# Lots of pictures; lots of problems



## potatoes (Jun 25, 2010)

Hi, 
I am trying to document the entire setup of my 10gal in detail and the progress of my 29 gal. I want to have them fully established before I pull it all together and post it, but unfortunately I have a few problems I can not seem to resolve. The pictures are attached. How do you insert them in between text?
My 29gal has been set up for three months, and I still haven't added my fish. This is because there are several problems that I think will take me a lot of maintenance and digging around to resolve.
I put MGOCPS that i sifted through and soaked a few times, but I think the cap was too fine. I got huge buildups of gas under the cap of Black Diamond blasting grit (they only had the finest grade). When the bubbles burst through, they mixed up the dirt and the cap, which allowed some dirt into the water and created a layer of the lighter dirt over my cap. I can not vacuum it of in some areas because my cap is so mixed up with the underlaying dirt that i just suck up mud. It makes water changes difficult, is unsightly, and settles on my plant leaves, which I think will make them prone to algae.
I also need to move some sunset hygro a few inches to make room for a piece of driftwood, but i dont want to rip out the root system along with a huge amount of dirt.
Another problem is it is doing well with no algae and fantastic plant growth. This is a problem because I have 48 watts of T5HO light laying on the glass hood, which is supposed to be way too much. everything melted when my ammonia was at 4 for a month around the time the gass was bad, and my tank just started looking nice. I am in a dillema, because I always thought "if it 'aint broke, dont fix it", yet it goes against everyones advice. Since I am not feeding it, am I just exhausting my soil? If I lower my light, will there suddenly be extra resources available and open the door to algae?

On top of all that, I have solved a few problems, like these aphids. I removed all the plants floating plants and trimmed submerged growth that reach the surface, waited 5 days while picking off stragglers, and then added back some aphid free floaters. in a 10gal nonplanted tank, and i am trying to see if i can literally stamp them out of existence faster then they can reproduce, because they are on my only frogbit. If it does not work in a week, I wish wash the plants with soap. I noticed that the floating plants sustained much less damage from the aphids than the submersed that grew to the surface. This may be due to the fact that the aphids concentrated on them more, or that the floaters have more defenses against terrestrial parasites. 
I also have a plant I would love an ID on two plants. One was a wonderful plant someone kindly gave me in a shipment, and the other is either pygmy chain sword or dwarf sag ( I had both, mixed them up, and planed them on opposite sides of the tank. one melted), and a picture of a mystery slime that developed on a different 29 gal I recently set up at my school. I made a wet slide of it and magnified it X800, and found nondiscript brown circular cells living in a colony together and excreting a matrix to live in. Just thought you would appreciate it  My APBIO teacher thought it might be a slime mold, or that it might belong to this other obscure but related kingdom whos name i can not recall.

My ten gal, which has a bit of long, coarse, green tread algae, has cloudy green water. I attribute this to its lack of a filter, and I would love advice on what to get. I want to minimize surface agitation. It will be a shrimp only tank, so it does not need to be that strong. I am leaning toward powerhead with a sponge over the intake and output, which will harbor the bacteria for my bio filtration. here is a link to the one i am considering. It has flow control adjustment, which i think allows me to adjust output, but i am not sure.
http://www.amazon.com/VIA-AQUA-VA-80-ATAM-AT-301/dp/B003GDYHYI/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_cart_1
Any comments or help with any of my numerous questions would be greatly appreciated, 
Mike


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## potatoes (Jun 25, 2010)

More pictures :kev:


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## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

wow, those really are aphids.


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## potatoes (Jun 25, 2010)

Lol yeah, but they were pretty easy to eradicate since i was willing to toss all my infected floaters.

Ok i have info on the parameters of the tanks.
29 gal:
Nitrate is about 3ppm
Ammonia is about .15ppm
O2 is at 7ppm
CO2 is 6 ppm

the 10 gal isnt doing so hot...
ammonia is 0
nitrate is 0
CO2 is 0
O2 is 8ppm

No wonder there is no growth in the 10gal LOL. the 10gal has more issues than i thought, and more green thread algae then i thought. I am not feeding the tank at all, as they only inhabitants are plants and pond snails. I cant figure out why there are no nutrients in the water. Sure i soaked and dired this soil a few more times then the 29 gal, but geez, ZERO?? I may need to split that tank into its own tread of problems, lol. Maybe I should feed the empty tank? I used to have way too much light on it (the 18watt plant tube simply diddnt look bright, so i added 2 35watt spiral compact fllourecents, which worked until the water clouded and the algae came along. I am back at the single 18watt)

I am at a loss here. If there is any information at all that would help, I am sure i can supply it or rummage up a test from my science department and tell you. Sorry about this massive list of problems, but they have been building up, and everything i know about plants I have taught myself in the last year using books and online resources (i.e. this sight). So although i am technically a senior member (still makes me laugh) I am still learning a lot


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## colinsk (Dec 29, 2008)

I am by no means an expert but I do understand a little. I would use 2 18 watt lights in a 10 gallon (and do). I would also start feeding slowly. Perhaps .1g per day then double it each week till your plant growth is too fast then cut back.


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## vicky (Feb 18, 2010)

_I am not feeding the tank at all . . . I cant figure out why there are no nutrients in the water._

There you go. Feed the tank - with fish food. Fish food, whether preprocessed by fish or not, becomes plant food. With a lightly stocked tank, you feed the tank, not the fish.


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## Tuiflies (Jan 21, 2010)

1. Stop changing the lights so frequently. The tank will need time to adjust and in this time algae often adjusts faster. Eventually your plants will start using up more nutrients and they'll start limiting the algae growth on their own. Just continue helping to keep the algae in check as this will assist the plants.

2. One 18W bulb should be good for a 10g tank but if you don't like the look, change the color temp instead of the wattage. Or, if you can use sprial CF's, use two 9-11W bulbs and you can mix and match color temps.

3. I suspect there's something wrong with the test you did on the 10g. If there's soil in the tank, you should be reading something. Try testing again just before the lights come on and expect to get some CO2 (from the plant respiration over night).

4. If you can contain the aphids, I'd leave them for your fish. If your 10g parameters are accurate, add fish. Maybe you have so many plants (including floaters) that they're using up all the nutrients in the water column. Fish and fish food will add some back.

5. Unless you want to redo the 29g, you're stuck with the black grit. I just have a healthy carpet of Pygmy Chain Swords to keep the soil contained and I don't do gravel vacs. That's what shrimp and snails are for. I even have a healthy increasing population of RCS in my 29g with Neons and guppies. Adding MTS will help with the soil gassing.

6. I'd just push the Hygro over and add more grit to fill in the trench you make, as you push it. I don't think there's any way to move things in an NPT without making a mess.

7. Can you reduce your light on the 29g gradually in any way? Like take out one of the HO bulbs and replace it with something not so bright (in a second hood) for the interm? If not, I'd just remove one of the bulbs and deal with the consequences. I'll sort itself out eventually and it's only been going for three months. You're still pretty much in the initial setteling in phase for an NPT anyways.

8. I think your mystery grass looks just like my Sag. only shorter. My PCS is much shorter and thinner.

9. Lastly, to insert a photo, save it somewhere like photobucket, and just insert the IMG code that get's associated with your photos. If the code is not bracketed by IMG, click on the mountain icon above the text box when you're writing a thread and paste the code in the resulting window where it asks for the URL.


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## potatoes (Jun 25, 2010)

Thanks for the replies, they are very helpful. I know that fish food acts as a source of nutrients in the long run, but the 10gal is only a month or so old, and I expected the soil to be leeching much more nutrients then it did. I had ammonia levels at 4ppm for a month when i first set up the 29gal. The aphids are not a problem, as they are gone, I just added them for interests sake and to tell people how i delt with them. I will keep the wattage at 18watts in the 10gal and retest tomorrow morning, but i couldnt have messed up the c02, ammonia, and nitrate tests all in a row. I must have just mineralized my soil more then i thought. If the tests come back the same, i will start feeding the tank.
Thats too bad about the soil, I will just divide up my dwarf sag (thanks for the ID) and encourage it to fill in all the open areas. Thats a good idea about the hygro, i was going to rip it out, which probably would have been disastrous. I will raise the light off the hood a few inches to reduced the light. I just found it interesting how well everything is going despite the fact that I have too much light, and was curious if this much light is destined to fail or exhaust the soil.


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## Tuiflies (Jan 21, 2010)

I think that sounds like a good action plan. There's always more than one way to skin a cat. I agree that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Even if you do deplete your soil faster than usual, you can still have a tank for over five years and there's always root tabs.


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## potatoes (Jun 25, 2010)

Awesome. I did some major plant moving, and I accidentally pulled up a hygo. To mu surprise, very little dirt came with it, so i ended up gulling up all the ones I needed to move. The ones that were in the wrong place were just stem cuttings in impatiently planted, so they did not have extensive root systems yet, and the ones that did still did not take that much soil with them. This may not work with everyone though, because my soil does not seem to have that high of a turbidity. Any soil that came up isn't really a problem for me anyhow, because I already have soil on top of my cap. Anyways, everything is finally coming together, thanks for your continued help 

I retested my 10gal, and in the morning, it only had 5ppm of co2 and .25ppm of ammonia (no filter). So it makes sense that everything is used up by the afternoon. I am planning on getting that powerhead and attaching a sponge to the intake and output, and I believe there is enough 02 for the bacteria to colonize it and act as my filter. I am hoping this will take care of my ammonia problem, and as a result my greenwater problem. Since i need two (one for this tank, one for a 5gal NPT) I am trying to save on shipping and getting a filter that will suit them both. The powerhead I want to get has 74 gph, so I am hoping it will be suitable for both the 5gal and 10gal. I am basically trying to make my own cheaper version of this without the gravel/carbon compartment or whatever that is:
http://www.frogpondaquatics.com/c=t...st-Powerhead-Internal-Filter-Kit-100-gph.html

Also, Any idea on that other mystery plant? I was thinking african water fern, but it has no ribozome. its stem goes straingt into roots, like a crypt or sword, so i am kind of confused. Its roots are currently buried and it s now my favorite plant, so i dont want to kill it by mistreating it.


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

If it is the second picture from the left in the second post, then the mystery plant is water sprite.


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## potatoes (Jun 25, 2010)

Cool, thanks, that was my original guess, but the ones in google images had much finer leaves with more divisions in the leaves, but i guess like wisteria, its leaf shape changes with conditions.


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