My Cycle Data

[hakova]

Do you guys think it is time to consider bicarbonate yet? The KH of my tap water is 2.2 (40 ppm), which may be the reason of dropping pH after addition of CO[sub]2[/sub] to the system.

If yes, do you just add it once and every time you do a WC, or keep adding this according to your pH readings?

Also should I just add sodium bicarbonate or rather look for potassium bicarbonate for long term maintenance?

Thanks in advance for the responses.

 

[hakova]

Question: Was I not supposed to squeeze the foam in old tank water when cleaning it? Maybe I should have just soaked it and moved around? I just want to make sure I don't repeat the mistake that caused my cycle fall back next time.

What is the general opinion for raising the pH? Just keep doing WCs which raises it about 0.6 from 6.0 or is it time to add some sodium bicarbonate? Or should I not bother, keep doing what I have been doing without WCs and hope for the best?

 

[hakova]

Back in the game. After relieving the kink in the canister hose, things improved quickly. 4 ppm ammonia was converted to 0 ppm ammonia AND nitrite over the last 12 hours! I just added ammonia to raise it up to 5 ppm to check tonight if my bacteria are happy enough to eliminate them too. Couple of more days like this and tank should be ready for swimming and crawling creatures!

Has anybody here bought Red Cherry Shrimp (RCS) through ebay in US? What would you guys recommend as a source to buy shrimp from. Drs F&S, petshrimp.com and couple of other places currently are out of RCS, while others (aquariumplants.com) sell 10 of them per order. The shipping costs are quite high too. Too bad none of the LFS has them. I would appreciate your tips.

I am planning to get 6 cardinal tetras and 6 CRS for my 10 gallon tank. Do you think this is a reasonable stocking plan for my tank?

 

[waterdrop]

That's good! Sounds like your fishless cycle is about over and really I'm sure how to advise you because a lot is going to depend on your goals and the planted tank aspects. With all those plants, you'll be able to supply a very nice envirnment for your first fish and if you make the initial stocking small, the bacterial populations you've got at this point should drop back to handle them just fine.

I think this will be a better approach than trying to buffer the water and push the bacterial colonies higher as we do with empty fishless cycling tanks. Once you get both the plants and fish going you're going to be fine. I run a very acid tank in the 6's and KH=0 or 1 and my plants and fish are flourishing. I saw your other thread and one of the differences dave and I have is that I feel the term "pH crash" was never meant to be applied to "running" or "fish-in cycling" tanks, it was a term best used when fishless cycling a bare tank and filter, where you can doctor up the water for the bacteria. I completely agree with him and indeed, as I've said, have a similar type of tank myself as far as running with low KH etc. In my own case I was quite fascinated with the science of the cycling and so did the whole thing out bare and only started plants and fish -after- the big water change after fishless cycling.

I also think there's every reason to believe that dave's quite right about the overriding magic of pressurized CO2, it solves a myriad of ills. I'm taking my good time getting to the point of experiencing it myself, but have little doubt of its effectiveness. I've chosen the liquid carbon route for now rather than the DIY, but CO2 is a lot better than liquid carbon in some ways I think so I'd stick with it if you want to. Also very interesting his comment about the soil and roots helping the bacterial situation.. does go right along with the positive things about both soil/root bacteria and CO2 from the soil that gets talked about in NPT/Walstad discussions.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[hakova]

Thank you very much for your endless motivation to help waterdrop. I really appreciate it and to be honest I was addicted to your comments, so for the last couple of days I was having some withdrawal going on . Today, I was ecstatic to see for the first time that my tank was able to process 5 ppm ammonia to 0 ppm ammonia AND nitrite (cycling diary). I think I will take my time until the weekend to stock my tank, will repeat and confirm this performance a couple of more times and then on the weekend I will do the 80% WC and introduce some fish.

Vinylman advised against stocking with cardinal tetras (6) in another thread, because my tank will just be cycled but not mature. I am sure he knows what he is talking about and I appreciate and respect his warning. What would be your comment on a mature tank? Like, when do you think we can consider a tank mature? Is there a certain amount of time or other indicators? Eventually, when my tank matures, will I be able to get some cardinal tetras for my tank you think? In the mean time, I can deal with some other less favorite kinds, but I don't even know if the LFS (i.e. Pet Smart or Petco) will be willing to let me trade them in for cardinal tetras.

DIY CO2 only lasted for a week in my hands. I will replenish the CO2 bottle tonight and hope for the best. I might have to go for the pressurized CO2 system, although it is rather expensive and I only have a 10 gallon tank. I would hate to watch my plants suffer and if I am hearing you correctly, CO2 systems are superior to liquid based stuff (Seachem Fluorish Excel).

 

[hakova]

Updated the cycling diary. I think I will be able to add some fish at the weekend .

 

[waterdrop]

Gotta love that graph hakova! Nice visual confirmation of "getting the last blips of nitrite out!" Congratulations.

Were you going for a single species (cardinal only) tank? Def want to wait 4-6 months before the cards. But definately need fish in there to feed the bacteria of course. I can see your dilemma, it just being a 10g. One good thing is that a well-filtered, heavily-planted (with successfully growing plants) tank could support a larger number of small tetras like cardinals and some other similar species than the usual stocking guidelines might seem to indicate to you as a beginner. Perhaps if you thought two shoals might be an ok look, then one of them might be chosen for its ability to be a first introduction fish, like rasbora heteromorpha (I think a great first fish.) Or black neons (actually don't know if they do better with a wait period, perhaps somebody else will.. I wish I knew by heart which smaller looking tetras (head&tail lights? glowlights? etc.) will -remain- small.. its tricky because you can't base it on how they typically look in the store. For instance rummy-noses, which are also wonderful planted tank shoalers will get quite big by comparison to cardinals. Anyway you could still plan on trying to take the first set back (PetSmart,PetCo straight out don't do this I think?) but by choosing something that might -possibly- work then it wouldn't be so bad if you couldn't get them rehomed and had to do two slightly smaller shoals of them and the cardinals.

Its very difficult to advise you about the carbon issue and I wouldn't like to steer you wrong. Many people -would- have a hard time justifying pressurized on a 10g I suspect, but then again, maybe not. You are off to a good start leaning about DIY and you might have the willpower to add bottles and stick with it. I may have given you an overly bad impression about liquid carbon, however, it can be quite good, its certainly a lot better than no carbon. I'd put all three methods of carbon way above not having carbon, but I'd put liquid and diy slightly below pressurized but for completely different reasons, diy for practical reasons, liquid for somewhat lesser quality of results reasons. So its quite a hard one for me to see how to give good advice. Am I remembering correctly you already are above 2 watts/gallon on the lighting? If that's true that would almost require you to go pressurized, otherwise you'll be all algae possibly. I'm dying for pressurized but I'm lazy and would buy it as a complete system, so it would cost several times over my entire investment so far in the tank and filter and that slows my doing it.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[hakova]

Hi waterdrop,

Thanks again for taking time for another detailed message. Let me try to itemize my issues:

1. I have already contacted Pet Smart, they won't take any fish back, even for free. So, one more time, I am leaning towards your excellent suggestion of perhaps having two shoals of different species; namely Harlequins (6) first, followed by Cardinal tetras (6) when the tank is mature. I definitely want some shrimp in there too and Pet Smart has ghost shrimp apparently, so I will go for it too. I don't know if this is overstocking, so I will need your suggestions on this one, too .

2. I contacted a local CO2 supplier (National Welders, which happens to be a major player in NC, as well) today. It looks like the complete system costs around $200, including a 5 lb full steel cylinder, the regulator and solenoid (the latter two from ebay or DrsF&S). However, the warranty that comes with the regulator/solenoid is only 6 months. In another web site that promoted an electronic regulator, there was a statement about solenoids getting hot and going out of order sometimes in a matter of months. After spending that much of money, it would suck to end up with a broken part. I was also able to make the yeast-based system work better by using fresh ingredients. Plus, the drop checker I received today indicates a CO2 level around 30 ppm so I decided to wait and see at the moment.

3. I have 1 cm laterite and 2-5 cm Eco Complete on top. I was wondering if it would be overkill to further fertilize the plants with the EI method or not. I posted this question in the Planted Tanks section. Assuming the verdict might be a yes, I started wondering if the 0.1% copper in the CSM+B fertilizer would be a hazard for the shrimp. As expected, I posted this question to the inverts forum of course, LOL. I am anticipating that it should be OK, but I just can't help worrying, LOL.

Once again, I would like to thank you for your incredible support during my cycling and afterwards. You are an asset for this forum, trying to help everyone as much as you can.

 

[waterdrop]

I think the six plus six plus shrimp sounds great! The six rasboras would be a great first tank intro and would keep you happy during the first months waiting for the neons/cards (let me mention that neons with their addional silver look can be just as stunning as cards and I've found them to be more hardy than in the old days.. got some really good ones from PetSmart of all places.) Shimp don't count much in the stocking dept. A tank like yours should handle what might be a slight technical overstocking and I would expect 8 neons/cards could be moved to rather rapidly.

You're really moving on your pressurized.. that's great. I'll be interested in any details, perhaps you'll even do a bit of a thread like the great recent one by Amunet in the planted forum (well it may be old now but Amunet detailed a pressurized adventure complete with pics and stuff.) I got kind of interested in that electronic device at that aquarium plant web site that's got red borders and scrolls plants at the top.. the co2 regulator there.. kind of expensive. I have no idea if that's one of the types that might get too hot and wear out.

I've been doing a lot of homework in the planted tank area the last couple years and it certainly seems pretty universal on high-tech planted (which is what we're discussing here) that the "high-tech" substrates (that's what you and I have got (I have seachem flourite) as opposed to actual organic soil, which would have a ton more nutrients still than what we're using but would require a completely different planted approach) are best considered as "backup" nutrient providers. The substrate kicks in to tide you over if you miss an EI dosing or if there's some deficiency due to miscalculation. In HT tanks the substrate does not generally replace the ferts, in fact fert dosing is quite a central thing to the whole process, along with CO2 and light. My favorite old saying was that light is a skill set, fertilization is a skill set, CO2 is a skill set and algae is a separate skill set somewhat dependent on being experienced with the previous three! I find plants considerably harder than cycling skills, but ultimately the actions are not hard and there's great support here from the planted members.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[hakova]

This is an official thanks to the members of this forum for their guidance during my tank's cycling. I couldn't have done it without you. I am proud to announce that my tank is populated with 6 harlequin rasboras and 5 ghost shrimp as of yesterday.

I would like to express special gratitude to waterdrop, who was not only a great supporter but also a very humble one. Although his knowledge was obviously superior than many, he never made me feel "small" or bad for any reason. With his encouragement and positive attitude, the whole cycling experience was actually a real fun one!

For the record, I am now struggling with the challenges of a planted tank, but there is a lot of support in the planted tanks section, too.