Rookie issues

[Torrey]

On 6/22/2022 at 3:39 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

He added crushed coral to the HoB and got KH from 0 to about 20ppm.  Unfortunately with water changes and so forth it's back down to near 0 it seems.

I remember that, I thought I had responded at that time that adding to the tank instead of the HOB may be more effective and sustainable long term. I've been using crushed oyster shell as "white gravel" in my tanks (and in a bag on top of the UGF in another tank) for a slower dissolving, more sustainable option. The more acidic the water, the faster it dissolves, and more water changes removes it from the water column faster. No single solution will fix everything, every change we make (no matter how seemingly inconsequential) affects othre parameters. It's why going slow, and lots of observation time is the secret to success....

Due to my available resources, I have to look at:

• How will I use the least water?
• What is the most sustainable option?
• What keeps my costs down long term?

[Streetwise]

@Torrey, your three questions are excellent, and with a spin, apply to all hobbies.

[Mark C.]

Just an update. The 29 gallon tank is doing great. Haven’t lost any fish since the Rubbernose Pleco. I added an Oto and it’s doing great actually. Petco only had one and hasn’t gotten anymore in. I want to get probably 2 more. The 10 gallon tank still has an amount of ammonia in it but the fish are doing fine and it’s still crystal clear water. 
Everything in the 29 gallon is growing like crazy. Especially the plants. I’m gonna post a new picture and compare it to the old pic from this post at the very beginning. That Amazon Sword is growing like crazy and that’s the top runner to the left of it that I cut off and planted. 

[nabokovfan87]

Looks good! I am excited to see the progress. The before and after is really nice. The plant on the left is doing really well too.

I was watching one of the talks on the ACO members playlist and there was one by someone who keeps a lot of specialized plecos. They said that they can have acclimation issues but typically respond to clean water.  The same talk included a lot of conversation about clean water vs. good water parameters, but I imagine that's a very specific perspective and point to be made.  They didn't expand on the concept, but something to note and just a bit of information I wanted to share with you.

Hopefully it's helpful next time you try for a pleco.

[Mark C.]

I spoke too soon. My Oto died after like two weeks. Dang it 

[nabokovfan87]

Is it possible it was difficult for the oto to eat heavily or internal parasites?  Was the belly usually full?

Edited July 7, 2022 by nabokovfan87

[Mark C.]

On 7/7/2022 at 1:24 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Is it possible it was difficult for the oto to eat heavily or internal parasites?  Was the belly usually full?

Hard to tell man. He seemed to be eating good. I was putting algae wafers in there occasionally and they were disappearing. So either he was eating them or the mystery snails were. The mystery snails are doing great maybe I did just need to add one more of those?

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/7/2022 at 10:48 AM, Mark C. said:

The mystery snails are doing great maybe I did just need to add one more of those?

Could be.  Did the oto usually hang out on the glass or where?

It's pretty difficult to feed otos and have snails always scaring them off. Having rocks for them to graze on, back glass, and then feeding should keep them happy.  I wouldn't suggest to just dump food in, but if you have more otos in there try to get an idea for how full they look.

[Mark C.]

On 7/7/2022 at 1:51 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Could be.  Did the oto usually hang out on the glass or where?

It's pretty difficult to feed otos and have snails always scaring them off. Having rocks for them to graze on, back glass, and then feeding should keep them happy.  I wouldn't suggest to just dump food in, but if you have more otos in there try to get an idea for how full they look.

That was the only Oto that I had because I hadn't been able to find anymore at my local stores. They spent a lot of time on the glass but a lot of time he stayed on the Amazon Sword and most recently on the heater.

[nabokovfan87]

I'm assuming it was food, but it could've been just a simple acclimation issue.  Difficult to know.  I usually try to go off of their gill colors to keep track of stress on them.  I have one I can't find at all but was doing just fine for a few months.  The other 4 have no issues.

Any spikes on ammonia or nitrites?

[Mark C.]

On 7/7/2022 at 2:13 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I'm assuming it was food, but it could've been just a simple acclimation issue.  Difficult to know.  I usually try to go off of their gill colors to keep track of stress on them.  I have one I can't find at all but was doing just fine for a few months.  The other 4 have no issues.

Any spikes on ammonia or nitrites?

Nope. Water is great! Zero Ammonia. Zero Trites and about 30 to 40 ppm of Trates. Maybe I’ll just stick with snails. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/7/2022 at 11:22 AM, Mark C. said:

Nope. Water is great! Zero Ammonia. Zero Trites and about 30 to 40 ppm of Trates. Maybe I’ll just stick with snails. 

Snails help out with the algae for sure.  I would think that they might have a spike in some parameters just in general, meaning something like clean water will help the fish out. 

Maybe @Guppysnailhas some advice or experience here that would be beneficial.

I would just try to keep nitrates below 20 and see how much they rise week to week. If you're spiking really high, it might be a sign of too much bioload.   As for any other fish, do they seem healthy? Plants doing ok?

[Mark C.]

On 7/7/2022 at 3:39 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Snails help out with the algae for sure.  I would think that they might have a spike in some parameters just in general, meaning something like clean water will help the fish out. 

Maybe @Guppysnailhas some advice or experience here that would be beneficial.

I would just try to keep nitrates below 20 and see how much they rise week to week. If you're spiking really high, it might be a sign of too much bioload.   As for any other fish, do they seem healthy? Plants doing ok?

Yeah the plants and the other fish are doing great! The plants are eating the Trates up. Even dosing easy green, It takes two weeks for the Trates to get up to 40 or 50 ppm.

[Guppysnail]

My guess is the snails are the wafers @xXInkedPhoenixX can chime in as I have not kept too but I don’t remember mention of them eating commercial food only veggies in their oto journal. 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Guppysnail

[nabokovfan87]

Mine eat the hikari or sera spirulina tabs. Not the Xtreme ones.

 

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

@Guppysnail no, mine do rely now heavily on commercial foods (especially since there's now 70+ in one tank). But in this case yes, likely the snails ate the wafer. I usually recommend people feed Otos commercial foods at night when most every one else is inactive. Mine are raised on Hikari Algae wafers and now I have Repashy Super Green and Soilent- all of these things though would be prefered by things like Mystery snails not so much the Nerites though I occasionally find one in the feeding dish. I'm suspecting here it's just one of those things either the Oto ran out of food (and hadn't taken to the commercial) OR more likely if it wasn't in the tank for more than a month- it probably had issues it may not have survivied to begin with. 

[Mark C.]

So should I just get another mystery snail or two instead of trying to get any other algae eating fish? I’m having bad luck obviously. And the wafers I was feeding are the Hikari Wafers. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/7/2022 at 7:09 PM, Mark C. said:

So should I just get another mystery snail or two instead of trying to get any other algae eating fish? I’m having bad luck obviously. And the wafers I was feeding are the Hikari Wafers. 

I would wait to change anything until nitrates are consistently lower week to week. If they are rising exponentially, more snails will just make it worse.

[Mark C.]

On 7/7/2022 at 10:11 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I would wait to change anything until nitrates are consistently lower week to week. If they are rising exponentially, more snails will just make it worse.

Naw I’m not having an issue with Trates getting super high quickly. It takes a good two weeks to get up there above 40 ppm

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

I would recommend Nerites over Mystery Snails. Tho Mystery are great, they are not the best algae eaters and require supplemental foods. Nerites don't, are excellent algae eaters and are very low bioloads. 

[Torrey]

On 7/7/2022 at 8:09 PM, Mark C. said:

So should I just get another mystery snail or two instead of trying to get any other algae eating fish? I’m having bad luck obviously. And the wafers I was feeding are the Hikari Wafers. 

Otos are like shrimp, in that experienced keepers won't add otos (or shrimp) to a tank less than 6 months old, to ensure the otos don't starve. Their primary food really is biofilm. They can eat toher things, just like toddlers can eat lots of things (pencil eraser, pennies, tiny plastic toys, dog food, cat food, fish food), but the things aren't necessarily meeting their nutritional needs/aren't sufficiently bio-available.

Sadly, there hasn't been a lot of research into the function of the gut biome in otocinclus until the last 5 years. Much of the conjecture, that the biome of the otocinclus is evolved to support an animal that is constantly eating seems to be holding up in the research. It is [apparently] possible to starve an oto to the point the gut biome of bacteria will crash, and without sufficient microbiofilm already being established in the tank for the oto to recolonize it's gut (and apparently it needs to be a wide variety of bacterial biofilms), the oto can eat and still starve to death.

A tank that is established for over a year is going to have a wider variety of available biofilms, grown from multiple different bacterial cultures, in response to the foods that go into the tank (so the right bacteria to break down the food). As this is still an new area of study in humans (that fungi and bacteria in soil are transferred to the human gut to establish a biome to help the human gut digest and absorb foods that are grown locally), it is still considered cutting edge research and hard to find for specific, non-human, species.

I stick to snails (now that I have learned they aren't pests) and amphopods for newer tanks, and branch into shrimp and other 'sensitive' bottom feeders in tanks that are a minimum of 6 months old.... (older and more seasoned is better)

[Torrey]

@Mark C. it took me a while to find, but this is what the water looks like where otos grow in the wild:

 

[nabokovfan87]

In this video....
 

Or on one of the videos made during this trip, Cory had mentioned that they typically find them on wood. So another great thing to do for any oto tank is to have wood in there. Just a note that might not be common knowledge.

Nice video @Torrey! I really love being able to see where fish come from.