Soil under substrate volcano ERUPTION!

[schoeplein]

If you have organic soil under your substrate, make sure you poke it with a spike, preferably one of those grill forks. That will release any gas pockets from the decaying matter in your soil. It will prevent the build up that caused this to happen!







Just finished a 20% PWC, opened up the skimmer flow, and crossing my fingers. I'm guessing I really didn't want a shiny black floor... looks like I'm going for the "natural" look, now. Gonna have to do another change and purge my canister in the next day or so, too.

 

[schoeplein]

Another pic of the devastation.

 

[Mebbid]

Haha wow, that's one Heck of a mess

 

[Sk3lly]

Nice tank ? haha.

No seriously WOW i never knew that can happen!! Gutted for you

 

[Brookster123]

I could have sworn I recommended the poking haha, sorry that happened, hopefully no major damage and it's all settled by the a.m.

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[MeCasa]

Never took it serious before, but now I'm thinkin' I might occasionally poke mine............

 

[schoeplein]

Brookster, you did, and I had been. But apparently not enough and not in all areas. A small mountain formed in the back of the tank and popped right in front of me like an adolescent's infected pimple. I probably should have gone for another 20-40 lbs of sand, too.

My danios are acting like it's the coolest thing ever. DG's are scared of their own shadows, this isn't helping. My rams aren't even phased -- seriously, those guys don't give a s*.

 

[Brookster123]

That's carzy.. I never knew it could go boom boom like that.. what are you going to do??

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[schoeplein]

I planned to have the entire floor covered in plants, so this ruining the look of my floor isn't much of a big deal, if at all. I'm mostly worried it scared my fish bad enough, and kicked up enough funk into the water to harm my fish.

Most of my middle and front plants need to be replanted. It seemed to cascade out from the back middle towards the front, uprooting nearly every plant I'd put in in the last two weeks (staro, cardinalis, a few ferns) as well as most of my crypts.

I've killed the lights to calm the fish, and I'm going to wait until tomorrow to try and replant everything. Probably a good time to trim my stem growths, and any dead leaves all in one go.

The biggest pain is the floating wood chips. They'll sink eventually, but right now they're showing me where my water is stagnant. Silver lining? I was able to skip most of them, the rest will be sucked into the overflow skimmer on my cannister's input tube.

Wednesday I'll definitely need to open up my cannister to dump the mass of wood shavings that have assuredly collected at the bottom. Also a good time to recharge one of my bags of Purigen, and add the new filter floss I picked up to the empty chambers.

Sucks, man. All my plants were looking great with the new light. Now they're covered in debris. I'm a little phased, but resilient.

Lesson learned, that's for sure.

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[Brookster123]

Well... it's more an excuse to tinker in the tank.. not always a bad thing..who's the deal with wood chips? ? Ph downer?

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[schoeplein]

They're apart of the potting soil, apparently. The "mud" (dirt) has mostly stayed under the substrate. PH isn't really a concern for me until I'm pumping raw CO2 into the tank. Mild fluctuations between 6.4 and 7.5 aren't going to hurt what I have in the tank (input water vs tank water). They're fragments and not an entire piece of driftwood so again, not a concern.

The small size of the particles is an issue, I'm sure. Just hoping it gets filtered quick. I wish I had an unwashed cloth to help scoop and skim the floating stuff.

It's already cleared out mostly. A light fog to the water and I still have some floaters... It'll come around.

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[schoeplein]

Apparently corys love digging through sand, dirt, and especially the wood debris. Stirs things up a bit, but it gets filtered quick.

I'm having to poke the soil near daily to keep the swelling of the substrate down. Kind of amazing how much decomposed matter is down there, and so far I haven't had any spikes in readings. 0's across the board.

Every couple days I'm also lightly "shaking" each plant to knock of the build up of debris on the leaves. If they could handle the power of direct flow from my canister jets, I'd angle the pipes into the plants...

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[Brookster123]

Try a power head, I had the same issue and it helped tremendously

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[schoeplein]

Suggested powerhead? I'm guessing something with pretty low flow?

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[Brookster123]

I had a koralia 240ish in my 29, it moved water but all my fish were ok with it..

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[schoeplein]

Nice suggestion. I'll have to order one when I get paid on Friday.

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[schoeplein]

Ugh. Wish I hadn't used so much potting mix, or found a organic soil that didn't have massive amounts of manure in it. The wood debris is insane. I have to do a pwc every time I poke the soil now. I'm hoping it's less than two weeks until I can suck all this sh* off the top of the sand. It's a dusty mess and stresses the crap out of some of my fish. Honestly I'm amazed, AMAZED, that nothing has perished. Not a single neon, not any of my rams. And my plants are still growing!

I'll probably hold off on the powerhead until I can get most of this crap out of the tank.

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[Brookster123]

It doesn't seem all that crazy actually, I fish ponds and lakes.that have zero visibility due to suspended particles and what not....the fish all look healthy and fat.. have no trouble locating my rubber worms either.. if anything you're giving them a more natural habitat...

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[schoeplein]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who fishes and keeps fish. Is this the only pet keeping where you maintain an amazing habitat for your pets, and catch and eat their relatives?

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[Brookster123]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who fishes and keeps fish. Is this the only pet keeping where you maintain an amazing habitat for your pets, and catch and eat their relatives?

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I'm more catch and release, only because I'm mainly freshwater bass.. i have had some fresh caught stripped bass on the Cape and boy was that something.. i do find keeping fish as pets to extremely rewarding.. as a kid I'd always jump in the lake with a mask to explore the crevices I.pulled fat ol' bass from earlier.. underwater structure fascinates me, what draws certain fish to certain features or structure..cool stuff!!

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