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Dunno. Depends on the size of the tanks and amount of plants. I just add a good squirt every so often from the bottle I have on top of the tank. Realize I don't ever really measure anything. Also, if you are fertilizing it is very important no to have an carbon/charcoal media in your filters. It will suck the fertilizer right out of the water.Skippy the one eyed Beagle said:
Co2 is amazing. It's like adding crack and steroids for plants to the water. It's also expensive. A decent rig will run close to $300. I don't use Co2, but a good buddy does. He's trimming plants back once a week so his angels have room to swim. To keep the algae in check go with frequent water changes and use a phosphate remover in your filters. Gotta keep the phosphate low...
oops. ok so i need to take the carbon out of my filter. do i replace it with something else?
Sand is just fine. If you want to change it up, that's up to you, but sand is fine.
Just kick up the lighting over what came with the tank. Go find a compact florescent or T5 mini light system for the tank. Oh, and buy good bulbs but do so online. In the store they will rape you on cost.
I would. Don't want to have to be topping off all the time. Also will keep any stray particles from landing in the tank like say pledge or windex. Just a speck of that lands in a 10 gallon tank and you have problems. The smaller the tank the less room to wiggle...
Shouldn't be. I tend to over filtrate my tanks.
I can't imagine buying a $300 Co2 unit for a 10 gallon tank. It's not necessary. If you feel compelled to use Co2, use the Co2 tablets...
It is a concern. There are obviously some water quality issues here. Do regular water changes and you should be fine.
I replaced all my charcoal with Fluval bio wheels. But I have canister filters on all my tanks. Add more floss if you have a hang on the tank filter...
What's considered frequent water changes. Right now im doing 25% every week to 10 days. Is that cool or would i have to ratchet them up? What form doesthe phosphate remover come in?
I have an aquaclear 50.I just did a search online and cant see the bio wheels as an available media
Phosphate remover comes in a variety of forms. Usually it's just in a cotton pouch that you put in your filter. Your water change schedule is great...Maybe you had problems because the tank was near a vent or got direct sun. Or maybe someone dusted around it or decided to squirt windex on the front of the tank to clean it...
Biowheels wouldn't do much for an aquaclear 50. You could only put a few in. You would need more than that. Just use an extra foam insert.
why would windex on the front of the tank cause problems? I just clean it with a moist cloth, but im just curious. That black and white sand sounds cool (i cant see it though as imageshack is blocked here at work) I've been looking for a way to make my substrate a little more interesting. I like the look of the pure sand, but it doesnt really look all that natural in a freshwater tank(especially if i plant it) I was thinking of mixing in some light colored stoney looking gravel. I'll check out the pictures tonight.
What have we been discussing about water quality in most of this thread? Ammonia. As in how many PPM or Parts Per Million. One speck of windex in the tank and you just spiked your ammonia. In a 10 gallon tank it will probably kill some fish. In a 100 gallon it wouldn't be as bad. But the lesson here is Windex is like a gigantic bottle of toxic waste to fish....They make specific glass cleaners just for tanks that don't have ammonia.
Ummm, I'm sure you never had gas in them........
They've never had anything in them but aquarium water. Used them for the last two moves. I think I should buy some more. They are convenient as hell. Being able to cap a lid on them makes them easy to transport in a car. They have handles to carry out to a car. Much better than buckets. And they are like $6 a piece. I highly recommend them.Ummm, I'm sure you never had gas in them........
I think the Chemipure Elite is the best chemical phosphate remover out there. I'm sure you can use it for fresh and salt water. You purchase about a 12oz plastic tub and it comes already in a sock. It should last for about 6 months without any sort of washing out or fiddling.link
I bought some stuff in bulk from Drforstersmith.com. It is good for both fresh and salt (as I believe they all are). I use 1 tbsp for every 25 gallons. It is working pretty well in the short term. I will definitely give the Chemipure a shot when I run out of this stuff. I don't have a lot of experience with different kinds of phosphate removers. I've only tried 2 kinds.
yeah, i realize that windex IN th tank would be bad. I guess its just the idea of having it around the tank.
Got any gaps on the top of the tank? Got a ceiling fan in the room that my blow that misty windex around? Very dangerous stuff. If you have to use it, spray it on a paper towel away from the tank and wipe it down with the paper towel and dry with another one to get all the ammonia off the outside. Don't want to touch the outside of the tank and then put that hand in the water right after spraying windex on it...
so, what happened? Are we all good now? Have things stabilized?
So, did all the cories die? Basically everything that resides along the bottom of the tank? That's problematic. What chemicals are you using in the tank. Most chemicals tend reside in heavier amounts along the bottom which is why when you treat a tank with meds you have to cut it in half if you have bottom fish.
No. Not all. About half. (Started with 4 pandas and 5 peppers) The clown loaches are also fine. The blue rams also spend most of their time down there. The only chemicals that go in the tank is the water conditioner.
Not real active. Tooling around at the bottom when feeding and the occasional rocket to the top of the tank to get a gulp of air. They should forage for food but like all catfish would rather do so under the cover of darkness
If that's the case, I would wait a week or two and go get yourself a nice red tailed shark to replace the one you lost. I almost typed Red Tailed Cat. Avoid the red tailed cat unless you have something larger than 300 gallons...TLEF316 said:
I clean my sand in a 40 gallon Sterilite container. Add the sand and run the garden hose through it constantly draining the cloudy water into the backyard grass until there's no more cloudy water. I was told this would not kill off much beneficial bacteria and was a necessary step every now and then. Returning it to the tank with no cloudiness and knowing all that crap is out of there is nice. I've never had a problem with fish loss doing this.
Ugh, things just keep getting better. Now it looks like one of my rams has a slightly swollen right eye. After a quick bit of research, it seems that its either fight damage (possibly from the other ram?) or a pop eye, which is caused by poor water quality. I don't understand how the water could still be bad. Its been almost 2 weeks since i cleaned out every bit of dead plant in there. I haven't been overfeeding. I added a new filter, and did a 25% water change on Saturday. I just can't understand how all these issues are popping up now. I went 6 months with no problems at all.edit: Maybe I'm just paranoid and imagining things.
I was told to use a standard syphon tube with the fat tube down in the sand but when the sand starts moving up the tube too high to kink the hose which will maintain the syphon but stop the suction and all the sand will drop then unkink and proceed. Haven't done a water change since going to the sand. Gonna clean out the cannister filter tonight. Maybe this weekend hit it with a water change...
I've got a yellow lab that has one eye that is fatter than the other. Not like full blown pop eye but it's noticeable if you look hard. Most of the time I don't even notice it and he doesn't seem to either. It can happen....
Plant the tank and then add the red tail. With plenty of stuff to swim around it will be much harder for him to beat up on guys. I never noticed my red tail sharks in the past being all that aggressive. And Clown Loaches should P0WN him. They have a little bone they can stick out from their Operculum (Gill Cover) that's like a stiletto. You will never see it but if you handle a clown loach in your hand you could be sliced pretty easily and not know it till you saw the blood. IF they wanna whip some ### they can. You can put them in with Africans if you want to...
Yes, I've read all this about the loaches in the past. My old shark (RIP) got along swimmingly with the clowns. They chilled all day in the rock cave. They also became a lot less shy after i introduced him. I may get another one. we'll see. Any thoughts on the blue gouramis? I figure they wouldn't do very well with all the active tetras and danios.O yeah, i will definitely be going with cories again. Maybe Sterbai or something similar.
Blue Gouramis can to be decent size such as more than 4 inches. I hear they have some dwarf blues out now that are pretty sweet that should not get bigger than 2 inches. I have some dwarf gouramis called flame gouramis which are a deep golden orange with a neon blue dorsal fin. I'd never seen them before. Probably a hybrid between a dwarf blue and a dwarf honey gourami.
I have in the past. Buddy of mine got a dozen wild caught fronts about 3 years ago. Still has 9 in a 225. He basically has two gigantic males and the rest are females or males that mask their sex by not developing a hump in order not to get crushed by the dominant males. His two males were so big that he actually had to pull one and drop it in a different tank as they were battling all the time.They are really sweet but don't expect to have any plants. They will shred them. They are also fairly docile for their size (males can get close to a foot and females about 7 inches). They are harem breeders. You want 1 male and at least 3 females. He breeds with one and before she is ready to breed again he will be. If there are more females he will go get with them. If not he will beat on the female he bred with and eventually kill her. She will try to protect the fry. He will try to eat the fry so she will breed again. The result is she will get killed. But if he can breed with one, go get with another, and then a 3rd, by the time he's ready to go again the first female will be beyond the point of protecting the fry and be good to go. They need a ton of space but the good news is that as long as the tank mates aren't too small you can put just about any peacock, lab, julidicrhomis, neolampralogus or lampralogus in with them. Even Altralampralogus such as A. Calvus. They are generally really expensive too. Hard to find ones at 1 inch that are less than $35/per
Gouramis of any type will not hole up in a cave. They stick to the middle to upper reaches of the tank almost exclusively.
yeah, i was referring to the clowns holing up. it would be great if they would just cruise all day.
I have a connection that gets down around $10 a piece for fry several times a year; if anyone is interested in Frontosa, I'll dig around for this guy.
There's a pet store in St. Louis where they are selling yellow fin fronts for 4.99/per. I'm not kidding. They guy works at the store and has some highly prolific Fronts that he can't sell fast enough. I was there on Sat, but when they get bigger my plants are a salad bar....
Yeah, usually when you treat a tank with medication to try to cure a fish you normally kill that fish you are trying to heal and other fish will probably die as well. Normally you have to cut the meds back in half if you have bottom fish. And in half again if you have scaleless fish. So now you are using quarter doses which aren't enough for the sick fish and still too much for the bottom and scaleless fish. And if you have carbon in your filters it's removing the medication from the tank before it works. A 10 gallon quarantine tank can be perfect for treating fish. No light. no gravel. A single rock or piece of wood to hide behind to reduce the stress on the fish. A filter and a heater. Fill the tank with water from your main tank. Crank up the heat, treat the tank, drop the fish in and pray for the best. If you can't do a quarantine tank there is another option that is a little more dangerous. Say a fish has ick and you can't treat the tank. Take a small glass bowl and fill it with water from the tank. Now mix in a good table spoon of sea salt and enough Nox Ich for 5 gallons of water. Net the fish and dip him in that bowl for about 30 seconds. Do this at least 3 times a day. Make sure you have some chemical in the tank that promotes slime coat growth as you will be peeling that away with the nettings. That Clown Knife I've had for 20 years was the first fish I ever cured of a disease and it was ich and I did it with this method. This is by no means scientific and was invented from the mind of a 15 year old punk kid. The method is pretty stressful to the fish so it should only be a last resort. Oh, and don't use your moms tupperware. Nox Ich dyes the plastic a nasty blue color!?!?!?!
That light rig is awesome. The T5 bulbs are better than anything out there in terms of lighting a tank. Sure the Halides are better for corals and such, but the T5's are sweet and a 1/5 of the cost. I've seen this light side by side against a compact florescent and it is much better. The colors of the fish are a lot better.What I would do is see what kind of results you get with this light alone. If you need more light add your light back to the top of the tank as well. It's kind of a pain to have to lift the second light strip up to feed the fish but it may be necessary to get good plant growth. If you are happy with the results from this rig then go ahead and use your light as a moonlight set up.TLEF316 said:
If it's at 8PPM and you trust the kit I would do daily changes. Test before you change then test after the change and see if there is any change in the result. Also what kind of filtration do you use? It almost sounds like your bio filtration isn't holding up well, or you have something big that's decaying
The light you picked should be just fine, I have grown everything in the tank from about 3 stems to where it's at now with only pretty much the light. Long story short I had a lot going on in the last 4 months and haven't done much in the way of ferts and was really surprised at how well they did.Also, I had 3 Powder Blue dwarf Gouramis, 3 Honey dwarfs, 4 Ottos and a pair of Bolivian Rams and one of the Powders killed everything but one Honey. So take that for what's it worth, I would never put a Powder in with anything else again, he cost me almost 50 bucks in fish.Also to note, my water tests damn near perfect and I can't for the life of me keep Blue Rams. They ALWAYS die on me. Finally got the tank finished up today. Trimmed up the plants, and re stocked after my move and my Powder murderer spree. Niw I sit with 5 Flame Gouramis, 3 Honey dwarf Gouramis (1 mature 2 juveniles), 1 Otto (left over), 3 Green Cories and 1 bristlenose pleco. I will try and get a pic up tonight.
