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Ammonia Time Bomb Carpet

gabriel.basso

gabriel.basso

Member
Joined
13 May 2010
Messages
89
Location
Brazil
Hey guys,

Just saw this video on youtube and it worried me a little since I'm growing a mixed carpet of monte carlo and hc.

Did this ever happened to you?

I guess maybe this guy should have trimmed the carpet more often and don't let it get too thick.



Cheers

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Removing a carpet like this It's like stirring up the soil in the tank... you just don't do it... you can blow it a bit and vacuum when cleaning the tank, but other than that, leave it alone.

It's plant food and for it to get to that stage without issues, just means your beneficial bacteria are way ahead and doing their job.
 
Keep it trimmed ,wave your hand over it wile changing water to dislodge that which might be collected there and feed less food's.?
Would be my path.
 
Thanks for the comments guys.
I also thought it was crazy to take off the hole carpet the way he did.
I will keep my carpet clean and trimmed.


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I dont know why anyone would deliberately pull up a carpet of mc or hc etc, would be such a pain to get it to re-root, I have left MC to grow to thick and it lifted itself but buy that stage (2 years of growth with semi regular trimming) I was ready for a rescape anyways
 
FYI

The guy who made this video, Dr Kevin Novak, published another one to respond the critics he received on the first video.

Basically what he says is that mc will work as a filter but we wont be able to clean it as we do with our mechanical filters to avoid nitrite and nitrate build up.

He even says about the risk of tuberculosis due to fecal detritus in the water.



Cheers

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gabriel.basso said:
FYI

The guy who made this video, Dr Kevin Novak, published another one to respond the critics he received on the first video.

Basically what he says is that mc will work as a filter but we wont be able to clean it as we do with our mechanical filters to avoid nitrite and nitrate build up.

He even says about the risk of tuberculosis due to fecal detritus in the water.
Click to expand...

Even if I dont agree with the cleaning part I can still digest its logic. But Tuberculosis through that.. come on. I live in a TB endemic country and I am a doctor by profession too. The only mycobacterium that can come through water are atypical ones and those too through public pools which are unhealthy and even these are extremely rare even in our own country. Tall claims.
 
And have you seen other videos by Dr Kevin Novak. He says Nitrate and phophate if added as ferts are toxic to aquatic plants. he says that the nitrates from the filter bacteria and phophate from fish feed is enough. so i would consider his claims with pinch (more likely a container) of salt.
 
He is kinda exaggerating a worst case scenario to proof a point.. :) Sounds like he's ony blaming MC or HC but the same goes for other dense leaved patches of low vegitation like mosses or just simple hard on impossible to reach nooks, crannies and cavities betweem and under hardscape elements. It all collects and accumulates dirt.

There aint much to proof that isn't already prooven, back in the day when water changes where considered a sin. A lot of unnecessary fish deaths prooved us wrong. Same story for an old time consensus that so called large self maintaning filter systems never needed cleaning, prooved us wrong for the excact same reason.

It is not a fact that dirty tanks cause diseases and disorders due to bacteria, the bacteria needs to be introduced in the first place. Some are rather common and all tanks have them, others are (or were) more rare and a role with the dice to get them or not. Hence some people never do a water change and never experienced a problem for years and some breeders never cleaned their large socalled self maintaining filter systems and aslo never experienced problems. Others follow these steps and it turns into a dissasters. This only prooves that the ones who didn't experience problems just got lucky with keeping the pathogenes out. Bad things can be introduced to our aqauriums in numerous ways, in ways which are impossible to detect with the naked eye till you diagnose diseases in your fish. The only fact is, if you are an unlucky one and you introduce something nasty, a dirty tank or filter has a higher risk of becomming a pathogene breeding box. History has prooven this often enough to make us realise that good husbandry and doing water changes is a necessity to keep closed system healthy and this changed the general consunsud about doing water changes. 30 years ago it was considered a sin, today it's considered a necessity. And still we encounter unlucky ones catching something nasty, go figure.

Anyway i'm not growing MC and i can pinpoint several hot spots in my tank i can not reach and definitively will collect dirt and it will do that as long as the tank is running. I guess this goes for 80% of all aqauscapes out there if not more.

I don't get it why this guy is making a storm in a glass of water or should i say aquarium, about Monte carlo collecting dirt. :rolleyes:
 
Yeah.. his tone is like preventing the next big plague to hit humanity. But instead of rats, MCs are the root cause of it.

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Same as Turtles, they all seem to be Salmonella bombs. :) How many people report getting sick of handling turtles? A friend of mine had 5 turtles in a 60 litre tank on a desk in the living room.. I always noticed that the tank was extrmely dirty with coffee brown water. One day it was so dirty i couldn't help myself ranting about it. And called his whole family lassy bums not worthy for pets, daughter chatting whatsapp whit girfriends and son playing games all next to an extremely dirty pet tank. :rage: Nobody cleaned that tank, poor animals.

It wasn't realy recieved very well me interfering.. I realy got mad and said, ask your vet about turtles and what they carie under their shell. Than you likely realise it's not only animal cruelty what you lassy bums all are doing, you have a timebomb on your desk.. Keep it up and one day the sh|t literaly will hit the fan more than turtle sh|t only.. :lol:

2 weeks later the turtles were gone :rolleyes: he probably did ask the vet, we never spook about it again.
 
Hi all,
gabriel.basso said:
Basically what he says is that mc will work as a filter but we wont be able to clean it as we do with our mechanical filters to avoid nitrite and nitrate build up.
Click to expand...
My suspicion is that he is economical with the truth because he has something (an anoxic denitrification product?) to sell.

I think his emphasis is very much on rubbishing plants as an aid to filtration.

I'll comment on his blog and see what he has to say for himself.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi all
Just had a quick look at this and few other videos from the same person.
It is not actually selling a product.Its trying to convince the folks that his invention (clay filled filter basket with laterite core) is the best way of filtering an aquarium and how ammonia is being pulled in and transformed to N gas.
Here is all about it:
http://www.mankysanke.co.uk/html/anoxic_filtration.html
If it helps him to sleep better at night he can keep thinking it while I bet my money on plant+ microbe filtration system.
Regards Konsa
 
Just squeeze the tube on the gravel vac to reduce flow. It’s strong enough to dislodge some waste but not the plant. I used to do this every week when trimming and water change. I wouldn’t fuss over the whole carpet more just randomly give it a poke with the vac. Tank was healthy and carpet was healthy.

Not due to this video but I’ve pulled mine up and replacing it with hair grass. Had the same effect in the video but my water levels were fine.
 
Dont think the guy, hes a scientist,ichicologist whos not a aquascaper as such who as Konsa says commercial considerations seem minimal as far as You Tube goes and has done years of research in the Pond and Koi Carp side of the hobby and well respected for it deserves to be condemned out of hand for his opinion whether we agree or not.Not many do research on sixty aqauriums at once and anyone looking for alternative Kessil at a fraction of the price cant be a bad thing:)
 
Monte Carlo is a dirt bag of a plant same as any other dense carpet. And having a dirty tank increases the risk of nasties to multiply if it ends up in there. That's a simple logic truth.. No need to bash and flame the guy trying to explain that even if he got a bit caried away by this idea. I think he's more caried away with the idea he's flamed for telling something that's basicaly true. But hey, that's the risk of expossing yourself in public trying to get famous with reinventing the wheel.Like 99% of the people on youtube do..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycobacterium_marinum And this is just one strain there seem to several Mycobacteriums possible to roam in fishtanks.
And it seems the fresh water types are the least dangerous to humans.. If you see the references at the page bottom you'll find several cases of people infected. Funny is all seem to have caught it while cleaning the tank. :rolleyes:

A USA California case also reported in the UK dating 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ving-hand-amputated-scratching-fish-tank.html

Even more striking related to this topic, the fishtank from where the poor unlucky girl from above seems to have caught this infection doesn't realy show any plants at all. It more looks like the easiest tank to keep clean and still she caught it.
article-2003001-0C8AA85200000578-481_468x286.jpg


If you go into the garden and stick a finger into the soil you expose yourself to the same risk of catching a disease or a parasite.. Go figure why 80% of the preteen children at least once had a worm infection. Its from sticking fingers into everything they see and then pic their nose with the same finger and eat what they find up there.. :spam: A very small number even still catches TB too.
 
Hi all,
Edvet said:
Well when you are a Dr everything you say is automatically true, isn't it?
Click to expand...
Only if you are the great <"Dr Seuss">.
Konsa said:
It is not actually selling a product.Its trying to convince the folks that his invention (clay filled filter basket with laterite core) is the best way of filtering an aquarium and how ammonia is being pulled in and transformed to N gas.
Click to expand...
PARAGUAY said:
Dont think the guy, hes a scientist,ichicologist whos not a aquascaper as such who as Konsa says commercial considerations seem minimal as far as You Tube goes and has done years of research in the Pond and Koi Carp side of the hobby
Click to expand...
I've been busy, but I've started watching some of the video's and I think what @Konsa and @PARAGUAY is right.

I think the filtration systems he has built, with potentially anoxic areas of fluctuating REDOX, are effective and robust, but not for the reasons he thinks they are. I think the majority of the filtration is aerobic and he has vastly over-estimated their denitrification capacity, and vastly under-estimated fixed nitrogen uptake by the plants.

I'll have to try and re-find the correct video, but there is koi pond one with a fantastic established, lily filled, pre-filter pond. He is saying that the growth of the (extremely lush) water lilies has nothing to do with nitrogen (N) and is attributing the success (and low nitrate levels*) of the system to the denitrification by the anoxic filter.

I'm pretty certain he is wrong, but it would be difficult to experimentally define the eventual fate of the fixed nitrogen.

*measured with a lamotte test kit.

cheers Darrel
 
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