Freshwater for the Kids! Build

[AHP]

Well I just keep reading about dirted tanks and thought it was might have been better than the route I was going.

I guess I need to focus on Flow and dosing.

[Bedlamer]

Hi,

I’ve enjoyed reading your thread. I really like the door you built for your stand. You should really quarantine new fish for about a month, not 4 days to get good benefit from it. If you liked the look of your ex-redtailed shark—the rainbow shark looks even better IMHO, and is much less aggressive. If you are going to get otos get a dozen, and hope 4 make it. They seem to have a high mortality rate when introduced.

I look forward to seeing how your tank evolves.

[AHP]

Thanks Bedlamer. The stand was actually quite easy once I stopped yelling at myself for making stupid mistakes.
I am in the market to find more Otos I was looking for about 10 more because I have 4 at the moment, they are great little algae eaters. But to kick the Green Spot Algae that I have I don't know what is best... Neritina sp. zebra snail? I will be getting two German Blue Rams and I have one Anglefish I am not sure the snails would survive! No to Amano Shrimp because the GBR and Anglefish will make them an expensive meal.

So here is a picture of my tank 2 weeks ago:


And here is a pic of my tank today:


Notice a couple of things...
1. I made a new overflow w/ pvc, it is 5/8" and has about very small holes to give it good pressure.
2. I have some frogbit floating, maybe about 8-10 different shoots. This is growing fairly well, I get a new leaf on each one everyday.
3. I have 4 different Sagittaria, I am hoping they will break up the foreground and midground.
4. I wanted to try out a Dwarf Lily, I don't know if it is going to work. I has already melted within the first 2 days in the tank.
5. I had to do some trimming on the Water wisteria because the leaves were not growing under the tops. I thought of it like an umbrella and the light was not penetrating the middle and bottom of the stem. (See picture)

6. I am monitoring the HC, but I don't think it is doing well. It is really starting the thin out I can't tell if it is from fish or poor setup.

7. I am still fighting Green Spot Algea so I have decreased the lighting to below 50% and cut the lights back to 7 hrs a day. I am sure I will have to bring it down to 4 or 5hrs a day.


So here are all my notes that I have going on
Water test:
pH: 7.8
Ammonia: .25ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
GH: 3 drops
KH: 2 drops
Temp: 80 degree

I am EI dosing 3xweek (K2S04, KN03, KH2P04) and adding MetriCide 14 10mL every morning before I run off to work.

As for my BML lights my PAR is 75degree @ 24", 85 - 80 - 70

Max PAR value I would have to say is the 12" mark on 75degree.

I know this is alot of information but any help would be greatly appreciated. I am thinking the response is going to be lower the light duration to knockout the GSA. But after that I would love some help on making the plants fill out and stay full.
All in all I am really getting the bug again.

[gambs]

How do you like your BML? I am thinking of ordering one for my tank. Not sure which one to get as i won't be planting any plants, just growing algae on the rocks. Defiantly want the fish colors to pop though.


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[AHP]

I love them! Hardly any heat, no noise, you can customize it anyway you like. I can say that if you hold out for the next phase of lights you will be able to have lights on different controls.
My goal next would be to order phase 2 (if they are even called phase), two 10000K 48" strips and an APEX control, So I could have sunset and sunrise along with moonlighting. LOL That's way overkill for what I need to do, but go big or go home.

For you I would say 130000K w/ dimmer and you should be good. If you want you are free to come over and take a look at them.

[Roshan8768]

Nice progress!!

Couple of comments:

You're getting pretty good growth, but as you mentioned some of your plants are starting to get the palm tree/umbrella look due to the light not getting to the bottom. Unfortunately, short of better lighting and CO2, chances are there's not much you can do to change this. I dealt with this a lot when I first started out, and the best thing I've found is to pick plants that are less prone to doing this... some are worse than others. I've tried several rotala and ludwigia spp. until I found 2 decent varieties that seem to hold their leaves better. I still have to cut the tops off and trash the bottoms once every couple of months.

Good foreground plants are one of the hardest things to get right without C02 and a premium plant substrate... even then they are hard to keep. Also, if you have any fish that like to sift through that sand or even hangout near the bottom, your plants are in trouble. If you plant them by thinning them out and spreading them over a larger area to increase growth, in all likely hood all that you'll be doing is making it easier for your fish to dig them up. If your other plants are stretching for light, you can bet that your HC isn't going to be happy especially in that sand. A better option if you absolutely love the grassy foreground look might be dwarf hair grass or micro-sword. They are not as compact, but they should do better with your setup.

If that dwarf lily doesn't work out, I have one that I can give you when we meet up to exchange clippings (eventually haha)

Regular pond snails are the only algae eaters in my tank other than my goldfish... they do a decent job of keeping it to a minimum. Why are you dosing?? Did you observe any deficiencies in your plants? Did you put down root tabs for your stems and ground feeders? It may be a good idea to try a couple of weeks without the ferts and observe what differences there are... they could be the cause of some of your algae troubles.

What is metricide?

And lastly, as far as the lights go I run my lights 4 hrs on 5 hrs off 6 hrs on. This has greatly reduced my algae and better helped me control it than when I had the 12 hr cycle. The split light cycle is more efficient, as photosynthesis is not as productive after x amount of hours. There are articles on the topic if you're interested. If you really want to kill the algae just do a 48 hr blackout, your plants can handle it.

[AHP]

LOL Yes we do need to get together if not to just talk plants and fish.

When you refer to better lighting are you talking about having a higher PAR Value at the substarte lvl? or Lets say some cooler lights 7000K or 10000K? If so I completely agree, this light setup is more to have the color in fish pop than to truely focus on growing. This would be a great cichlid's and/or discus light.

As for CO2 I am sure down the road I will try to play with pressurized CO2. Which brings me to Metricide 14, this is a replacement of Excel. Its cheaper, twice as strong and last longer. I could use this for spot treatment as well, I just haven't tried yet.

My only foreground plant that is doing well and growing slow (to be expected) is Crypt Parva, I love the look and get a new leaf once ever other 3 weeks. Once I was able to get the Osmocote Plus root tabs made up they are doing well. No melting, no yellowing and the leaves are getting bigger and longer. LOL I say give it a year at this rate and I might have a nice ground cover.

Thanks for the light durating info, I will go read up on that, it sounds like it might fit my schedule as well.

Lastly yes I started dry fert because I noticed leaves turning yellow and having tiny holes in them, so I though I had a potassium deficiency.

Thanks for the help again Roshan8768!

[AHP]

Going to stop dosing CO2 for a bit and see how the plants do. I was trying to make the tank fill in faster but I think by doing that I was encouraging GSA.

Here are some pics of my progress to start up conversation.
Rommie noes tetras, I notice if is stress them out their black and white tails will loose it's color.



Neon blue dwarf Gourami, Might be the culprit of my frogbit's not doing well.


Silver Zebra Angelfish


Time for plants:
Dwarf lily, this one is slowly coming back as you can see with the new growth compared to last week.


Randoms






crypt parva, I like this stuff grows slow but looks nice.

[topout24]

whats happening to the frogbit??

[AHP]

I am not sure, it's not growing as fast as I thought it would. I think that is because of the Gourami eating the plant or roots.
I was hoping that they would grow faster than the Gourami could take them out.

[topout24]

Its not a real fast drowing plant like duckweed. But I've noticed that it starts di ing realky good when the roots get the fuzzy look.

[Roshan8768]

I was referring to the PAR deeper in your tank... I don't think the color temperature is of too much importance. I used actinic lighting alongside my 10K bulbs quite often to make the fishes color's pop as you mentioned. 5 k, 7k, 10k, 12k, 14k.... doesn't really matter as long as there is some light that is in the appropriate wavelength needed for photosynthesis in plants. I personally prefer the 12-14k look, it's more crisp and clean to me compared to the yellow which I feel drowns/washes out the colors of the fish and plants.

Oh... and I bet the Gourami is eating your frogbit. I added some duckweed to my tank a while back to see if it cut down on some excess light, but it was all gone in 24 hrs. I'm talking about a 6" by 6" patch of plants... granted my perpetrators where goldfish, I'm pretty sure a gourami would have a nibble too

[AHP]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to posting.

Roshan based on what the chart I posted before my readings of the PAR value at substrate lvl should be between 85-70.
85 (0 from center)
80 (3" from center)
70 (6" from center)
Which is in the range of medium light. BUT I have the lights dimmed down to less than 75%. My question is if that is the case wouldn't my PAR value be more inline with low light?

Side note, I picked up two German Blue Rams this weekend and I think that will do it for stocking fish. The GBR's are great to watch but I have noticed that they are very slow eaters and picky, which I kind of new from reading abou them before the purchase. I just didn't think it would be to this extreame, so last night I popped some frozen brine shrimp in and distracted the other fish so they could get a meal. I think they each had 1 shrimp and lost interest. Does anyone have any ideas or tricks to get them to each when its meal time rather than 10min later and there is no food left?


On a side note I have noticed that when I trimed back the Water Wisteria I started seeing growth from the bottom. So that is good news.

[Roshan8768]

I'll get back to you on the PAR...

The GBRs probably just need some time to settle in before they feel comfortable... they are notorious for having internal parasites though, so if they don't start eating with some gusto pretty soon you may want to run some Prazipro or similar medication. Most likely it's just them getting used to your tank... if all else fails, you can always go pick up some live food from Cinco Ranch Aquariums... Hector usually has some in, but I'd call and check before hand

[AHP]

I have seen them in the last two days going after bloodworms and pellets, they just take for ever to get eatting. I would say about 5min after the Carnials and Rummy-Nose eat everything.

I am using the split light cycle and doing fairly well with decrease in algae. When I see a decrease in algae I think I will go back to 6-7hrs days.

On a sad note I had a cory die yesterday so I tested my water and noticed that my nitrates were 40-80ppm. So I did a 50% water change and filled it back up with RO water.
Still no dosing K,N,P nor C02, I just want to see how everything is doing before I start that back up.

As for plants I do have some Dwarf Sag coming in today and I am going try and see how that works.
I am still debating on dirting the tank and capping it with Eco-Complete, which will allow me to rescape because I am just not feeling it... Not enought hiding spots and I have some dead spots around the tank.