Just a little morning pearling in the pea puffer desktop tank.

[Phantom240]

My pea puffer tank is starting to look much better now that I've done a bunch of trimming and removing of plants that I no longer wanted. Still needs to grow in a bit and figure out why some of my dwarf sag is melting back, but I found the pearling of the plants to be almost therapeutic to watch. Enjoy. 
 

 

[Gator]

I recently did a major overhaul of my main tank where I uprooted all of the plants, stuck my hand down into the substrate (Eco-complete fine-grained planted aquarium substrate) to stir up the substrate to remove any methane (swamp gas) build up, luckily there was very little.

Just as soon as I was finished, I noticed that all of my Crypts and my Amazon were all pearling, WOW!

I've seen my Amazon and Jungle Val pearling several times before W/O stirring the gravel back in the '90's. I asked a Fisheries biologist what it meant, he stated that it means that I have done something right, either I had the correct ratio of fish to plants or the correct amount of nutrients for the plants, or both.

So, you're doing great, keep up the good work.

Sincerely

Gator 

[Phantom240]

Thanks! This tank has always had very active pearling, and I think the substrate has a lot to do with it, as well as my light (Dennerle Scaper's Soil and Finnex Planted+). I recently redeployed CO2 and EI dosing to get the plants to fill back in. 

What's a little annoying though is that when everything starts getting happy and the tank turns into 5 gallons of sprite, with oxygen bubbles everywhere, the canister filter tends to suck them up and it causes the impeller to burp a bunch of air every so often. 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Phantom240

[Phantom240]

Think I figured out my dwarf sag melting issue... Nitrates have completely bottomed out. 

[Gator]

I lived in Orlando, FL back in the '70's, '80's, and '90's, I had I had 20 tanks at one time. In most of the tanks that had plants, I used HOB filters and I sometimes had pearling, but never to the point that my tank looked like tonic water, or sprite, if you prefer.

The only 5 gallon tank I had also had plants, but I used a sponge filter in this one to breed Bettas, I never saw any pearling in this tank and the plants in this tank didn't do very well now that I think about it, maybe because the sponge filter added more oxygen than the plants could produce. What do I know?

 I had a 20G H that had an under-gravel filter where I couldn't grow plants. Either an under-gravel filter puts too much oxygen into an aquarium that doesn't allow CO2 to get to the plants or the un-natural flow of water down through the roots kills the plants, and it may be a combination of the two. I heard once back then that I could put the plants down into the gravel still in their pots and they'd stay alive, but I never tried it.

You have a canister filter on a 5G tank? I didn't know they made canister filters that small.

I have two canister filters (Marineland C-220, made for 60G tanks), one is used on a 29G tank and the other is on standby in case this one dies. I don't have snails so the one I'm using has lasted 10 years past the warranty period, I still have the receipts from when I bought them, but the receipts wouldn't do any good now. I love canister filters, but the only time mine burps, as you call it, and for lack of a better term, that's what I'll also call it, is when I clean the filter since I have to shut off the flow of water after un-plugging the filter, cleaning the filter, refilling the filter before I reattach the hoses, and plugging it in.

I have two 10G tanks that have an Aqua-Tech, 10-20 HOB filter on each and I have plants in each tank.  I have pool filter sand in one and standard aquarium gravel in the other, but I've never seen any of the plants in either of these tanks pearling...yet.

 

[Koi]

@Gator If you have a decent amount of plants, a large water change might be able to get you that pearling effect.

[Gator]

Thank you.

I don't really have a lot of plants in this tank, but I wanted to loosen the gravel so roots can spread, and discovered that I had one small area that had developed small pockets of methane. If I had used a gravel vac, it would have sucked out all of the substrate since it is such a fine grain black sand.

This isn't the first time I have seen these plants pearling and I hope it isn't the last time, but it's the first time I've seen them pearling after a water change, I used to have Jungle Val that seemed to always be pearling, I should have kept them. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20.

[Phantom240]

On 7/17/2021 at 5:03 PM, Gator said:

 

You have a canister filter on a 5G tank? I didn't know they made canister filters that small.

I have two canister filters (Marineland C-220, made for 60G tanks), one is used on a 29G tank and the other is on standby in case this one dies. I don't have snails so the one I'm using has lasted 10 years past the warranty period, I still have the receipts from when I bought them, but the receipts wouldn't do any good now. I love canister filters, but the only time mine burps, as you call it, and for lack of a better term, that's what I'll also call it, is when I clean the filter since I have to shut off the flow of water after un-plugging the filter, cleaning the filter, refilling the filter before I reattach the hoses, and plugging it in.

 

It's a ZooMed Nano 10. Definitely a bit of a chore to maintain due to its size and peculiar, ass-backward flow, but it keeps things nice and tidy. 

https://zoomed.com/nano-10-external-canister-filter/

[Phantom240]

Oh and after a bit of time with the light on, this is what my soda water oxygen bubbles do… accumulate on the intake prefilter, and eventually get sucked into my filter lol

[Gator]

When my plants are pearling, what I see is a line of small bubbles going from the plants' leaves to the surface. Depending on the location of the plant in relation to the filter outflow, sometimes those bubbles rise diagonally, but always in a line with each other. What's really cool is when I'll have plants in two different locations pearling at the same time, and the bubbles are going in different directions, but I've never had any bubbles get sucked into the pre-filter. I don't think those bubbles that do are going to hurt anything, the nitrifying bacteria in your pre-filter and filter need oxygen too.

I once tried to make CO2 using a 2 liter soda bottle, bakers yeast, sugar, and water, I guess it worked fine for a while but the yeast took over and made my water extremely cloudy. I couldn't see any fish unless they swam right up against the glass and I couldn't see any plants unless their leaves were against the glass. I'm still using the same canister filter that I used then, but what I did was put an air stone close to the intake so some of those bubbles would be sucked into the filter restoring the nitrifying bacteria and my water was perfectly clear again in two days. Surprisingly, I didn't lose a single fish or plant.

My point being, you're doing great.

Sincerely

Gator

[Phantom240]

Lol I’ve heard many stories of yeast co2 kits filling tanks with cloudy yeast, and they never get old.

[Gator]

It was definitely a learning experience at the time and yeah, I can laugh about it now. I also ask myself, though I know that yeast does produce CO2 in the right conditions, why did I believe that CO2 from yeast was a good idea for an aquarium?