Tank Overhaul Log - 29 Gallon

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I agree that your aquarium is probably closer to a small aquarium than a large one.

You may not need the Nitrates and Phosphates right now, but if your bioload stays the same while your plant mass increases it could reach the point where your Nitrates and Phosphates start bottoming out. If this occurs you would need to start dosing them. Maintaining at 10ppm really isn't that high.

My inclination would be to get all four ferts, since if stored properly they should keep pretty much indefinately. When I was getting started I bought each fert separately as I found I needed it. Wasted money on shipping and the plants continued to suffer while I was waiting for the later fertilizers to arrive. If I could go back I would just have gone ahead and gotten them all at once.
 
Cool, so it sounds like a combo-pack would be the way to go.

It's also time for me to get some new Prime. I wish it came in bottles larger than 250 ml. Though I suppose that if it did I wouldn't be able to use it before the expiration date. Does it even have an expiration date?

The problem with ordering things online is that I always want to add more to get a good deal on shipping but then I end up spending more money on the extras that I add. :)
 
They do sell prime in 500ml bottles, but for some reason F&S doesn't carry it. Big Als does, however. I'm not aware of it expiring.

What I tend to do is start up a shopping cart at F&S and let it run until I've got a good amount of stuff in it. For instance, there's $88 in my F&S cart for the past 2 weeks pending purchase. lol
 
Yah, I know that letting it run feeling. Next thing you know there's $200 worth of things you just have to have! :silly:
 
Perfectly normal, so I'm going to assume that the Oto didn't die of water quality issues.
Parasites and starvation are pretty common killers of otos. They're wild caught, so many of them come from the store with a load of parasites, and the store keeps the display tanks squeaky clean, so they don't have much algae in their bellies when they come home either.

If you decide to replace the otos: Set up a QT, and purposely let it get all green. Leave the lights on overly long, leave food to rot in it, whatever works for getting green film everywhere. Then get your otos, put them in the QT and start a preventative parasite treatment. They'll fatten up on the algae, and you can slowly introduce them to less native foods like zuchini. When they've been in there a month and are readily eating food other than algae, then move them to the busy community tank.

If I decide to add any fish to my shrimp tank, these little guys are on the top of my list.
 
Wow, great advice, thanks!

I'm hoping to get some other fish first, like some zebra danios and possibly some cories. But when I do decide to get some more otos I'll definitely take your advice and fatten them up and de-parasite them before introduction to my tank.
 
Alas, I had a sad thing happen last night. I had been raising a single glofish that was the result of a spawning from some fish I had taken back to the LFS. I really liked the little guy as he had appeared as a miracle of sorts. Well, he had been in a breeder net hanging on the edge of the tank and when I did a PWC a few nights ago I raised the water level too high and he escaped over the lip of the cage. I thought maybe he would be okay as he was getting pretty big by now but the next day I couldn't find him anywhere. I suspect someone in my tank made him into a snack. I know that it's perfectly natural for that to happen, and even half expected it but I'm still sad that he's gone. And I'm feeling a little mad at my other fish for eating him. I suspect I need to just mourn for a few days and then I'll be over it.

At least now I can move forward without worrying for him every day and without the breeder net mucking up the aquascaping.
 
I know that it's perfectly natural for that to happen, and even half expected it but I'm still sad that he's gone. And I'm feeling a little mad at my other fish for eating him.
I once aquired a hodgepoge collection of fish including an angel. I really wanted to have a community tank, but he ate all my new aquisitions. I eventually traded him in at the store for some ghost shrimp. I didn't really blame the angel, he was doing what comes natural to him, but I had to make a decision about the kind of tank I wanted.
 
Yeah, I've been trying hard to get a group of fish together that I like but there are always compatibility issues, even after doing my research. I'm starting to get MTS I think because there's so many different fish I want to keep but they don't all play nice together.

For now, the community seems stable, which is nice because it means I can turn my eye to adding new plants instead of new fish. I think I need to add lots more plants at this point to get the look I'm going for. I'm too impatient to wait for the ones I have to "fill-in".
 
Update:

I got a few java ferns from Atl300zx in the barter/trade section. Yay, more plants! I moved some things around in the scape yesterday and made quite a mess of things. Luckily, my PWC took care of most of the mess. I'll try to get some pics tonight to post.

A strange thing was happening with my filter though. I've had a ECCO 2322 running for the past month or so on a somewhat low flow. I decided I wanted to up the flow a bit and so opened the ball valve a little bit more last night. When I did that all this white paper-like material flew out of the outflow tube. It really shocked me. I tried scooping as much of the junk out of the water with a fish net as I could. Could it be disintegrating filter material? Or some sort of weird algae/fungus? I'd really like to be able to up my flow a bit but I'm scared the white stuff is dangerous to my fish and I don't want to spew more of it into the tank. I guess I should really open the sucker up and figure out where this stuff is coming from. Anybody ever experience this kind of thing before?
 
If you would like a nice spray bar, I use these and LOVE them:

Eheim Water System Installation Sets

I really can't help with the 'white' stuff. I know you will get algae buildup within the filter expecially within the tubing, but that is normally a brownish color.
 
Did it disolve in water? Mineral buildup?

Any way, opening up the filter and rinsing out all the media should take care of that.
 
Hmm, thanks for that link. I think maybe it is the same as the filter in question was only hooked up a month ago and so is currently cycling (I've been running my already cycled HOB the whole time though so no need to worry about having a cycle in the tank). It doesn't dissolve in the water or at least not as far as I can tell.

As for spraybars, I've looked into the Eheim ones but I want to go with a DIY. I have the piece of PVC but I need to drill holes, get a plug for the end and hook it up.
 
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