TheLoreleiAquatics

It does! Here is a picture of the LEDs on the light: https://imgur.com/a/YpTH7O5 Unfortunately, there is no way to completely turn them off, ag least not that I have found. There is an all blue setting that I assume is supposed to be for night, or maybe a saltwater setting. I can dim the lighting, there are three intensity settings. Most of my plants, I believe, are lower light. I think. Here are photos of every type of plant I have: https://imgur.com/a/9V9uWHh If I'm being honest, I'm not sure of all of their names. I know I have anubis, amazon sword, and tiger lily for sure. The others I am not so sure of. I got an online sale of stem plant cuttings and when I received it and they were unlabeled. But if the plants would do OK, I am able to reduce the intensity of the lighting. It is a 55 gallon tank with two ropefish filled with about 45 gallons of water, I have a four-five inch gap to encourage my mystery snails to lay eggs. No eggs yet, unfortunately 😕 Right now as clean up crew I have two giant mystery snails, one smaller mystery snail (my starter magenta breeding stock), and a host of ramshorn and bladder snails. My larger ramshorns are mysteriously dieing as they get bigger, which is puzzling me. Maybe the ropefish are eating them? I keep finding empty or partially empty shells once they get past a certain size. No dead bladder snails though, and I have a couple really big ones of those. I also have a breeder tank of ghost shrimp currently in quarantine, and after a few weeks I will be catching some out to put into the tank for the ropefish to eat. They're only eating cocktail shrimp right now, and I am really concerned about their nutrition. I am not doing CO2, DIY or otherwise. I am waiting until the Co-Op's regulator comes out before I purchase everything needed for it. I will take a look at it too! Thank so much for much for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it!

So the older leaves have the outer edges turning yellow and brown doesn't look like a deficiency to you? I was worried it was a deficiency. I do definitely have an algea issue that I have been battling for a while. It had gotten really bad before I put fish in because my nitrates skyrocketed, then it had chilled out after I lowered the nitrates, added a break in the lighting, cut the lighting from 10 hours to 6, and added some plants. The algea seemed to be behaving itself, so I increased the lighting back up to 8 hours (on full intensity from 10am-2pm, off from 2pm- 6pm, and on from 6pm-10pm). I have a Nicrew light, it is full spectrum so it does have some reds, greens, and blues, but it is mostly white. I have it on at the highest intensity. So I should increase the fertilizer a little until my nitrates are 20-30? They sit between 10-20 now 🙂 I didn't want to over do the nitrates because that seemed to be what made the algea go crazy before. Unfortunately I do not have the fluval, I have a little 48" budget Nicrew I got off of Amazon for $67. I just decreased the lights so they're on from 1100-1400, off from 1400-1800, and then they are back on from 1800-2100. I knew aquatic plants were going to have a learning curve, lol. They are growing though, they have all grown pretty significantlysince I put them in there, especiallythe tiger lily. So I am doing some things correctly (at least I think?).

https://imgur.com/a/sNlJPms Hi friends, Aquatic plants are tough and I do not know what to do with these deficiencies. If I saw them in terrestrial plants, I would say magnesium, calcium, and potentially potassium. I do two 30%-50% water changes a week (which is mostly to gravel vacuum because the mystery snails are ridiculous). I use a heaping tablespoon of seachem Equilibrium in my new water because otherwise I have 2 or 3 gh and kh. That tablespoon brings the gh up to 8 or 9 (I also use a tiny bit of alkaline buffer to boost my pH to 7.4 and my kh to 4). I use 4-5 squirts of easy green and easy iron twice a week, (which I might dial it back because of the algea, but I am dialing light back first with these deficiencies), and I have 6 hours of light, two 3 hour blocks with a four hour siesta. The pH is around 7.2-7.6, ammonia is usually 0, but I had a small spike earlier in the week due to some food getting stuck under a plant I didn't see and it was .25, nitrites are 0, nitrates are usually around 10, sometimes 20 on water change day. Should I add more Equilibrium? I am nervous to put the gh up much higher, the ropefish get restless. Should I add an additional Potassium source? Are there different magnesium sources that don't change gh? Is there a calcium deficiency still? Are aquatic plants so different from terrestrial plants that I have no idea what I'm looking at? Lol Thanks in advance!

We have central air and there is a vent in the room, but I don't want to heat the entire house. I will look into the wall mounted heating units! 🙂 thanks for responding!

I had really weird, oily bubbles after I ser up my ropefish tank and I also used sand from Petsmart! I rinsed it really well too. Thankfully I was doing a fishless cycle, so I did a bunch of water changes over the course of four weeks until there were no more bubbles and the ramshorns that hitched a ride on my plants were reproducing, then I added my ropefish. I wonder if it was the sand? All this time I assumed it was the driftwood because I gathered it locally and only soaked it for a few days.

Hi everyone, I am slowly getting back into breeding and planning to turn a decent sized walk in closet into a fish room. I am thinking that it is probably going to be more cost effective in the end to heat a 7.5' x 5' room with 8' ceilings to 78 degrees, rather than dozens of individual tanks. Except not if it is using a space heater. What would everyone recommend as the most cost effective way to heat a small room? Thanks in advance!

@Brandon pI'm glad you had luck with it! Maybe I'll give it a try again with different bottles. Did it help you with algae? That's really the main reason I'm interested in trying CO2.

Hello from Virginia! New to the forums, but not new to fish! 🙂 I recently got back into the hobby and breeding after quite a long break. I discovered Aquarium Co-Op while I was brushing back up on fish keeping and seeing what's changed I really appreciate Cory's reasonable, rational, humble, and non judgemental approach to the hobby. As well as how giving he is with knowledge and advice; and how staunch he is in his ethics. I was super excited when I heard about the forums and am excited to expand my knowledge and fire up my old breeding business. I currently have 4 aquariums (55g, 40g, 29g, and 10g) that house two juvenile ropefish, four purple mystery snails, an axolotl, two pairs of tiger endlers, blue jelly shrimp, ramshorn snails, and a black worm culture.

@Brandon p strangely enough, I did get a Red Flame Amazon Sword when I got all the anubises and other leafy plants because it was on sale, and it is actually doing great 😂🤣 It has grown 2 new leaves since I put it in there and doesn't have any of the curling leaf issues, lmao. It's doing the best out of all the plants in the whole tank! I did try a DIY C02 with a couple milk jugs and a gelatin, sugar, water, and yeast mix that a Youtuber I follow uses, but I couldn't get it to pressurize and come out of the diffuser. I think the seals on the mill jugs were leaky. I'm thinking of waiting until the Co-Op's CO2 regulator comes out and then getting a little used CO2 tank and giving it a try with a real set up. People sell used tanks in my area for $30-$50, so I could probably do a beginner's set up for under $200. I need to make sure I can keep plants alive first 😂

@eatyourpeas ❤️ I am on it

@Seattle_Aquarist, I guess I am assuming they were transitioned because they were at the LFS for a few months. I don't really know how long the transitioning process is though 😂 The stems were not from the LFS, those were an internet deal I found, $20/30 stems from 8 different species. So I don't know how those were grown, could be any way.

@Brandon p I have watched Cory's videos ❤️ Because the anubis and the-nameless-leafy-plants were already transitioned to immersed by my LFS, that lead me to believe it was a deficiency. Which, my water's dGH was 3 before the wonder shell, so it very well could have started out as a calcium deficiency. But I don't feel like that explains what's happening now and what's happening to the stem plants. I do know that some of the stem plants I bought were grown emmersed, so the transition might be the cause, but not all of them. I just don't want to kill everything 😂

They are some crushed coral I had added to try to stabilize the KH and prevent pH crashes. I bought a big bag for my axolotl's canister filter and had a little bit left over, but not enough to make a difference apparently as my dKH is still at 2 in the tank.

It is a 55 gallon tank, I gave nutes 5 pumps of easy green twice a week for the first week and a half, then I reduced it to 3 pumps after water changes x2 a week when the algea got crazy. My lights were 8 hours straight the first week, then I reduced to 3 hours on, 4 hours off, 3 hours on. I started noticing the algea reducing, so I increased the light to 4 hours on, 3 hours off, 4 hours on late last week My pH straight from the tap sit a little below 7 and usually dips to 6.8 after 24 hours in the tank. Tap water is dGH: 3-4 and dKH: 2, so pretty soft. There are no nitrates in the tap, but there are .25pom ammonia after declorinatation. Tank parameters: 0 ammonia 0 nitrites 20 nitrates, which means I missed food when I cleaned up after feeding the snails last night

https://imgur.com/a/rhf9MiP Here are some pictures, the anubis and the leafy ones are over a month in the tank. The stems and the one in the last photo are less than a week in the tank.