Do Over

[WhiteDevil]

I tore down my 52g FBH FW planted tank today, got rid of the ugly play sand, can actually see me fish now. I have a UGF plate in there, a AC70 off the back w/ sponge on inlet as well as a power sponge marineland filter/powerhead set-up in RUGF fashion.

I couldnt get my ammonia to get below 2.0 sustained, it dropped to .50 then back to 8.0 overnight. I eradicated the sand to see if that was the issue and added the RUGF. Its set up and going again, have two zebra danios back in it, water temp is a little high but heater is off to bring it down and ice was added to the water via old biowheel w/ any filtration parts at all.


I have my paired of marble angels in my grow out tank, my grow outs are in a friends 55 and my fry got two oto's for tank mates along with two kuhlis, the danios and the corydoras are going back into the 52 when the temp gets to 82.

I did neglect it for 2 weeks and that was enough to do me in with the ammonia level headache, lost about 50 bucks in fish this time so now I am going to work with what I got, not touch it till mid september then go from there. I am taking MY approach to it again since it works so much more better then WC's every week. Once a month was what I used to do and never had a problem. Follow your best instinct people. Take into consideration the advice of others but truly follow what you think is best. Fish acclimate pretty well minus some species they truly dont need to be stressed out every week.

FORT, the crypts are doing fabulous along with the anubias and the moneywort and java moss, everything else is soaking in a bucket trying to rehabilitate.

 

[mgamer20o0]

what did you have in the tank? a jump from .50 to 8 is a big difference.

 

[WhiteDevil]

what did you have in the tank? a jump from .50 to 8 is a big difference.

about 4 dead, buried fish and quite a few dead ghost shrimp, that sand sucked weight in, I found nearly 50 rocks under the sand that I forgot were even in the tank, the sand would never truly form a base and just sucked all the junk in.

it was 8.0 on the test API STRONG, it was well over 8.0 IMO being how black the test nearly was.

Everything is doing much much better, in a mini cycle but thats OK, better then the ammo poisioning.

I am on the plant hunt, MG
I kept only most of what I got from FORT. and all my tall stuff and ferns were toast. they look better but still bad in the plant bucket.

I truly havnt seen my cories this active in a while, they split apart now they schooled back up and it actually looks really neat.

 

[mgamer20o0]

thats a new one ill remember this one. i have had sand tanks though never had one suck the fish in.

 

[WhiteDevil]

my caribsea sand never did it either, it was this play sand it never compacted down like it should have, maybe the flourite under it had something to do with it?


either way the junk is gone, I wont buy play sand for the aquariums again, I didnt like PFS due to it being more like micro dippin dots and clear.

I hear blasting sand is good stuff to use, but I am just getting plants and starting the plant aspect of it going then putting a very light layer of gravel sparce layer at that on top so the flourite is still surface as well as the gravel.

 

[mgamer20o0]

what you want is colorquartz.