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Try this, take a cup and dip some water from you aquarium. Let this cup sit overnight or put an air stone and let it run until the ph settles. Test the ph of this water and you will know the true baseline ph of that particular body of water.

Sorry, I don’t have any links on hand, just a strong chemistry background in my younger years. Research the relationship between co2 KH and ph. Also look into how surface exchange works. The dissolved gasses in water are at equilibrium with the surrounding atmosphere when they are dissolving and...

if co2 is building up that much on its own, that just means you have a very poor rate of surface exchange, which most likely also means low O2 concentration. The airstone doesn't get rid of all co2, it just returns the co2 concentration in the water to atmospheric equilibrium, which is how you...

Thanks. I’m happy with how it turned out. Bonus: I spent very little money. The tank and hood were sitting around and hadn’t been used in a while. The rocks were all swiped from my outdoor landscaping, cleaned and bleached. All I had to buy was the $5 bag of sand, the $8 filter, and fish which...

10 gallon cold water White Cloud Mountain minnow tank Stock: 8 white clouds A few cherry shrimp Ramshorn snails Plants: Anubias nana petite Petco black sand Marineland LED hood Sun sun internal filter

How long are the lights on? Reduce to 4.5 hours until algae subsides. If you don't mind healthy but less compact growth in the HC, you could raise the light fixture to reduce the intensity. I think your large bioload is going to be a major problem in a high-light setup. Have you ever noticed...

Changed it up some. I added some gravel to soften the contrast between the sand and hardscape. and moved some plants. I'm also considering switching to a black background. This tank has zero substrate ferts, just sand, and interestingly the crypts seem to be thriving so far with water column...

Great suggestions..thanks! Very close to what I've been leaning toward. Red cherries and ramshorn snails are already in there. Those and some amanos were my only firm plan so far. My senior citizens are in the tank also, one remaining neon and 2 harlequin rasboras.. they are the last of their...

Picked up a new 20H and set everything up this weekend. Waiting for the plants to perk up.. scape is still a work in progress Light is a finnex stingray suspended 8" above the tank. Substrate is pool filter sand, and I will probably add a sprinkling of some coarse river gravel I need some...

Tank is/was doing great, but it's time for some major changes, plus I was getting tired of all the trimming every single week: Most of the fast growing stem plants are gone now. I'm going for a mostly low height midground/foreground look which should hopefully be much lower maintenance. Stay...

I know next to nothing about reefkeeping; I had to look up carbon dosing. I'm not sure about this, I'm no chemistry expert.. Some aquatic plant species can make use of bicarbonate ions as a carbon source, but I don't think plants are able to utilize the carbon that is bound within dissolved...

I had to do some googling since I couldn't remember where to find the article. I realize this is from JBL's site and they are trying to sell their co2 systems, but here it is: https://www.jbl.de/en/blog/detail/123/the-story-of-liquid-co2-fertilisation (scroll down a bit, click part 2 - The Effect)

Take a look at Tom Barr's comments here: https://barrreport.com/threads/high-kh-and-co2-absorption.5688/

I no longer use excel at all for similar reasons. From what I have read, there is evidence to suggest that the old plant growth only looks healthy because it is essentially embalmed and preserved, and because of this new growth speeds up purely as a survival mechanism, not because of carbon...

You might try hitting those rocks with a spray bottle of peroxide. Just a fine mist, 1 or 2 times when the water is low during your water changes should help a lot. You can even dilute it 50/50 at first to be on the safe side

Yeah I get the best results overall when o2 is plentiful. Better growth and less algae. However it does seem that even with plants contributing o2, the rate of gas exchange at the surface is still important. I think many people try to reach a sufficient co2 concentration by trapping co2 in the...

I don't know for sure. Transport of nutrients to the site of growth uses up a lot of the energy (from light) that could be used for actual growth instead. It's inefficient, which is why I tend to think submerged aquatic plants would not waste energy transporting nutrients except when/where they...

I put a filter media bag over the end of my siphon hose to avoid vacuuming any shrimp or fish. Works great, just be careful so that you don't uproot anything.

I think aquatic plants uptake very little from the substrate, even so-called "heavy root feeders". I think the nutrients surrounding the roots are used mainly for just that: growing roots to anchor the plant. It wouldn't make sense for an aquatic plant to waste energy transporting nutrients from...

Yeah, I think they all three look like they've been grown emersed. The one on the far right looks like wisteria (Hygrophila difformis) in emersed form to me.

I'm afraid this sounds like only the beginning of a never-ending battle. You will need at least a 55 gallon or better for those goldfish if you want to keep them all in a single tank long-term. If that's not an option, I recommend a school of white clouds and maybe some dwarf anchor catfish (if...

Thanks! Yeah... been a while. This summer has been a blur. Regarding the CPDs, I would not have guessed that such a tiny, normally peaceful fish could be so nasty! Of course it happened due to breeding which was exciting to see at first, but wow it turned into a disaster very quickly...

Hey Fresh! Nice hardscape. I also love how the ar mini looks in this scape! So simple but striking. The large rocks are awesome and if it were my tank, I think I could deal with letting them become covered in algae, or at least I that's what I would tell myself. The small amount of lace rock I...

New scape, new fish: Added HC, it's doing well so far. New fish: 16 ember tetras Still have 1 sparkling gourami and loads of shrimp in there. Word of warning: watch those CPDs! Not sure if my school was not large enough, just had too few females or what, but the dominant male ended up...

The reason they look like that is because those leaves were not grown submerged, instead they are the emersed-form sword leaves which can't survive underwater. You can tell because of the rounder shorter leaf shape and longer stems. Just trim off the old leaves as they start to look bad like...