Office tank

[vogelspinnen]

Great idea, having a tank in the office. Definitely helps to stave off boredom (: Might wanna keep a small betta tank in mine too!

[Jungle-mania]

I notice you do not have a diffuser for your outlet, what happen to it?

[equidorz]

I notice you do not have a diffuser for your outlet, what happen to it?

Hi i have a ceramic diffuser just under my cannister outlet. On the bottom left of the tank. Maybe its hidden among the plants. LOL> anyway i tot of using a reactor instead of a diffuser or mayb add a wave maker to improve on the circulation of the tank?

[equidorz]

Great idea, having a tank in the office. Definitely helps to stave off boredom (: Might wanna keep a small betta tank in mine too!

Yah. sometimes after staring at the computer for the entire day need to look at some greens. hahaa. Betta tank is not bad an idea. My colleague has a small jar with a betta in it.

[Jungle-mania]

It actually doesn't really matter what you have at the end of your outlet, more importantly, as you said yourself, there is water movement around the tank. One way is to get a few drops of black water extract as a dye and see where it spreads in the tank, you will know then where are the places that do not get water flow.

[Navanod]

Hi Jungle.

Noted of the changing of water. I will try to do water change more frequently but as mentioned in my previous reply to stelim, changing water not very convinient for me as the tank is in my office.
Anyway can you enlighten me n the filter inlet and outlet position? I will extend the lighting period to 8 hours.

Thank you so much for your help

Hi Bro, Pardon me, but increasing the lighting hours will just make your algae problems worse.
Here's my humble suggestions:

1. Check your nitrate levels. Is is more than 80ppm? Try to reduce it to 30ppm
2. Have you been dosing potassium and micro-nutrients? When these are depleted, your plants stop growing well and algaes will appear.
3. You need to change water more. Either increase the number of times, or the volume per time. Aim to change at least 40% a week
4. Maintain your lighting at 6hrs for now and increase your CO2 to 30ppm or as high as you can without having the fishes gasping at the surface. Be very careful and make sure you do it early in the day so you can observe the effects on the fishes over a few hours.
5. If you all along been topping up the water instead of changing, it may be good to check on the hardness (GH). It may or may not be very high (more than 15).
6. If you have liquid carbon, such as excel, dose at double dose strength daily for 14 days. If you change water, dose as per instructed on bottle (I think its 4 or 5 times the daily dose). If you miss the wkends, its ok, cannot be helped. You should start to see the BBA and hair algae turn pink and die.

Also, note that the nerite snails will eventually lay eggs all over your rocks and they'll not hatch, leaving unsightly white spots all over.
SAE and flying fox are not the same (but I'll not go into this), but they both grow very big and not eat much algae, preferring fish food.
Get 1 or 2 (no more than that) Amano/Yamato shrimps instead and reduce your fish feeding so the shrimps are hungry. They'll help eat up any dead BBA and some of the hair algae.
You can add cherry/malayan shrimps if you need more algae eaters.

[equidorz]

Hi Nav,

Thank you for your kind suggestions,

Please see my reply as below :

1) I do not have a nitrate tester. Maybe should consider having one. How do i calculate ppm for nitrate?
2) I do not does liquid fertiliser in my tank, only Co2 input. As for the plant, i see some growing quite well but others stunt, not growing. I am thinking of dosing liquid
fertilisers (maybe ferka products - http://www.ferka-intl.com/productlist.php?set=0) not sure if that will help.
3) I am trying to make more water changes. If possible i aim to do at least twice a week or minimum once at least. 40% each time like you mentioned.
4) Ok now, i am confuse. so is 8hours good or 6hours good? maybe 7? LOL. Back to PPM again, how to measure 30 ppm for Co2? Drop checker? Currently CO2 ouput is slightly more than 1BPS. I have crs in my tank and i am worried that high CO2 might wipe them all out.
5) I havent been topping up water recently as evapouration is not as high as before. reason : not using fan anymore just let the office aircon do the job, maintaining 24-26degrees. I also heard that topping up water will cause high GH. The last time i test my GH , it was 14.
6) I have excel but i do not dare to use as well again because of my CRS. Anyway care to explain how liquid carbon can killl BBA?

Cheers.

[equidorz]

It actually doesn't really matter what you have at the end of your outlet, more importantly, as you said yourself, there is water movement around the tank. One way is to get a few drops of black water extract as a dye and see where it spreads in the tank, you will know then where are the places that do not get water flow.

Ok, so you are suggesting that diffuser and reactor will do the job. I just have to improve on the water circulation/flow in my tank? Maybe with a help of a wave maker? Any brands to recommend? Changing to a stronger cannister might not be possible due to space constraint.

[Navanod]

Its up to you to decide if your CRS or killing the algae is more important to you. The algae does not harm your CRS and can be left alone.

1) I do not have a nitrate tester. Maybe should consider having one. How do i calculate ppm for nitrate?
The kit will tell you using a color chart, depending on what brand you buy.

2) I do not does liquid fertiliser in my tank, only Co2 input. As for the plant, i see some growing quite well but others stunt, not growing. I am thinking of dosing liquid
fertilisers (maybe ferka products - http://www.ferka-intl.com/productlist.php?set=0) not sure if that will help.
You may want to avoid dosing more nitrate and phosphate since those are normally found in fish food. But once your nitrate falls to 10-20ppm, you can start dosing nitrate and phosphates as well.

3) I am trying to make more water changes. If possible i aim to do at least twice a week or minimum once at least. 40% each time like you mentioned.
40-50% total per week is good enough. If you change water twice, then changing 30% each time = 30 + (30% of 70) = 53% is good enough.

4) Ok now, i am confuse. so is 8hours good or 6hours good? maybe 7? LOL. Back to PPM again, how to measure 30 ppm for Co2? Drop checker? Currently CO2 ouput is slightly more than 1BPS. I have crs in my tank and i am worried that high CO2 might wipe them all out.
8hrs is ok when your plants have no CO2 or nutrient constraints to grow and there're no algae. But giving 8hrs when your plants are obviously not growing well (stunted like you've said) is just giving the algae more light/time to grow. 6hrs is minimum, too little and your plants may die.
Drop checker (but make sure you use KH4 water, not tank water). But I also look at the fish's response. Increase bit by bit and observe for at least the next 6 hours each time you increase it. If the fishes starts gasping, you can reduce it back and know thats the max you can go. Do not increase alot on friday afternoon and then go home and come back on monday to find all your CRS dead.

5) I havent been topping up water recently as evapouration is not as high as before. reason : not using fan anymore just let the office aircon do the job, maintaining 24-26degrees. I also heard that topping up water will cause high GH. The last time i test my GH , it was 14.
I don't know if 14 is too high. If your CRS are molting normally, then it should be ok. I try to keep to 8-10.

6) I have excel but i do not dare to use as well again because of my CRS. Anyway care to explain how liquid carbon can killl BBA?
Excel contains Glutaraldehyde which is a form of formaldehyde (a toxic chemical used to preserve dead body parts). It is a reducing agent, which basically "donates" an electron to other molecules. This electron exchange bombards organic matters with negative ions and damages cell membranes of simple lifeforms like algaes, which does not have complex skin or outer membranes to protect them.
Liverworts and bladderworts (eg. riccia and mini pelia) also suffers from it.
At high concentrations, it'll damage gills membranes and kill livestocks but you'll have to overdose ALOT to see that.

[equidorz]

Hi Nav,

Thank you for the useful information. Have send you a Pm.

[Jungle-mania]

Hi Bro, Pardon me, but increasing the lighting hours will just make your algae problems worse.
Here's my humble suggestions:

1. Check your nitrate levels. Is is more than 80ppm? Try to reduce it to 30ppm
2. Have you been dosing potassium and micro-nutrients? When these are depleted, your plants stop growing well and algaes will appear.
3. You need to change water more. Either increase the number of times, or the volume per time. Aim to change at least 40% a week
4. Maintain your lighting at 6hrs for now and increase your CO2 to 30ppm or as high as you can without having the fishes gasping at the surface. Be very careful and make sure you do it early in the day so you can observe the effects on the fishes over a few hours.
5. If you all along been topping up the water instead of changing, it may be good to check on the hardness (GH). It may or may not be very high (more than 15).
6. If you have liquid carbon, such as excel, dose at double dose strength daily for 14 days. If you change water, dose as per instructed on bottle (I think its 4 or 5 times the daily dose). If you miss the wkends, its ok, cannot be helped. You should start to see the BBA and hair algae turn pink and die.

Also, note that the nerite snails will eventually lay eggs all over your rocks and they'll not hatch, leaving unsightly white spots all over.
SAE and flying fox are not the same (but I'll not go into this), but they both grow very big and not eat much algae, preferring fish food.
Get 1 or 2 (no more than that) Amano/Yamato shrimps instead and reduce your fish feeding so the shrimps are hungry. They'll help eat up any dead BBA and some of the hair algae.
You can add cherry/malayan shrimps if you need more algae eaters.

Navrod, I conceit to your views about the lighting, I can see your point that the algae given the simply organism it is would probably grow faster. However from my past experience, reducing the daily lighting time did nothing in reducing the algae in my tank. Depending on the severity of the algae, the only reduction that seemed to work for me was the 3 day blackout. Granted, it wasn't the only cure but was part of the cure which had included water change, physical removal of algae, etc.

Algae unchecked can be disastrous, I did once have an algae bloom when I was so busy with work that when euthropication took place, it destroyed my entire tank.

With the nerites, I never had them lay eggs in my tank. The only that I did and regretted were the freshwater abalones which flooded the tank with little snails that I had to get a puffer.

But all good, bro, I respect your opinion, that's what this forum is about, to help one another.

[Navanod]

Navrod, I conceit to your views about the lighting, I can see your point that the algae given the simply organism it is would probably grow faster. However from my past experience, reducing the daily lighting time did nothing in reducing the algae in my tank. Depending on the severity of the algae, the only reduction that seemed to work for me was the 3 day blackout. Granted, it wasn't the only cure but was part of the cure which had included water change, physical removal of algae, etc.

Algae unchecked can be disastrous, I did once have an algae bloom when I was so busy with work that when euthropication took place, it destroyed my entire tank.

With the nerites, I never had them lay eggs in my tank. The only that I did and regretted were the freshwater abalones which flooded the tank with little snails that I had to get a puffer.

But all good, bro, I respect your opinion, that's what this forum is about, to help one another.

Hi bro,

IMHO, reducing lighting hours is not to reduce the existing algae in the tank. They'll still grow, but slower, so that while we're killing and removing, its not growing right back. For super severe infestations, I agree with you that reducing the lighting hours is really not effective anymore since there's so much algae that each doubling of their mass is still alot of algae...slowing down that doubling time is not going to help much

However, I'm sure that increasing the lighting was not going to help the problem, which was the point of my initial post to the TS.
Euthropication is indeed a problem, thanks for reminding me. So in the long run, algae CAN kill shrimps by depleting the oxygen in the water at night, when photosynthesis shuts down!

How did you stop the nerites from laying eggs bro? There were theories of picking only the males, but no one could tell their sexes apart!

Agreed bro. It's good to hear of other people experiences and ideas, thats the benefits of forums.

[Navanod]

Hi Nav,

Thank you for the useful information. Have send you a Pm.

Sorry bro, think you should continue to post your questions here. I'm mostly running around at work and only return to my desk to reply emails and sneak a look at the forums

[chumzhujun]

is it a canister filter

[equidorz]

is it a canister filter

Sorry but what do you mean? the cannister behind my tank is a ehiem 2211 if you are referring to that.

[equidorz]

Hi Peeps.

Some updates on my tanks with lots of algaes on the rock especially.






Have spray hydrogen peroxide on the algaes infested area. Will try to take a picture again and update if it works.


Side view on my tank

[Ftech]

Very nice little tank. Setup looks complicated.

[surface1030]

very nice setup.
a pleasant distraction to take ur mind off work

[equidorz]

very nice setup.
a pleasant distraction to take ur mind off work

LOL. sometimes i stare at the tank until i forget about my work. But my tank still has alot of improvement to be made.
Will post more updates on it soon!

[xXXXx13]

Waiting for your updates