Looks stable and good, your mc is carpeting fast... Regarding low kh it is normal since you are using ADA soil. But I'm worried for your nerite snails, as the ph swings every time the CO2 is on and off... Some of my horned nerites couldn't survive the low ph in my planted tank, so I put the survivors into my shrimp tank.
Week 4 update
Attachment 51369
Before water change
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After water change, trimming and replanting the top of Rotala and S.Repens
Shrimps are surviving well, added more shrimps to make up the numbers.
- 20 CRS
- more than a handful Red Nose Shrimp
- 1 Yamato Shrimps
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Increase to 3 otos
Added CPDs and Ruby tetra (about 20 of them in total now)
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So far things seems ok (touch wood) except 3 CPDs and 1 Ruby Tetra didn't make it...symptom same, bloated eyes and stomach area turns white, not sure is it due to fish is weak or due to my water??
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Week 5 update
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After some mysterious death of a few live stock (painful lost of 1 oto,a couple of CPDs and 1
CRS) , I started to notice my CRS tends to hide behind a particular rock during my lights period. I tried tuning down my CO2 slightly and now I see them coming out to the foreground more. Fish also doing fine, will continue to monitor for another week.
My hair grass is not growing well...it is still very green in color, but the growth is very slow... I google about the hairgrass I bought then I realised it requires a much lower temperature than my tank water...so I decided to find an alternative to plant over the left side of the background. Thanks to Xiaozhuang, I managed to find some Ludwigia Arcuata to fill that portion up.
- Now I'm thinking should I start to trim my Rotala and Ludwigia now? Or wait till it grow much taller than start to trim?
Anyone can advice?
- I notice my GH is creeping up slowing, probably due to the rock I'm using. Can anyone share what are the effective methods to bring down GH besides using RO/DI water? (I have started a thread on this too: http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...-GH?highlight=)
Thanks in advance
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If you want to keep your height you need to prune it once they hit the 5-6cm mark. Pruning enhances lateral shoots to form and its a great way to make them bushier. Prune it just above the node where the leaves emerges.
Test for nitrate and ammonia before releasing your fishes in also get a CO2 checker just to make sure. 1 bubble per sec is more than enough for your tank size.
Cheers
Thanks Mameshrimps.
Will take note of the pruning suggestion.
My nitrate and ammonia was fine when I put in the fishes.
But for CO2, with my ANS solenoid with the brass bubble counter, my plants were flourishing after I up the bubble counts to 5.5 per second (using iPhone slow-mo to do a 10 sec recording)...now I had reduced the bubble counts to about 4 per second. Water does look a bit like 7-up with my up-aqua online diffuser, is it normal? Or is really too much.
After lowering my CO2 for a week, some plants starts to shows unpleasant signs.
- Holes and partial melting on S.Repens leaves
- more MCs losing its green and some MCs new leaves are much smaller
I came across an article mentioning too much light will harm plants (http://photobiology.info/Chalker-Scott.html). I trying now is lower my LED light intensity to 60% with my dimmer and monitor the result for another 1-2 weeks. Not sure if I'm doing the right thing haha.
Hope some veterans can provide some inputs.
Thanks.
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Inline diffuser system will create the misty 7-up look in your tank when in operation, its normal.
Running the Co2 injection at 5.5 bps in a 2ft tank is considered okay for such systems, its on the higher side but if you match it with higher lights and fert dosing it will help boost plant growth.
If you are not too keen on the misty 7-up look and want to conserve Co2, can consider switching to inline reactor instead, it will dissolve all the Co2 in the water before exiting from the outflow, so the water will be kept clear along with much less bps required too .
Thx UA, I'm actually ok with the 7-up effect, just need someone to tell me that it is not something not normal haha.
Within my circle of friends, there are some have aquarium but none keep plants, so this first tank of mine really is based on all helpful advice I got from forums and articles I read
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Week 6 update.
This week new equipment had been added
As there's no way to shift my cabinet, have to run pipe all the way to the other side.
Spent few hours setting up...when I first power on, water was dripping due to not enough white tape, really nightmare....
Took me a hard time to remove the joint as the space was cramp and most joint are glued...
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With this chiller, hope the CRS will multiply in numbers.
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Photo after some trimming.
** I notice my flow rate had reduced quite a lot, worry that the CO2 flow to the area below the lily pipe is not sufficient...
** If I am to monitor first before adding a internal pump, what are the tell tale signs that CO2 is not enough at that are?
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Nice setup!
For your Co2 levels, just monitor your drop checker to make sure its in the green color range during the active photo-period. Try placing the drop checker at different areas of the tank to measure the localized Co2 levels and see if any areas need more circulation. Ultimately it'll be the overall growth and health condition of the plants that will tell you if Co2 is at optimal levels.
I guess you do have to be cautious about not overdosing the Co2 though, since you are also keeping the more sensitive types of shrimps.
Was wondering why the cabinet looked so familiar, haha its the one i sold you. Glad you made it work for ya. Nice scape!
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Holy is the Lord, God Almighty ! The Earth is filled with His Glory !
90 x 50 x 50 cm tank: Eheim 2217; ANS CO2 Solenoid with 60mm intense bazooka; Zetlight 6400; Teco 500 Chiller; Borneo Wild Steel inlet/outlet
Ferts: Dry Mixture/Dr Mallicks. Temp: 26 degrees Substrate: ADA Amazonia
Noted that, previously that was the lowest CO2 level area, think is better for me to shift around once more since flow is much reduced now.
Thanks to UA, was going through his blog and saw how tidy his cabinet is. The daiso hanging kit are really great in keeping the cabinet neat.
Yup bro, thanks for the great deal. Love your new 3 feet setup. Probably I will go more wood than rocks if I have a chance to do another tank haha. These rocks release minerals and causes raising GH issue haha. Btw do remember to share the formula you are using for dosing this tank when you are free. Would like to take it as a reference =)
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Hmm, I am thinking of filling up the gap along the center line with 1 more type of plant.
- Between the Ludwigia and MC
- Between the Rotala and MC
Can anyone recommend some plants which you think might suits?
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I have very good quality stocks.http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...654#post834654
Learning new things everyday !!!
Can try Blyxia japonica... its an ideal mid-ground plant commonly used as a "divider" between shorter foreground carpet plants and taller background stem plants.
Although it has a dense bushy look, its actually a stem plant (not crawler/runner plant), so it doesn't spread to other areas and is easy to maintain.
Hey Kaen130, where did you get your tank and cabinet from? And how much did it cost?
I want one that's the same tank size as yours and similar cabinet. But that tank size and cabinet is quite hard to find apart from customising...
It has been a busy 4 weeks with work, festive holiday, and my aquarium lol.
New Challenges kept appearing and so many changes happened.
1) After installing the chiller, my flow rate reduced a lot. GSA started to appear on my S. repens leaves which was planted at the area with least CO2 flow...
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Tried many things:
- shift my Lily Pipe to the other side on tank to reduce the pipe length, still does not improve much
- temporary installed a power head for the extra flow.
- just bought the chiller in/out elbow for 16/22mm pipe. Suspect the flow reduced may be caused by the step down to size 12/16mm at that part. Will try out during next water change
2) With chiller now, I want to try CRS breeding. There were many times I noticed that my CPDs and Ember Tetra went to disturb my shrimps when I fed shrimp food. So decided to remove them and pass them to a friend to look after.
It was hell trying to catch my 15 fishes >.<....both of us spent 1.5 hours and only managed to catch 9 with fish scoop net.....
The next 2 days, this was what I did after doing some research on Google (see photo)
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I'm doing fishing with fish trap in my aquarium lol. Finally managed to catch the rest of them after 2 days hahaha
3) Without fish and now installed with chiller, 1 to 2 shrimps still dying after every few days....this led to the toughest decision to make, which is to remove the GH time bomb in my tank....I started this tank because I want to do rock scaping.....but GH had been climbing, highest recorded was GH 9 and TDS went up over 280ppm......so either I give up Shrimps, or I give up the rocks....
So this was what I decided:
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And shifted the S.repens a bit
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