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liquid plants
I just removed some biomedia from the system when I decided add more floss to the filter. What a spike! But it was quick, all levels below .25 ppm and still dropping (well, I can't measure that small but it stands to reason). Still, it was disturbing to see so many leaves turn into mush! The whole thing just started four days ago.
On the whole, though, all is going well. I've got approximately a scad of fishes and a load of plants and invertebrates in there. My filter has proven inadequate as a source of turbulence to aerate as the amount of hard-to reach mulm increases and as more gunk is getting digested by the sand. So, I've added an airstone and have a valve in the air line so it just sizzles a few bubbles, enough to circulate water up to the surface.
All my black worms stick their tails out of the substrate and my MTS climb the walls up to the surface if the oxygen is low or maybe the CO2 is high. It happened twice and once some of the fish were gasping, though not many. Still, I felt guilty. Aeration cleared up the problem twenty minutes after I had discovered it.
I saw my first planarian worm since I introduced them! Hooray! I thought they didn't take.
Also, my gold tetras and lampeyes and axelrod's rasboras, oh and my endlers (the Just Add Water fish), are all doing mating dances like crazy and the female endlers actually seem interested for once!
All my glass shrimp but one developed a brown patch on their right sides and cloudy white patches and died one after another. The survivor has a few white marks now but seems otherwise healthy. It eats blackworms like crazy.
Anywho, this whole low-filtration deal seems to be working. Gotta watch the bioload as far as oxygen/co2 goes and as far as waste/ammonia/decay.
I buried a very small chunk of fish (from a fish 'n chips shop) at a centimeter from the bottom of the sand, against the glass. I can see the black anaerobic decay gunk and it extends to about an inch from the surface of the substrate, where it has a very clear border. It spreads a few more inches to each side. No gas yet but I'm sure if the sand were turned over, there'd be a lot of toxic chemicals in its depths.
I've decided to keep a paper journal of all that happens and all that I do to the tank. I don't know why but I just really dislike the high-volume filters, tanks with lots of currents I want to discover all I can about keeping fish in simple, small tanks simply. I should note what I come across.
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