Recently Changed Substrate, now I've got some Questions!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Okay, I'll call them :)

I've got another issue though :( my air stone for the bubble wall just broke, and so the surface agitation has gone back to its original state, only moving from what comes out of the filter. It's not very much at all, and I'm hoping I can replace it tomorrow but I'm not sure that it'll be all soaked and fully "bubbling" for another week or so after I get a new one. Here's a pic:


View attachment 92225

At least this isn't something totally catastrophic and it's not gonna hurt my tank :) I do miss the bubbles noise though. The tank has gotten a bit less foggy since yesterday, and the neon tetras have acclimated and all six of them are already schooling together. They've really mellowed out too, I'm surprised that adding more fish could calm them down to such a large extent! All of the fish are swimming around and under my plants and they seem to like hiding in the micro sword ^^ here's the schooling neons:


View attachment 92227



View attachment 92231

And these are pics of my plants and my tank:


View attachment 92228



View attachment 92229



View attachment 92226

The one with the roman column this is (from top to bottom) anaubis nana and micro sword. Then the plants just placed in the sand (from left to right) melon sword, amazon sword, and wisteria. I also have lots of anacharis floating in my breeder box so the fry have a snack during the day :) and also, here's a pic of my Cory cat:


View attachment 92230

I put that pic on there because it just looked so cute to me :) I like the black sand, it's really thick! Look at how deep it is:


View attachment 92235

It's supposed to be really foot for the BB growth, according to the Internet ^^
 
Here's pics I took today, it's really clearing out :) my micro sword has uprooted itself though, I guess I didn't bury it deep enough! All is doing well and my tank should be happy and clear by tomorrow! :)
 
Well... My tank WAS happy and clear, and so I was doing a follow up pwc to get anything out that I might've missed, and I noticed my filter acting up and making noises. I checked to see if it was sucking in air (I leave it on during my pwcs because it has an extension thing on the end, and can't really start sucking air unless you don't pay attention) and I'm still very new to cleaning my tank with the sand bottom and so I was going slower than I usually do, and I thought that maybe I took out too much. Anyway, the end of the filter was fully submerged, and the water flow was barely a trickle, so I took out the two filter cartridges to see if they were causing it. Well, a whole load of stuff got into the water, and so my first order of business was to get most of it out, which was hard because it was all floating through the water column. Then after I had tried three times to get the stuff out of the water, I started cleaning the filter. I pulled the little power cartridge out and gave the inside of that a good cleaning, and I cleaned the end of the intake tube, and basically did a full cleaning of it, and go it working. My tank was still half full (I had forgotten to fill it back up) and so I put the filter in, got it running, and things were looking nice, but then when I was filling it up, the filter stopped again. It's working now (clearing out the nasty stuff) and the tank is almost totally clear again! But now here's my question: what happened with my filter? Is it because of the sand? I have a tetra PF 10. It's the newer model, but I'm using the old cartridges (shaped the same, but new ones have a stupid thing that's supposed to tell you when to change the filter cartridge...stupidest thing ever, didn't help me at all) heres the tank now, still clearing out the last of that gunk:


View attachment 92411

I also noticed something about the sand, there's a layer of lighter sand on the top, why is that?

View attachment 92412
 
Turn your filter off when doing a PWC, especially with sand. You don't want to accidentally kick up some sand and have it sucked into the filter. It probably got a grain stuck in the impeller and then it got dislodged as you fiddled with it. I would clean the pump out to make sure no sand is in there or it will chew up the impeller.

As far as the lighter color layer of sand on top... An effect of lighting and glass thickness.
 
Oh okay I'll turn it off next time! I guess my homework on the sand wasn't done too well, I suppose I should've turned it off, but that wasn't ever a need when dealing with gravel, so I didn't think about it. I've just read a thing about gases getting trapped in the sand, and that there's a need to stir the sand. What gases are they, how often should I stir it, and how exactly do the gases get trapped in the first place? Oh and I've cleaned a large amount of gunk out of the filter (part was sand but there was brown crap) should cleaning gunk out of the filter itself be a routine thing? (like every six months?) and if not, am I overfeeding my fish or what? The filter did go through a foggy expirence in the past (I was told to not clean my gravel...then I decided to move my plants around...so much crap came out that it was painful to look at...) and that could've been it, but I'd've expected it to have been in the filter cartridge that I took out, not the thing that spins itself :0
 
You should clean out the filter housing, pump/impeller and the intake tube about once a month. Build up of that crud will lead to high nitrate levels.

Deep Sand Beds (DSBs) have anerobic bacteria in the bottom layers. They "eat" nitrate (good) but produce hydrogen sulfide (bad). If pockets are allowed to build up it may be possible to lose your fish. This usually only happens if the sand bed is greater than three inches deep. You can use a wooden dowel (chop stick) to stir and poke every so often. You can get Malaysian Trumpet Snails to help sift the sand, they dig in when the light is on and come out when it is dark.
 
Okay that's some great info there! But now I need to check something that's very important if I get a snail. How do Malaysian trumpet snails reproduce and what's their bio load? I'm going to be adding two Cory cats (I only have one and they're schooling fish) and I know that the bio load will be a little heavier (and my tank will NOT be over stocked, just heavily stocked, there is a large difference) and if Malaysian trumpet snails give off a large bio load, I'm not sure if they'd help too much. And if I happen to get baby snails in my tank, will my guppies eat them? Oh and my tanks all clear to! Yay!
 
Your tank looks nice!

I have some MTS (Malaysian trumpet snail). I have read that they give birth to live young. And, if you are over feeding your fish they will reproduce. I've had mine a few months and so far I've not had a snail explosion. I'm actually wishing they would so I could move a bunch into my 55 gallon. As far as I know, I believe their bio load is minuscule.
 
Are they hermaphrodites or do they each have separate genders?
 
Great link! It didn't explain the gender question, but I think that getting just one would be safe enough. What do you guys think?
 
One isn't going to make any difference at all, these things are very small. Really though, the gas pocket issue tends to get overblown and take the blame for other issues, like poor tank maintenance. Just hit up your local Chinese food shop for some chop sticks and use them to poke around in your sand when you do a PWC, if you feel the need to.
 
Can I just poke the sand or is there a need to stir it up?
 
I just got some 6500K super daylight compact bulbs. Isn't that great?

View attachment 92523

And they're only 10 watt, and since my hood is 15 watt, it's saving a butt load of money (according to my mom, since it's on all day) I also got a replacement air stone :)
 
alia258 said:
I just got some 6500K super daylight compact bulbs. Isn't that great?

And they're only 10 watt, and since my hood is 15 watt, it's saving a butt load of money (according to my mom, since it's on all day) I also got a replacement air stone :)
Click to expand...

That's the one I swapped into my 10g Shrimp Jungle recently. I bought 2 and now wish I'd bought more. :)

I have my tanks on timers, so my lights are off midday while I'm at work.

4 hours on/ 4 off/4 on
 
I'm hoping my wisteria starts growing better with the light, and that my micro sword has some growth, and that perhaps my anaubis nana will attach itself to my decorations, so I can take the thread off
 
So the new lighting has really put my tank into full color, it's amazing! My Cory cat has also become darker because of the dark sand, which makes him look very elegant and pretty :) I was thinking I might get an Otto cat or a loach to help with any algae problems, I heard somewhere that those two like algae (Otto cats eat it more than algae discs?) and I read that loaches (I've got my eye on a golden dojo loach) are sand sifters as well as algae eaters. But I don't know either of their minimum tank size or maximum length. I assume that if the minimum tank size is a 30g or less then it's safe to get a young one because I'm getting a larger tank this summer. The bubble wall is doing nicely, of not better than my old one, and the bubble curtain is very even. I like the way it sifts the sand as a bubble comes out, it looks cool! I took a few pics of my tank, and my wisteria (of which I only have two very small stems, which I'm keeping in the breeder box hoping that the closeness to the light will help it establish some small roots, because it keeps slipping out of the sand)
 
I don't suggest getting either of those fish just to deal with algae. That Loach gets big, way too big for a ten gallon tank. Otos like groups so you are looking at three at the very least and if there is no algae to eat then it can be difficult to supplement their diet. If an algae issue arises it is best to find out why it happened and fix it rather than throwing fish at it as a band-aid solution.

The tank is looking great BTW.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
changing substrate
Replies
4
Views
268
Andy Sager
Andy Sager
H
Substrate question
Replies
1
Views
508
Aiken Drum
Aiken Drum
B
aquarium plant trouble
Replies
6
Views
945
Aiken Drum
Aiken Drum
B
changing substrate
Replies
8
Views
246
Andy Sager
Andy Sager
A
Amazon swords problems
Replies
2
Views
407
Artemas
A

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom