# decaying food on the bottom of NPT - I am struggling to balance things!



## helenf (Mar 24, 2008)

I'm worried about the balance of food - fish - plant growth - unwanted algae and fungus in my NPT.

No matter how little I try to feed the fish, I end up with food dropping to the bottom and decaying there, and getting all covered with fungus.

*Background *

Its a recently established 5 gallon NPT, planted with hygro, hygro difformis, an anubias nana, some kind of little sword, ambulia. Mostly fast growing things. And duckweed on the top. Everything is growing, some faster than others. The duckweed is getting long in the roots. The crypt is putting out new leaves and losing old ones. Some of the hygros have holes in their older leaves and the difformis has old leaves at the bottom that are all twisted and curled up. But all the hygros are growing new leaves at the top that look OK to me, and a couple of them are soon to break the surface of the water, I think. There is algae on the gravel and the sides of the tank (which I wipe off from time to time), and a little on the plants but not much actually on their leaves. I had hair algae growing on the wisteria leaves, but putting a small Siamese Algae Eater in the tank for a couple of weeks sorted that out nicely.

There is no water circulation other than that caused by the heater. Temperature is about 22 degrees (actually I haven't looked at that recently, but I think that's about right). Lighting is good daylight with no direct sun plus a 13W CF desklight, suspended over the tank, that is on for around 12 hours a day.

I've had the tank running for maybe a month so far.

The water tests consistently at:
ammonia= 0
nitrite = 0
nitrate = 0
PH = 7 to 8, depending on the time of day (I think the variation is due to the CO2 concentration in the water changing). 
Phosphate is about 2ppm, I believe (haven't tested that in more than a week).

The fish are about 9 endler males. So they are smaller less than half the size) of fancy guppy males. Really tiny things.

*The current worry*

So anyway, the thing I am currently worried about is that the fish don't seem very interested in the food I give them. Either that or they just don't find it (I have a little feeding ring set up to clear a space in the duckweed - thought they would learn to look there for food, but they don't seem to so much as to happen on it by accident sometimes). I'm not actually sure what they are eating - maybe they are eating the algae or maybe they just need far less than I think, being so small. I've been giving them a tiny pinch of flake in the morning and a tiny pinch of pellets in the evening. But most of it stays uneaten. The flake kind of dissolves on the top of the water (I'm sure the duckweed likes that), but the pellets mostly drop down to the gravel, where they decay and become covered with fungus in a couple of days.

Now I'm sure that having the bottom of the tank covered in a layer of fungus isn't good, though the fish don't seem to mind. I have no idea whether the sort of fungus that eats decaying fish food would be dangerous to the fish or not. But my worry is that if I feed the tank less the plants will have less nutrients. I'm already worried that the holes and curling in some of my hygro leaves are signs of some missing nutrient, so if anything I'd like to be able to feed the tank more, not less. But most of what I'm feeding already skips the step of being digested by a fish, and I don't want to increase the fungus problem.

*Questions/B]

Does anyone have a suggestion for how to tackle this?

Has anyone had a similar problem with fungus growing on the bottom of their tank where uneaten fish food has sunk? What did you do?

Could the lack of circulation be contributing to the problem here, since the water at the bottom of the tank is so still that the fungus can grow easily? If so, would adding a powerhead make a difference (I don't really want to do that long-term, but I'd considering giving it a try temporarily).*


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## Red_Rose (Mar 18, 2007)

What are you feeding your guppies? Have you had them since setting up the tank? If so, I think they would've started eating the food by now. I give mine Nutrafin Max flake food and they gobble it up. Try giving them a different type of food to see how they take to it. You can also give them blanched veggies too.

I don't recall every having fungus form on uneaten food in my 10g but then again, it's rare for my betta to leave food uneaten. lol I also have a ton of snails in my bigger tank so they tend to quickly clean the food up.

You could try adding some circulation to the tank. I've found that is' helped in my 10g when it comes to algae but now that I have some nerites, I don't mind having algae in the tank. Water circulation will also spread the nutrients throughout the water for the plants. Why would you not want to add a powerhead(or even a small filter) in the tank long-term?

Also, what kind of algae do you have in your tank? If it's brown the you most likely have diatoms which are very common in newly set up tanks and it tends to go away on its own after the tank is more established.


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## helenf (Mar 24, 2008)

Thanks for the advice Red Rose.

I'm feeding the guppies the same as my other community tanks. Which is: Omega One flake, Sera flake, New Life Spectrum small fish pellets and Hikari small fish pellets. I usually feed flake in the morning and pellets in the afternoon, alternating the two varieties of each. 

All the pellets are very small and definitely not too big for the guppies. The flake I usually crush a little, so its easier for them to manage. 

Maybe I need to get a snail. I'm not sure what kind of snails I can get here in Melbourne, but the LFS has gold mystery snails for sale, at least. Would one of those eat my uneaten food and would it multiply in the tank (don't want loads of snails). Would it crawl out the top (no cover on this tank, only the duckweed)? 

I'm disinclined to add a filter partly because the tank is on a windowsill where its a pain to put power cables. Admittedly I already had to relax my goal of "no power only natural" to heat the tank, since its getting colder here and the water was too cool for the fishes comfort. Party it's just that I had this aim of getting a tank to work with as little technology as possible, just to see if I can get it to work. So far I'm not sure if I'm happy or not. Fish seem happy, plants are growing, but the algae and decaying food are clearly a problem which I haven't figured out how to solve yet. 

I have a little bit of brown algae, which I'm not bothered by, and a little bit of that green sheety stuff, growing amongst the brown on the glass. The main that bothers me is the hair algae growing on the leaves of the plants. I had a baby siamese algae eater in there for a couple of weeks, which ate all the hair algae that I could see. I moved him out, because I thought he didn't seem happy and its too small a tank for a SAE, even though just a baby, but two weeks later (now) the hair algae is back in force. I've just this morning put the SAE back into that tank to eat that, but I don't think I can leave one of them in there long term, and I read that otocinclus don't eat hair algae, so it seems to me that I need to prevent it growing not have someone in there to eat it when it does.


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## Jareardy (Feb 14, 2008)

Get some ghost shrimp, they'll eat anything that hits the floor


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## Red_Rose (Mar 18, 2007)

You're welcome. 

The golden snails you're LFS has is probably Pomacea bridgesii. These types of snails need a male and female in order to breed so if you have one, you'll have nothing to worry about. These types of snails eat dead and diseased plants, fish wastes and fishfood. Many people also give them blanched veggies like green leaf lettuce and green beans as well. They have been known to crawl out of tanks but I think they only tend to do that when there's a problem with the water quality.

I had looked up hair algae and the only thing I found on getting rid of it is doing it manually. I don't know of any fish that will eat this algae and I can't remember if Nerite snails can eat it. Hopefully someone will post who knows how to get rid of this type of algae.


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## Revernance (Aug 20, 2007)

Jareardy said:


> Get some ghost shrimp, they'll eat anything that hits the floor


I second that. I purchased a dozen ghost shrimp for my 29 gallon. I left them there for for a week. When I got back from college, I thought my mom vacuumed the gravel. It was cleannnnnnn. No detrius.


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## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

Shrimp ought to help. 
I feed my Endlers about the same stuff as you are feeding, and they do like it. The very smallest size of Spectrum pellets is well within their range, they love Omega One flakes, and I feed an assortment of frozen and freeze dried foods. My tank is a 20 (American) gallons, and has so many Endlers I cannot count. I have Cherry Shrimp in there with them, but not very many. The Endlers are breeding a lot, the shrimp are not (or else the baby shrimp are getting eaten :-( )
If they are so uninterested in food then perhaps you are overfeeding, try once a day instead of twice (If you are feeding twice) and skipping a day once a week. In a well planted tank there are a lot of microorganisms in the water, and it may well be that the Endlers are staying well fed by grazing on these things.


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## helenf (Mar 24, 2008)

Well a quick trip to the LFS resulted in no shrimp (apparently they are out of season here at the moment), but one small apple snail. 

I'll see how that goes...

Thanks for the advice, everyone.


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## tames (Apr 18, 2008)

Apple snails can grow to be quite large for a 5gal tank. Just thought you ought to know. You may also want to try a Cory. They eat the left overs on the bottom.

As others have said, cut back on the food. I only feed most of my fish - including Endlers - every other day. If you feed your Endlers even less, they will start to consume algae in the tank (not sure about hair algae though). This is also true if you have any wild strains of guppy. I am currently feeding my Het. formosa once a day to get the population up.

Another thing to consider - and I am no expert - is that the Endlers may be stressed with no females in the tank. I may be wrong, but it just crossed my mind. Normally you want a greater percentage of females to males. Feeding them less helps keep the population down too.

Here is an interesting article by Lovel Tippit who writes a series called Timeline for FAMA magazine.
In this tank, he only fed his Endlers 13 times in one year. This article covers the first year or so. See April 2008 magazine for an updated story into the second year.

http://aquariumheritagesociety.com/covers/vol-1.num-1-cover.html

I set up a 5 1/2 gal about two weeks ago to try this myself. I have not added fish yet. 
If interested, more details here: http://naturalaquariums.com/bb/index.php?topic=1031.0


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

helenf said:


> There is no water circulation other than that caused by the heater. Temperature is about 22 degrees.
> 
> So anyway, the thing I am currently worried about is that the fish don't seem very interested in the food I give them.
> 
> ...


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## tames (Apr 18, 2008)

I don't consider feeding my fish as "starvation" with reduced feedings. As usual, this hobby is about many, many different ways of doing things. It was just a suggestion, and one that works well for my fish; of which I have kept many alive and healthy for several years.


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## helenf (Mar 24, 2008)

dwalstad said:


> Hello Helen,
> 
> Yes, you may need some water circulation here-- temporarily. I'd also change the water immediately and do as much gravel cleaning as you can. Lethargic fish with little appetite is a warning that I'm glad you picked up on.
> 
> ...


Hi and thanks for your comments.

It hadn't occurred to me that there might be a lack of oxygen in the tank. The endlers are moderately active (mind you, these are the first I've kept, so I don't know what the norm is. However they are not very interested in their food.

The baby Siamese Algae Eater I've put in the tank is not very active at all. In fact the last one of those I put in there, I ended up removing after a couple of weeks because I was worried about his health - he just seemed to be lethargic all the time compared to those in my other tanks. So maybe this fish is in fact indicating a lack of oxygen in the water.

The water is at 22C, which is around 72F. I think that's warm enough for plants, though maybe I am wrong. I'm not very experienced at this hobby.

I'm going to start by doing a 25% water change with a light gravel vac to remove fungus from the bottom. Then I'll add an airstone to the tank for a few days, and see whether the behaviour of the fish, especially the SAE, changes. I am slightly horrified by the idea that I might be depriving my fish of oxygen (and infact I didn't realise that was a danger in a heavily planted tank), and want to rectify that ASAP.

Thanks again for the advice!

PS. My new apple snail is exploring the tank slowly, and I'm pretty sure I can see cleaner substrate where he's been, so he does seem to be working "as advertised", which I am glad of.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

tames said:


> I don't consider feeding my fish as "starvation" with reduced feedings. As usual, this hobby is about many, many different ways of doing things. It was just a suggestion, and one that works well for my fish; of which I have kept many alive and healthy for several years.


Well said! My apologies. Poor choice of words. Reduced feedings probably wouldn't hurt in this case. After all, if the fish aren't eating, adding more food won't help their situation. That's for sure! 

Remember, though, fishfood is the plant fertilizer in NPTs, so a little excess food is good for the ecosystem-- once tank is well-established. Plants take up the waste products, so minor overfeeding doesn't cause the toxicity problems that would happen in an unplanted tank. My fish routinely get fed more than they can eat, but I never see food rotting on the bottom or fungal growth.

In new tanks like Helen's that aren't yet established, there's not enough oxygen to fuel bacterial decomposition and keep the water safely oxygenated. Once soil bacteria finish feasting on the freshest soil organic matter, the substrate will "settle down" and this low oxygen problem should dimminish. Her adding an air-stone temporarily will speed up this process, as aerobic decomposition is much, much faster than anaerobic decomposition.


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## helenf (Mar 24, 2008)

dwalstad said:


> Remember, though, fishfood is the plant fertilizer in NPTs, so a little excess food is good for the ecosystem-- once tank is well-established. Plants take up the waste products, so minor overfeeding doesn't cause the toxicity problems that would happen in an unplanted tank. My fish routinely get fed more than they can eat, but I never see food rotting on the bottom or fungal growth.
> 
> In new tanks like Helen's that aren't yet established, there's not enough oxygen to fuel bacterial decomposition and keep the water safely oxygenated. Once soil bacteria finish feasting on the freshest soil organic matter, the substrate will "settle down" and this low oxygen problem should dimminish. Her adding an air-stone temporarily will speed up this process, as aerobic decomposition is much, much faster than anaerobic decomposition.


That is such a clear and plausible explanation for what is going on in my tank! Thankyou!!! I know I'm not overfeeding the tank, in the sense that there is never any detectable ammonia, nitrite or nitrate in the water. So the plants are clearly taking up all the nitrogen they can get, which is great. I think the water quality is much better in that way than in my other tanks, which all have some measurable nitrate.

But I was worried about the fungus "mid-stage" of decomposition that is happening and also about the depressed-looking siamese algae eater I had in the tank.

With the airstone in there, the fish do look happier, I think (I think I'm not imagining it). The endlers are dancing through the bubbles, the SAE is crusing and grazing, and the snail is upside down on the duckweed, presumably munching something up there. And more of the guppies than usual (three or four, as opposed to maybe-one) came up for their flake this morning, which is a good sign.


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## helenf (Mar 24, 2008)

I just want to say that adding the airstone has worked wonders on my tank.

The gravel is now totally clear of fungus and seems to have a lot less general detritus on it too. Some of that is me having done a couple of gravel vacs, but I also think something is working better at consuming the detritus that collects there. The lack of fungus is excellent.

The fish are more active. They are taking a little more interest in their food, though hardly flocking to the surface with each feeding like those in my other tanks. But then I always knew I was overfeeding the NPT - that's quite intentional, so I think these guys are getting plenty. 

There must be food going uneaten and ending up on the bottom of the tank and decaying, but it isn't very evident, unlike before. Maybe it is decaying faster?

The only problem is that adding the airstone seems to have sparked a huge hatching of pond snails. Maybe it is coincidence, but I only saw a couple before adding the airstone and in the last 3 or 4 days I've siphoned out hundreds of the little guys, all 1-4mm in shell length. Anyone know how to rid a tank of pond snails without harming my apple snail? 

Does anyone have a suggestion for how long I need to leave the airstone in the tank before I can think about slowing its flow and eventually removing it without causing problems with lack of aeration? 

My understanding is that there was a specific process going on in the soil that was robbing the water of oxygen, and that should stop after some time, but I don't know for how long. 

I might just end up leaving the airstone in there, but having to run airline to that location is slightly inconvenient, so not certain of that.


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