with chunks of glass in my hand from the window and my lungs were stuck. Wind knocked out of me, but it's also the same feeling of trying to start breathing (slow shallow breaths) when you have an asthma attack. Everyone was completely fine, car was wrecked of course, and it was a pretty frustrating moment for sure.

Fluval is good about that. Yes. They usually include extra carbon and pads as well. It was more just about other filters. The 107 (on the website photos) might just be an oversight on their end. I would assume it comes with the tray foam. Looks like it does. Very cool. 🙂 PLEASE take a video of the circulation if you can. I really need to understand how they size their stuff.

Yeah it's there. Just based on this video.

Would be so nice if they had a 408 with a slightly stronger pump. If you're having cycle issues enough that you're actually noticing it, then I would make a thread and try to include as much details about the setup. Please feel free to tag me if you make one. Welcome to the forums!

For sure.... It's one of the reasons I'm hesitant on getting one for myself, I want to really see what the use case is for each size and get a better understanding. I've got one canister that was sent to me, it's rated for.... ~65 gallons and based on actual assembly testing (with no media) I think it probably best fits a 20-29G aquarium. There's not a lot of oomph. We'll see and fingers crossed it's all good when you do have it in place! A lot of that is because they stopped including media to lower cost. Not sure why the 107 doesn't even come with the sponge in the bottom tray. (maybe it does). Part of the changes and Improvements on the x06 --> x07 series was thanks to people like pondguru showing off how to get every little bit out of the canister and complimenting the flow path. It's good to see helpful notes for hobbyists that may not necessarily know where to put the media. Especially on the box itself. If you want a real puzzle go check out the UNS canister tray layout.

Consider the 207, might be "fine" but I am unsure how much flow you normally run. I swear the "rated for tanks" sizes are always a weird one for me. The advantage here, is that normally with each jump up you get another tray. The 107 though: Top tray: (polyfil on the bottom if you want it) fill the rest with good media for biological) bottom tray: A handful of the "mech" stuff (sicce sells something similar to eheim mech, the fluval ones are a bit chunky) and then on top of that I would add the layer of the bumpy foam. The default foam in that filter/bottom tray is good stuff. for ref. here's the 207

Yep! That is unfortunate, but they should be able to take care of you. 🙂

Definitely close the co2 tank and email support. I've seen the issue before and they will likely need to replace it/repair it to resolve the situation.

Very much the same way. I spend a lot of time trying to dive into the details... for her as well as Myself.

I am not familiar with all of the plants mentioned, but I would recommend starting with easy to grow plants that are somewhat simple to get going. Moss can be challenging, but it is pretty helpful and fast growing. The only real challenge is the method of attachment. Given the wood and hardscape, I think tying the moss would be very nice and work well for you. To that I would add in any and all forms of anubias as the other plant. The substrate you have, I also have, and while the package mentions that it's for planted tanks the real confusion is that it's not the best. I ended up taking it out, adding soil as a base layer, then capping that with the fluorite and it's working extremely well for me now. Some root tabs are on the way and I think the tank works really well now given the root feeding plants and stems have access to nutrients. The above mentioned plants however, moss and anubias, only require liquid fertilizer. Some other plants you could try would be something like bacopa, hydrocotyle, or valisnaria. Those plants tend to be very easy species and low demand. Dwarf chain sword (or micro sword) would be a good plant to sort of push the boundary of skill. Trying to get it to carpet.