40g planted

[Elwood]

they are stationary but wave in the current

 

[greenmaji]

most FW plants do poorly with freshwater aquarium salt (regular sodium cloride)
I personly dont use salt in freshwater tanks.. not even for ich treatment, just heat.
Salt isnt nessisary for FW tanks, thats why its called freshwater.

 

[Acer]

Hey jason where are you located, i know of a couple of decent lfs if your interested, when i first started looking into the hobby i tracked down and visited lots of stores just to see who has what, im on the southside next to midway airport

 

[greenmaji]

you need to dose NO3 to about 15ppm and PO4 to about 1.5ppm.. a 10:1 ratio is recomended.
you didnt give a result for PO4, youll need to get that testkit or have a LFS that can test it for you for now.

 

[malkore]

most FW plants do poorly with freshwater aquarium salt (regular sodium cloride)
I personly dont use salt in freshwater tanks.. not even for ich treatment, just heat.
Salt isnt nessisary for FW tanks, thats why its called freshwater.

I can't add to anything said here...its all true

And about ich in general...if you maintain your tank, you won't get ich. I've had ich exactly once, and it was a goldfish tank where the two fish came from a 'suspect' store I don't usually buy livestock from, and they got ich in 2 weeks.

So, while it's wise to be knowledgable about ich and other diseases/parasites...its normally not a problem.

 

[malkore]

Plastic valves hold up under the pressure just fine. The issue is that the CO2 creates an acidic environment in the valve and it eventually damages it to the point of needing replaced once a year.

So once I year I drop 99 cents on a new valve cuz I'm just too lazy to order $10 metal valves online.

 

[malkore]

Aspec, you are correct, it shuts the solenoid off when it hits that pH.

Other controllers have upper/lower limits you can set. An upper pH doesn't make much sense to me...I mean, who wants to let CO2 levels drop a bunch and then re-inject.
I don't use a controller but it makes the most sense that, if you want a pH of 7.0 that yields, say, 30ppm of CO2, you'd want that controller kicking right backy on at a 7.2pH level...or 7.1 even.

 

[Jason the Lost]

Im in Willowbrook. I know of a bunch of stores around the city, but anything recommended on the southside would be great....I hate driving anywhere anymore.

 

[severum mama]

Honestly, I'm really surprised that no one has yet suggested cycling the tank without fish.
When I set up my 29gal, I used the fishless cycling method. Worked perfectly. It took about a month, was very easy, no frequent water changes, and no unneeded stress to my fish.

Most people here recommend fishless cycling to everyone. However, I think that fishless cycling wasn't recommended in this case because it wasn't necessary. Jason pointed out that he would seed the filter in the 55 gallon with old filter media from another tank. If he proceeded to do that and only added a school of barbs to a 55 gallon tank, he should have no problem with cycling at all, provided he takes it slow with stocking. I really think it would have been fine even without the the use of BioSpira- I've cycled many tanks this way myself, you just have to watch perams for a few days and then everything is fine.

Jason- have you thought about trying the regular tiger barbs, or even the green variety, rather than the albinos? It sounds like your Petsmart really got a bad batch.

 

[malkore]

Jim,

first, welcome to Aquarium Advice!

I see a major flaw in your setup already: adding alkalinity buffer, then using pH down does NOT increase CO2 levels whatsoever. What it does is completely invalidate the Kh/pH chart that gives us our CO2 levels.
With your Kh & pH it might look like you have 20ppm of CO2, but in fact you have nothing more than normal atmospheric levels of 3~4ppm.

Next, the java ferns are hardy plants, so it wasn't the temp change that hurt them...it was pulling them out of the tank for 10 minutes. Java ferns cannot be allowed to sit in open air long. If the leaf surface dries out, the leaf gets burned by the air. Too much burning, and the whole leaf dies. I think that's what you had happen.


You never mentioned the size of the tank, or the amount of watts in that JBJ fixture. But with java fern and anubias, you only need 1-1.5wpg to keep them growing nicely. At that light level, no CO2 is required, which is why these plants continued to do fine without it.

So really, you don't need to DO anything to correct the tank, or even put CO2 back in. At most, you might find a comprehensive fert like Flourish, or a simple iron/potassium mix like Leaf Zone to be useful.

I would change at least 10% of the water every week. If you have to do it bi-weekly, then at least 25% water changes.

 

[malkore]

Also keep in mind, goldfish love to munch on plants

 

[Jason the Lost]

I really like the Albinos look but I gave up on them, I have 4 healthy albinos in the tank now and they seem to be leaving the other inhabitants alone. If I seem them getting antsy I may add some green or regular tigers donw the road. Its was just really strange that these fish were happily swimming around in their tank for over 2 weeks and as soon as they hit the bag theyre floaters...very bizarre. These are medium sized already too, so it'll be hard to find like sized barbs...I'm not sure if smaller barbs will be good or bad if added with them. I agree I could have probably done without the biospira but Terry's in NW Indiana has the 30 gallon packs for 11.99. Can't beat that price.

Stock list is now
11 zebra danio (I got shorted one!, haha)
6 red eye terta
2 marble angel
1 dwarf gourami
6 peppered cories
4 Albino tigers
2 algae eaters

 

[TankGirl]

For the Flourish Nitrogen, which provides nitrogen in the form of nitrate and ammonium, I'd start out with 1ml (to first thread in cap) and see what your nitrate test results are with that. I can't remember the formula for calculating how much Flourish Nitrogen you need to raise the NO3 X ppm, since it has been a good while since I have used it, but I'd tailor it to my tank, and only use it if you are seeing stunted growth or other signs of nitrate deficiency.

We'd love to get an article from you about your own DIY CO2 method. There are lots of ways to do this and we appreciate additions to our library. PM me when you have something to submit.

 

[severum mama]

Keep an eye on the barbs and angels. You may need to add more barbs to cut down on aggression, should you see any- I've heard that barbs in schools of less than 6-8 can be quite nippy. I've never had any problems with my school of 8 tigers. If you get 3-4 more tigers or green tigers, they will all school together.

As for the BioSpira, for $11.99 I might have reconsidered!

 

[drjimmy124]

Dear Malkore,

Many thanks for the reply. Your explanation about my Java fern melt makes sense. Now that I think about it, I recall that the leaves were starting to dry when I put them back in the tank. Perhaps 10' was something of an underestimation of how long they were out of the tank...it may have been 20' or more now that I think about it.

Regarding the CO2 - I understand that Acid buffer doesn't affect my CO2 levels at all. Originally, I was adding CO2 for plant growth, and also to bring down the pH to 7 from the ~8.0 that Alkaline buffer alone induced. However, once my CO2 went off line I didn't want to subject my fish/plants to pH 8 all the time, so I started using acid buffer/alkaline buffer in combination to get my pH to 7.

Lastly, it's a 20 gal tank, sorry for omitting that important detail.

Thanks again!
Jim

 

[greenmaji]

after reading alot about ODNO bulb replacement depends on how well the bulbs are cooled and how many power leads are used.. 4XODNO on T-8's that have good fans installed last nearly 18 months according to reports by ODNO users on the planted tank forum. just thought I would put that out there.. with your other under estamates of other bulbs I would put that at about 9 months roughly.. HTH

 

[fprintf]

I have this same issue and DevlishTurtles pointed out to me in Chat last night (a great resource, I might add!) that they are probably just harmless nematodes because of high nutrient levels. The advice was to feed a bit less and do a few more water changes.

If you do a search on "white worms" you will find quite a few threads discussing what they look like in various forms and when they are harmful.

 

[greenmaji]

Fulham workhorse ballasts and IceCap ballasts work on T-5, T-5 HO and if you were so inclined would overdive a T-5 HO.. Ive asked about overdiving them over on reefcentral and the general consences there is your tank better be at least 2 foot deep and it will scorch low light reef inhabitants LOL..
any electronic florecent ballast should do for your T-5 HO needs but the bulb life will be redused if its not a T-5 HO ballast or a IceCap (both by the way are unessisarly expesive IMO) a little 7 dollar 2-F32T8 ballast from home depot should do the trick.. for 32 watts or less just use one of the leads.. for more then 32 watt bulbs use both leads and you should be fine.. HTH
btw. Ive read thought both of the ODNO threads posted above and there both good reads if you have the time..

 

[greenmaji]

any news? any questions about ODNO?

 

[greenmaji]

wow.. I missed this post tetrin..
I caught it with a ODNO search.. hehe..
It looked great.. hope you beat the retchid BBA!
I could clear up your 2X or 4X situation with a little info. about the ballast you used
and the wiring you did with it. #-F32T8 what number is were my # is on your ballast?