Day 41 - Ranting
Plants are thriving
, there were a few older leaves with holes on the Ludwigia Palustris, which made me pay more attention to ferts and CO2 levels. See this thread
http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/ei-regime-k-and-mg-deficiencies.42985/
It made me realize I really need to tweak my ferts in order to reduce nitrate levels and that the problem in the Ludwigia is probably from low CO2 or from the poor water flow I had before adding the external filter. I raised the CO2 a bit just in case (since flow is definitely not an issue anymore
)
I'm still doing between 6-7hours of lighting period... I should probably increase it slightly
My water params don't change much (from what the tests can tell me):
- Temp - 25.5º
- PH - 7.2 (CO2 on) - 8 (CO2 off)
- GH - 21
- KH - 13
- NO2 - 0
- NO3 - 80
- NO4 - 0
This is day 5 after the cleanup crew was introduced to the environment and I can now really see how well the plants are doing
, specially now that the eleocharis is no longer hidden in a cloud of hair algae and the few stems of Lindernia Rotundifolia (which gave me so much trouble before) that survived are now starting to become what I expected from it from my very first attempt of a planted aquarium.
As for my tenants (I like to think I'm a landlord now
)... I had 3 deaths so far:
- 1 of the 3 Nerite Snails was DOA.
- 1 RCS found dead on day 1.
- 1 RCS found dead on day 3.
This means I have 2 Nerites and I
should have 8 RCS...
Yesterday, my Seneye was recording a slight ammonia raise sooner than normal after lights off, so I turned the CO2 and lights for a couple of hours to keep it from raising too much during the night. It's probably due to the added bioload added with the critters, but it also made me remove the statue decoration to see if I could find dead RCS... I wasn't able to find any dead critters and was able to see 5 of them at the same time (yay!).
I reduced the gaps of the filter intake with small rubber bands before adding the RCS, so I hope they don't get caught in it, but today I'll open the external filter anyway just to be sure there's nothing living in there.
In the meantime, I'm slowly buying what I need for a 2nd (slightly bigger) tank, because I'm hoping to get my hands on a Biotopia tank by the end of this month when they get more to sell.
To finalize, I have to say... no, I haven't moved the moss ball yet!
