Any fishkeepers here? Saltwater or freshwater

[Silock]

I'm looking at starting up a saltwater tank. Is there a good fish store in the KC area without driving out to Lawrence?

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Silock

Wow, amazing to see how small my plants were before the CO2 system went up and the lighting got better. They're growing like crazy now.

Yeah, the downside is that you'll soon be wishing they WEREN'T growing like crazy. That's the one drawback of live plants - you can never just leave them like plastic ones. They'll eventually need to be pruned so that you can start the growth process all over again.

Originally Posted by Silock

I thought that the meds killed off my biofilter, as I got a pretty big ammonia spike a couple of days ago, but it's back to normal today. Nitrites are still an issue.

Keep in mind the nitrites are also poisonous to your fish. Prime detoxifies nitrite just like ammonia so you may want to consider continuing to use it until both ammonia and nitrite reaches 0ppm.

Originally Posted by Silock

But, since the meds were stopped, I had to change the filter media. So, it's got fresh media, and I did a 90% water change. I ordered an active Mag Sponge filter from Angelsplus, as they've gotten superb reviews. From all accounts, they fully populate the tank within a couple of days with all the needed bacteria. I'm hoping this finally solves my cycling issue.

Another 90% water change? That's too much but I think we've said that before.

I'm not familiar with the Mag Sponge - is it "seeded" with nitrifying bacteria then? Most of these products have limited use unless they're refrigerated. Seachem Stability is one of the notable exceptions but Stability is also not true nitrifying bacteria. It's more of a bandaid than a "cure".

That being said, I cannot say enough good about sponge filters in general. Sponge filters, in general, hold 10-20 TIMES the amount of nitrifying bacteria as traditional floss filters. In fact, you can run a 10-20G tank completely off of a single sponge filter as long as you don't mind that they're not great mechanical filters. I STRONGLY recommend sponge filters, they're awesome.

Originally Posted by Silock

Removed the fake deadwood. Replaced it with real deadwood. The fake is going in the new 30 gallon tank. Not going to do a cichlid tank, after all. Going to do a larger 30g planted tank, with dwarf hairgrass carpeting. That should look great. Plants I can apparently do very well. Fish . . . well, it's a work in progress.

Good luck with the hairgrass. I never could keep it planted using Seachem Flourite. I think you really need to use finer substrate or even sand to keep it from just floating away.

Originally Posted by Silock

I saved the mystery snail, but it must have been pregnant when I brought it home. Ever since he got into the tank, I've had an explosion of snails. I thought the Ich meds would have killed them off, but apparently not. I had the mystery snail in quarantine, and when I went to put it back in the main tank, I saw it was covered in snail eggs. I removed them from the snail, and got as many eggs out of the tank as I could find. I know I missed some, though. Might have to buy a loach to take care of the snails.

Have any of the eggs hatched? Mystery snails are not hermaphroditic so they can't just reproduce like other snails. It's much more likely that your brought in common pond snails on your plants. Yes, the Ich meds should have have killed them but I have seen pond snails survive a dip in 25% bleach solution. I've found they're nearly impossible to get rid of so I just thin them out occasionally using a trap I fashioned from a clear plastic salt shaker. Honestly, a few snails are a good thing - they really keep the algae down. You just don't want too many because they are poop machines.

[Silock]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Yeah, the downside is that you'll soon be wishing they WEREN'T growing like crazy. That's the one drawback of live plants - you can never just leave them like plastic ones. They'll eventually need to be pruned so that you can start the growth process all over again.

Yeah, I'm going to be moving them all to my 30g soon, so I'm happy they're growing like crazy right now.

Keep in mind the nitrites are also poisonous to your fish. Prime detoxifies nitrite just like ammonia so you may want to consider continuing to use it until both ammonia and nitrite reaches 0ppm.

That's what I had been doing, but I did a lot of water changes with it, too (20% daily) to keep the Prime from building up in the water too much.

Another 90% water change? That's too much but I think we've said that before.

Well, I wanted to get rid of as much of the meds as I could before I put the invert back in. Also, since I got the seeded sponge and was changing filter media anyway, I wasn't too concerned about losing my bacteria.

I'm not familiar with the Mag Sponge - is it "seeded" with nitrifying bacteria then? Most of these products have limited use unless they're refrigerated. Seachem Stability is one of the notable exceptions but Stability is also not true nitrifying bacteria. It's more of a bandaid than a "cure".

http://www.angelsplus.com/FiltersSponge.htm

Active Filters: These are taken from our disease-free tanks and contain a large, healthy colony of nitrifying bacteria and other beneficial micro organisms. A healthy tank contains a lot more than just some nitrifying bacteria and our active filters have the other essential mico-organisms. These filters provide an instant-cycle. Read about a test done on them by a hobbyist here. We put them in our fully-cycled tanks for 4-6 weeks prior to selling them, with the sole purpose of providing them to customers. This is a far superior way of "starting" a new tank, when compared to other bacteria starters. We are certain that our active filters work many times faster and better than the next best cycling product on the market. Our tanks do contain red ramshorn snails and they are a possible passenger on these filters. Don't order these if you don't want the possibility of small snails hitching a ride on them.

Came double sealed in water-tight bags, with just a bit of water that it said to add to the tank with the sponge because it also carried tons of beneficial bacteria.

After 16 hours, water params are as follows:

Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10, pH 7.2

So far so good. If this product works, I'll definitely be getting a couple for my 30g, because they're so cheap for a seeded product. I did keep my other filter running (with fresh filter media) for mechanical filtration.

That being said, I cannot say enough good about sponge filters in general. Sponge filters, in general, hold 10-20 TIMES the amount of nitrifying bacteria as traditional floss filters. In fact, you can run a 10-20G tank completely off of a single sponge filter as long as you don't mind that they're not great mechanical filters. I STRONGLY recommend sponge filters, they're awesome.

Is there a way to tell if I've got the lift tube set up correctly or incorrectly? I followed the instructions exactly, and there are bubbles coming out of the top of the lift tube, but I want to make sure that water is actually filtering in through the sponge.

Good luck with the hairgrass. I never could keep it planted using Seachem Flourite. I think you really need to use finer substrate or even sand to keep it from just floating away.

Seachem has a new Black Sand fluorite substrate. That's what I was planning on using.

Have any of the eggs hatched? Mystery snails are not hermaphroditic so they can't just reproduce like other snails. It's much more likely that your brought in common pond snails on your plants. Yes, the Ich meds should have have killed them but I have seen pond snails survive a dip in 25% bleach solution. I've found they're nearly impossible to get rid of so I just thin them out occasionally using a trap I fashioned from a clear plastic salt shaker. Honestly, a few snails are a good thing - they really keep the algae down. You just don't want too many because they are poop machines.

I thought I went over the plants with a fine-toothed comb to prevent them from getting in. I apparently missed one. None hatched yet. The whole reason I got the Mystery snail was because it wouldn't reproduce like crazy. There goes that plan. Do you recommend a loach? I want a clown loach, anyway, and this seems like a good enough excuse to go ahead and get one.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Silock

http://www.angelsplus.com/FiltersSponge.htm

Came double sealed in water-tight bags, with just a bit of water that it said to add to the tank with the sponge because it also carried tons of beneficial bacteria.

Ah, makes TOTAL sense now. It's not a "packaged" product. They're seeding the filters themselves in established tanks. The sponge filter is a packaged product (I've seen these square ones a few times) but Angels Plus is adding "after market" bacteria it appears.

Originally Posted by Silock

Is there a way to tell if I've got the lift tube set up correctly or incorrectly? I followed the instructions exactly, and there are bubbles coming out of the top of the lift tube, but I want to make sure that water is actually filtering in through the sponge.

This is difficult to do. You could try just stirring up debris around it - the debris should be sucked up against the filter if the current is flowing well. You could also try a SMALL amount of methylene blue, but any chemical agent you put in there could harm the bacteria so it's not a great idea.

Originally Posted by Silock

Seachem has a new Black Sand fluorite substrate. That's what I was planning on using.

Did not know that. Might have to get me some!

Originally Posted by Silock

I thought I went over the plants with a fine-toothed comb to prevent them from getting in. I apparently missed one. None hatched yet. The whole reason I got the Mystery snail was because it wouldn't reproduce like crazy. There goes that plan. Do you recommend a loach? I want a clown loach, anyway, and this seems like a good enough excuse to go ahead and get one.

Several loach species are known snail eaters. The problem is that, much like most algae-eating fish, they will eventually opt for fish food instead of snails because they get conditioned and lazy, just like other pets. My daughter's yoyo loach ate snails for about 3 weeks before giving up. It now lives in a tank with hundreds of snails available for snacking and it won't touch them. They lay eggs right next to it's head in the little cave it made for itself!

[Silock]

Lame! Might just have to buy an assassin snail if things get too out of control. Based upon the number of eggs I removed, I see this becoming a problem very quickly.

[Silock]

Well, water params are 0 amm, 0 trite, 0 trate. Either my plants are eating all the nitrate, or the cycle has completely restarted and the filter is bunk. Not sure what to think at the moment, although the filter has been up for 3 days and there's been zero spike of anything with a snail, pleco and betta in the tank. You'd think they'd be kicking up some kind of ammonia by now, especially since the snail by itself in the quarantine tank kicked up 3 ppm of ammonia in 12 hours by himself.

[Silock]

Still zeros across the board. It seems that the product worked?

[KS Smitty]

Speaking of snails...we have a pair of Apple Snails that have laid eggs twice but neither batch has hatched. They lay their eggs above the water level and we have made sure that when doing water changes/adding water (this time of year we get a lot of evaporation) that they remain above the water level but no babies. Is there something we're doing wrong?

We have a yoyo loach in our 49g tall tank and even though he does pig out on the flakes that we feed the other fish in the tank he still loves to dig around in the gravel and eat the ramshorn snails too.

An easy way to trap unwanted snails is to use a plastic soda/water bottle with an algae wafer in it, the snails will crawl into it (maybe some fish too) and you just take it out and let them dry out, or crush them and feed them back to the fishies.

[Lumpy]

Originally Posted by KS Smitty

Speaking of snails...we have a pair of Apple Snails that have laid eggs twice but neither batch has hatched. They lay their eggs above the water level and we have made sure that when doing water changes/adding water (this time of year we get a lot of evaporation) that they remain above the water level but no babies. Is there something we're doing wrong?

We have a yoyo loach in our 49g tall tank and even though he does pig out on the flakes that we feed the other fish in the tank he still loves to dig around in the gravel and eat the ramshorn snails too.

An easy way to trap unwanted snails is to use a plastic soda/water bottle with an algae wafer in it, the snails will crawl into it (maybe some fish too) and you just take it out and let them dry out, or crush them and feed them back to the fishies.

That's great advice w/ the container/algae wafer. I have 100's of pond snails in my 5g Red Cherry Shrimp tank. When they start to get out of hand, I do the container/algae wafer trick. I then float the container in my 55g and release a few each day for my Clown Loaches, (I now have 3-picked up 2 little ones last weekend).

I actually like the pond snails, (they're fun to watch), but can reproduce very quickly. In the Spring, I place a bunch of them in my pond and they keep the algae down quite a bit.

[Mr_Tomahawk]

Fish?

Here are a couple of Blood Pythons...

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Silock

Still zeros across the board. It seems that the product worked?

I would think yes. If it wasn't working, you'd see at least some ammonia.

I'd say it's likely that your fish aren't producing enough waste and the plants are completely depleting your tank.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by KS Smitty

Speaking of snails...we have a pair of Apple Snails that have laid eggs twice but neither batch has hatched. They lay their eggs above the water level and we have made sure that when doing water changes/adding water (this time of year we get a lot of evaporation) that they remain above the water level but no babies. Is there something we're doing wrong?

Some apple/mystery snails are sterile, meaning they'll lay eggs but they'll never hatch.

Originally Posted by KS Smitty

We have a yoyo loach in our 49g tall tank and even though he does pig out on the flakes that we feed the other fish in the tank he still loves to dig around in the gravel and eat the ramshorn snails too.

My daughter's yoyo loach isn't interested at snails at all anymore. She added 2 more loaches (not specifically for snail control, thankfully) but they are Kuhli's and they don't touch snails.

Originally Posted by KS Smitty

An easy way to trap unwanted snails is to use a plastic soda/water bottle with an algae wafer in it, the snails will crawl into it (maybe some fish too) and you just take it out and let them dry out, or crush them and feed them back to the fishies.

The problem is with the plastic bottle method is that it simply won't work in a small tank - there's nowhere to put one in my daughter's 14G tank.

My salt shaker trap I made is much, much smaller. The most snails I've captured at once with it is about 30.

[KS Smitty]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Some apple/mystery snails are sterile, meaning they'll lay eggs but they'll never hatch.



My daughter's yoyo loach isn't interested at snails at all anymore. She added 2 more loaches (not specifically for snail control, thankfully) but they are Kuhli's and they don't touch snails.



The problem is with the plastic bottle method is that it simply won't work in a small tank - there's nowhere to put one in my daughter's 14G tank.

My salt shaker trap I made is much, much smaller. The most snails I've captured at once with it is about 30.

I didn't realize snails could be sterile. hmm
Your salt shaker trap is a good innovation for a smaller tank. You seem to be pretty good at home-made equipment that actually works!

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by KS Smitty

I didn't realize snails could be sterile. hmm
Your salt shaker trap is a good innovation for a smaller tank. You seem to be pretty good at home-made equipment that actually works!

I've made my own light fixtures, filters, and other things. It's kind of fun. I wish it was something I could make some money doing.

[htismaqe]

So I dropped almost $600 today on a pretty major upgrade...

I bought two 30W TMC GroBeam 1000 LED tiles. This isn't my tank but here's what 2 of them look like together.

[Silock]

Sweet!

Also, I keep meaning to ask:

Some of my plants' leaves are browning. Is that due to a lack of light or a lack of fertilizers? I do root tabs once a month, and Fluorish twice a week. Do I need to increase something?