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Sam's 4ft nightmare, I mean journal

Re: Completely stumped - the saga continues

Quick update.

I spent over 4 hours yesterday giving everything a good clean in an effort to increase CO2 movement around the tank. I must say the powerhead it noticeably more powerful than before now its clean (there was a surprising amount of junk when I took it apart).

I'm gonna up the CO2 slowly over the next few days keeping an eye on the fish to get it as high a possible. I'm also doing excel as prescribed now too. I had to take quite a bit of the HC out as it had detatched itself from the substrate and a large mat of it was wafting around in the current!! Most I binned but I've replanted a fair amount.

Time to leave it alone and see what happens over the next month or two.

Fingers crosses!

Sam

PS - Could a Mod please move this to the journals forum, I might as well keep it as my 'warts and all' journal, hopefully the pain and lessons I've been trough will be of help to some people :)
 
Oh and rather than using an RO machine, why don't you try one of those in-line filters with no wastage? It won't be as pure as RO but doesn't need to be for freshwater?

Btw, can't you plumb it up so the RO wastage goes back into the supply?
 
Lisa_Perry75 said:
Oh and rather than using an RO machine, why don't you try one of those in-line filters with no wastage? It won't be as pure as RO but doesn't need to be for freshwater?

Btw, can't you plumb it up so the RO wastage goes back into the supply?

The extra back pressure would mean the RO wouldn't function correctly as you'd get too much back pressure but you can get RO water down to a 1:1 ratio of waste and reject water as some guys do their RO units on their koi ponds.

The in-line filters work by using ionisation. This takes two forms, either mixed bed deionisation resins that need replacing regularly as they can't be recharged (expensive) or ion-exchange resins that can be recharged with sodium chloride which put lots of sodium ions into the water! Neither are that good!
 
Lisa_Perry75 said:
Hey Sam,

Hope things have improved for you?

Lisa -x-

Hi Lisa,

Good to see you back on here :)

Well I did a complete strip down and changed the substrate for fresh, unsoaked akadama, then planted it with blyxa and HC, around 5 weeks ago. This was followed by a period of little to no CO2 and the whole take got covered in brown algae. This killed most of the HC and the blyxa didn't fair that great. I added some ottos and nerites snails and they are finally getting on top of it. I added some more HC but its once again not doing very well, although the blyxa is going ok.

I really dont rate akadama, although I did get it to work in my nano once, it just seems to need months to get settled (whatever 'settled' actually means, and it must be a similar principle to tropica substrate?). I should have just bitten the bullet and got a decent substrate, aquatics-online do EC pretty cheap, esp for a large tank. I have promised my wife I'll leave it alone for another month or two, but unless there is a radical change it'll be another strip down and substrate change.

I did at least rearrange the rocks, which I have to say I'm really rather pleased with :)

I have also changed to 100% tap as its on the low side of hard hardness (14dGH), as I was fed up with changing the water and the recent lack of rain put an end to my use of rain water. I've also got nice hardly cherry barbs :) which as Jimmy says are an underrated fish IMHO.

Looks like the blyxa will survive but its not flourishing, the HC only time will tell.

I have a mature java fern in there that's doing well :) it loves the CO2.

Sam
 
Thanks Sam. Sorry to hear things aren't going better for you. Maybe a better substrate might help, that and constant good levels of CO2? Anyhow what do I know, I grow seaweed!

Thanks Ed for the info. Surely you could collect the waste and then use it for toilet flushing etc?
 
Good stuff mate, always learning hey :D
 
Hi Sam,
took me a while to find this thread :D
I have similar problems with HC and akadama. All the plants are doing great, except the small ones, like HC.

EI dosing, light 0.75w/l, co2 30ppm, NO3 10-25, K~30, PO4~2, Fe~0.2, Ca~35, Mg~8

Do you know approx levels of all the nutrients in the two tanks you have?
There must be a difference there. We just have to get to the bottom of it 8)
J
 
hi,
how's it all going now?
i must say that i have had similar things happening for a while in my tank, altho not quite as bad tbh.

in my case i believe it was flow and co2 related, altho at the time i was positive that both those things were up to scratch!
i use a ph meter (is is set low, so is a "safety cut off" rather than to switch the co2 on and off, if that makes sense)
i realize that other things influence the ph other than co2, but just by looking at the ph reading on the meter i can see roughly how my co2 is doing at any given time (this has got easier as i'm learning more about the tank!)

so... i noticed a couple of things
1. as you said the evaporation has a bearing on levels and if the water disturbance gets greater as the week goes on then obviously your co2 levels are dropping day after day!

2. as plant mass increases co2 uptake obviously increases, so in my case as the week goes on co2 levels drop

3. as the plant mass increases it interferes with the flow, again messing the co2 distribution up!

i did a large trim yesterday and ripped most of my carpet up, the co2 reached its cut off within 2 hours of starting, the day before the trim it didnt get anywhere near that in the 8 hours it was on!
 
Hi matey :)

Cheers for the advice. CO2 has been shouted at me from a great many angles :lol: When I was using the akadama I took all the fish out and ran the CO2 to the max, really to the max and nothing changed. Since changing to the eco-complete, I've run the CO2 into the yellow. I did run it very high but I lost a fish and they just weren't as active when it was very high so I have reduced it a bit, still way into the yellow though. Nothing changes.

When I see the surface too disturbed, I either lower the outlet or top up the tank, so its never causing problems for very long.

Sam
 
Geez, Sam. Nothing? It's not growing any better?

Any pictures?
 
Themuleous said:
Nope not a sausage out of either the HC or blyxa. I even added a few crypts as a bit of an 'easy plant' experiment, but they are doing crap as well :(

Sam

Is this your only tank?
 
i honestly do belive its your water or you tank, there must be something leaching.

becuase, all other angles have been covered and you know what your doing, so i put it down to the tank (was it bought new btw?) or the water. :(
 
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