Plants vs Ammonia / Nitrites / Nitrates

[angelgirl66]

When I do a WC, I take out the thermometer out of my tank and use it to gauge the temperature of the water from my faucet. If its the same, then I can continue to fill my tank. If its not, keep changing the faucets and using the thermometer till it is the same.

 

[meegosh]

After quite a few years of doing water changes you will get the hang of matching the temperatures. I can usually get it to within a few degrees just by touch.

 

[F4A]

Yeah but can do a 10% change with cold water?

 

[Crepe]

Sure can....When I do WCs during the winter I use a hose attached to the sink. It lets me mix my water before hand...even when I use ice water I just trickle it in and let my heater make up the difference. Never drops more than 2-3degrees over an hour.

 

[meegosh]

Yeah but can do a 10% change with cold water?

How come you only have cold water? If it is really cold you could just let it sit out in a bucket and get up to room temperature.

 

[F4A]

How come you only have cold water? If it is really cold you could just let it sit out in a bucket and get up to room temperature.

I was told not to use water from the hot tap.

 

[meegosh]

Why is that? I match the temperature of my tanks the best I can buy touch (using hot and cold water) and add directly to the tank via a python. I'm not sure why you could not use hot water?

 

[F4A]

Some posts I found on the subject...

If I remember correctly, theres bacteria present in your hot water heater that arent present in cold water lines. They supposedly deplete water quality although im not sure how.

You shouldn't use warm or hot tap water because of the iron that can be inside your pipes.

There was a thread a while back about hot water heater water. The drawback that they had was that the water put in the tank seemed to have a low O2 count causing issues in a heavily stocked tank.

I also came across this...

If you already have fish in the tank water, new water must be left in buckets for at least 24 hours for the chlorine to evaporate

Can someone confirm if this is true because nothing is said on the water conditioner.

 

[fort384]

I have never had an issue using hot/cold mix... and I do 50% water changes on tanks with FW shrimp, which are very sensitive. I get the water temp as close as possible to the tank temp (using touch), dose with prime, and it goes right into the tank.

 

[F4A]

Fair enough, likewise with the water conditioner?

 

[fort384]

I don't know too many people who let FW sit for 24 hours before adding to the tank. A lot of people use pythons, where the tap water goes directly into the tank (treated with prime or another dechlor of course).

Personally, when I do water changes, it goes straight from the tap, into a bucket with some prime, and right into the tank.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

I never let the water sit 24 hours before I do the water change. I take out 50%-70% of the water, then set my faucet to the temp by touch like others mentioned, then fill it back up. While it's filling, I dose the tank with Prime. No issues what-so-ever. And most of my changes are closer to 70%.

 

[Crepe]

Some posts I found on the subject...
I also came across this...
Can someone confirm if this is true because nothing is said on the water conditioner.

Wow...that is some old literature. I have some old old books (90s) that suggest sitting the water out and/or spraying it via misting hose to diffuse the chlorine into a bucket. This was before dechlorinators were big I suppose (doesn't make much sense though, I remember using dechlorinator on all my tanks back then) .

The iron in your pipes isn't going to harm anything...because..we don't use iron in our pipes lol. We use copper which is very unreactive.

 

[F4A]

lol, ok thanks

 

[F4A]

I am having a re-think about some of my plants and I'm considering some small slow growing ones for the front. I would like to know if I cover 50-70% of the gravel with plants, is it necessary to keep removing them to hoover the gravel? What happens if I just don't hoover the gravel at all?

 

[fort384]

There is no need to move plants to use a gravel vac. It is still best to run the siphon over the tops of the plants and around the bases and any open gravel that there may be. You don't necessarily have to push the vac down into the gravel... the goal is to just get up any sediment that may have settled on the plants or substrate. I never uproot my plants when vac'ing... and in my tanks pretty much 100% of the substrate is covered with plants.

 

[AggieMel]

Just a little input on the original topic:

Plants will use Ammonia and Nitrate. Ammonia is preferred, and will be used first by plants, because they do not have to use energy to reduce it like they do Nitrate (this just deals with whether there are Hydrogens or Oxygens attached to the Nitrogen atom, and in what form N is used in the plant).

Nitrite, on the other hand, is toxic to plant roots, and will not be utilized by the plants.

If nutrients are limited, the bacteria will always out-compete plants, so you don't have to worry about plants messing up your cycle. If the Ammonia is there, your bacteria will utilize it before the plants can.

Source: several courses in Soil Microbiology and Soil Fertility.

"Trust me, I'm a scientist."

 

[Lonewolfblue]

There is no need to move plants to use a gravel vac. It is still best to run the siphon over the tops of the plants and around the bases and any open gravel that there may be. You don't necessarily have to push the vac down into the gravel... the goal is to just get up any sediment that may have settled on the plants or substrate. I never uproot my plants when vac'ing... and in my tanks pretty much 100% of the substrate is covered with plants.

Exactly. I never uproot any plants either, it's much healthier for the plants to leave them be and not uproot them all the time. For the vac, all you need to do is clean up the surface of the gravel and the plants lightly.

 

[kc2ped]

A couple of thoughts on this thread.

Do you know how much ammonia, or anything else, is in your tap water. I was doing frequent water changes trying to get my water, which is rock solid at 0.25 ppm ammonia, down to 0 ppm. Eventually I tested my tap water and found that it has 0.25 ppm ammonia in it. So all I was doing with my water changes was replacing old ammonia with new ammonia.

I would normally check the canister every 4 weeks but I have been doing weekly checks to remove the guppy fry. Taking out the foam pads and rinsing them with cold tap water. I would replace the filter wool or polishing pads with new. If necessary, rinsing the bio media with clean dechlorinated water. I also run a gravel vac around a small area once a week. I have no medication in the tank, although I have tried added API Bacteria to try kick-start the bio into action.

I am wondering if the method of cleaning the filter might be hurting the cycle. Everything I read says not to wash the filter in tap water but to use water from the tank, I guess to keep from killing the bacterial colonies that have built up in the media. They also say not to change floss/carbon cartridges and sponges at the same time because you are throwing out all of your bacteria. So i am suspecting that washing all of the filter at once will greatly reduce the amount of bacteria. My sponge filter said not to use hot or cold water on the sponge but water the same temperature as that in the tank from which the filter was removed.

[The above written by someone who may have cycled 1.5 tanks. When I was into Aquaria as a kid there was no nitrogen cycle]

 

[Lonewolfblue]

If you are cleaning all your filter media at the same time, yes, that will affect the cycle. Can even restart it if you lose too much of the beneficial bacteria.