Stupid Question

[Skyrmir]

Okies, I just realized something. Cories + shrimp pellets + gravel substrate. Just how are the corries supposed to lift small boulders to get to the choice bits of shrimp pellet that they invariably spray all over the place?

And seeing as the gravel is avoided during water changes...there's probably a TON of decaying shrimp pellet in that gravel. Just a note, also the good bacteria attach themselves to the gravel. You'd have to scrub pretty good to actually remove it, so vacuuming shouldn't hurt at all. And if my suspicion is correct, there's a bunch of gunk down in that gravel feeding the green algea instead of the cories.

Just my 2 cents from watching my own cories turn shrimp pellets into huge swathes of shrimp pellet bits, then vacuuming them up. I use sand myself so the cories actually dig about 1/4 of an inch into the sand to suck up the bits they scatter.

 

[Nick & Anne]

HI,

Thanks for all the help, we are going to do another large water change and cover them up for three days but this time before we cover them over we are going to take everything we can out and vacuum the whole gravel, before putting the stuff back and then covering them . We will let you know later what happens.

The lfs said the water was fine, did not give a reading, they used the dip strips. Our water test results were stated in an earlier post and have been the same for some time now.

 

[Nick & Anne]

Stupid Question - update

Hi,

Well here we are a week later, we did a 50% water change, took everything we could out and vac'ed up really well, there was a lot of rubbish under the decorations that we had not thought about before, we will be a bit more thorough in the future.
We covered up for three days, still a little cloudy but a white cloud rather than green, fed them a small amount and covered them back up for another two days. The result, beautiful clear water!! Yippee.
We also bought some nylon type filter material, almost like cottonwool to go inside the filter to catch the debris and when we took it out today after doing another 50% water change the top half was black.

We can rest easy knowing that the mafia has not taken over as an earlier poster thought as when we could now see clearly into the water we found that one of the Panda Cory's was missing, when we did or head count the other one must have been darting about quickly trying to put us off the scent that he had eaten his mate earlier for breakfast, burp

After the water change we also found a small neon tetra that had not survived the stressful few weeks.

If it works, we have posted a picture of what the tank looks like now, never had a picture of how it looked before but imagine looking at a green wall and you will be almost there.

Thanks for all your comments, jokes and serious advice, hopefully the green water will be a thing of the past and it was just a case of bad housekeeping and slightly overfeeding.

Nick & Anne

 

[Jarred Darque]

I didnt read the last few posts but incase everyone is stil lwondering why there are no nitrates...there wont be. The tank has an algae bloom. they suck up any form of nitrogen like a sponge

 

[tracygh]

Hey Nick&Anne, where in Alberta are you? We just moved back to Ontario a few years back, spent 10 years in Banff and Canmore. LOVED it.

Tracy

 

[Nick & Anne]

Hi Tracy,

We are in central Alberta, near to Red Deer. We moved here from England three years ago and love it too!

Nick & Anne

 

[tracygh]

I had a feeling you were British... just some of the phrasing you have used. My parents are both British, born and raised in Hove, so there were some familiar sounding tidbits here and there...
Welcome to the board, and the Country !

Tracy

 

[Nick & Anne]

Hi Tracy,

We live in Central Alberta just near to Red Deer. We moved here from England 3 years ago and love it too.

Nick & Anne