Cory Eggs! How Long Do I Leave Them?

[greenmumma141]

Sorry... water changes are the order of the day now!

 
looks like it 

 of course I had a million things to get done too lol, but it's pretty gut wrenching pulling teeny tiny cory carcasses out of there, so water changes it will be!!!!
 
I got a fluval 306 lol

hopefully it will help with all the sludge. still pretty crazy that I'm slushing out the sponges (one filter once a week) and they're still clogging this much.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Sounds like you need to do it to one filter every 3 or 4 days... 

 

[greenmumma141]

jeeze louise.... 

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I know.  Something has to be the cause, but until that is fully determined and dealt with, you have to treat the symptom - sludge.

 

[greenmumma141]

i hate sludge.


I'm really hoping/thinking that having the new filter out of all daylight will help a lot too. 


And now dosing the liquid co2 and better ferts will keep the plant melting and breaking down to a minimum.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

It very well may be the linchpin. 

 

[greenmumma141]

Just cleaned out filter #1. I'm no expert by the sludge looks like broken down plant matter to me, could be wrong though. 
 
Thought I'd share with everyone Hopefully no one is eating their breakfast muahaha....
 

 
The whole filter is full of this stuff, caked onto the basket, and the sponge felt like it weighed 5 lbs. 

 

[eaglesaquarium]

That's definitely the problem, but why so much?  Is the stuff "grainy" at all to the touch, or smooth and slimy?

 

[greenmumma141]

grainy, with chunky fiber looking stuff. That's why i was assuming it was plant matter. This was just what was in the very bottom of the bucket, there was much much more of it. It's in both of the filters.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Ok, now more importantly, what plants - or is it like a black beard algae?

 

[greenmumma141]

It doesn't look like an algae... Maybe bc I bought a couple new plants that completely melted away?  I haven't had that much leaves or anything stuck to the intakes this week though... but two weeks or so ago I sure did. Two entire large plants melted down to nothing. 

 

[eaglesaquarium]

That might be it...  What plants?

 

[greenmumma141]

Well, I've been struggling with two cambomba (sp?!) plants for almost a month, they're finally stopped breaking down and I'm left with two little sprouts.  A recent water wisteria is about half the size, and the third and last one melted down to absolutely nothing, not sure what the name was, but here's the pic... 
 

 
I don't even think the roots are left... which is a big bummber bc I really liked it a lot.  This is what lead me to decide to start dosing the liquid co2. I can't keep anything really stemmy in my tank


you can even see a piece of the camboba stuck to the plant in the pic lol. I'm really good about clearing out all the debris a couple times a day and clearing whatever is stuck to the intakes, but all the plants breaking down must still be building up in the filter. There was a good 1-2 inches of sludge in the bottom of the filter, let alone caked onto everything else...

 

[greenmumma141]

Down to 4-5 babies 

 

[snazy]

Generally speaking, what came out of your filter is nothing compared to what comes out of mine when I clean it. But I don't clean it as often and I don't get any spikes.
The only difference is that I find mulm in the filter and it isn't grainy at all.  Are you sure your filter isn't sucking up sand? If you sand is too fine maybe it goes in the wrong places, decreasing performance too. It's just a guess. When plants starts to melt away, just cut the melts as soon as you see them but it still shouldn't be enough to cause a spike like that.
 
Sorry about the babies. I don't think they can handle any ammonia/nitrIte very well. Keep doing what you are doing and if not this time, it will be fine next time.