So, my previous issue with the 7.5G seems to have disappeared after changing a few things. I've been busy at work/family/fishing and it's been really hard to find time to do what I need to do. The tanks in the basement are cycling, NO2 has shown for more than a week but no sign of easing off. Netlea tank still leaching NH3 after, hmm... almost 3 months. Then my main CRS/OEBT tank is giving me trouble.
The shrimp in the 20GL tank has been acting funny. Monday when I fed them, although they still came for spinach but after 10 minutes most just wondered off. And from then on, they started to be very inactive. No dead shrimps are found yet but I really can't tell if the bodies were just eaten (probably not by the way they respond to food). However, all baby CRS are goners now. It does make the tank move planned in about a week to 2 weeks easier I guess.
Also, I saw ONE hydra and ONE very small planaria-like creature. So I dosed panacur Tuesday night... then last night.... they became really inactive, and I tested NH3 0 (or very close to 0, I always have trouble comparing the yellows of different shade), NO2 0, and then... NO3 somewhere between 70 to 80. OMG.... what's going on. Did 10% WC and got more ROs to do a 30% WC today. So much for the panacur dosing but that can wait. Not sure now if planarias got to the baby CRS or the NO3. I'll deal with NO3 first.
I'll do a few daily 10%-30% WC until NO3 comes down to 20% then add the DIY NO3 reactor with Seachem deNitrate. Sigh... this is not as easy as I thought it would be after a few months.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Too much filtration?
A discussion on TPT got me thinking, actually I've been thinking about this topic for a while.
So, here it is. It's very popular in Asia shrimp keeping circle to have multiple canister filters connected to get more filtration. But, if I only need 1 to get NH3/NO2 to 0, and NO3 is under control, what does the extra filtration give me?
So, here it is. It's very popular in Asia shrimp keeping circle to have multiple canister filters connected to get more filtration. But, if I only need 1 to get NH3/NO2 to 0, and NO3 is under control, what does the extra filtration give me?
Monday, May 14, 2012
RIP
The last CRS I got from a unnamed source (since source has nothing to do with what's happened) has died yesterday. I got 5 early February.
- the biggest female died 3 weeks after I got them. I was playing with the heater in that 2.5G and I think I killed trying to up the temperature in the winter temperature.
- I started to see them dying slowing one by one in the last month. In a 7.5G tank that has the best water quality, NH3/NO2 are zero all the time, NO3 hasn't gone over 5ppm.
- Last one died yesterday.
As mentioned above, the tank has pretty good water quality. It's a 7.5G with a Fluval 105 adjust to about 50-70GPH connected to UGF with Akadama substrate.
I have about 8 to 9 mischling shrimps (one died after about 2 weeks), a trio of orange neo that never stop breeding, and these CRS from AI.
Lighting is a 13w CFL with a clipped on light, about 10 hr/day. Good amount of java moss and some flame moss, plus some floaters (the only tank I have that has these floater grows nicely).
All seem good while this is the only tank I'm seeing dead shrimp. Over populated? I'm not sure. The orange trio did give birth to somewhere between 30 to 50 baby shrimps. The second drop (both female, about the same time) seem to have very low survival rate, they were dropped at around the same time I started to see dead shrimps. Hope it will be good from now on, fingers crossed.
- the biggest female died 3 weeks after I got them. I was playing with the heater in that 2.5G and I think I killed trying to up the temperature in the winter temperature.
- I started to see them dying slowing one by one in the last month. In a 7.5G tank that has the best water quality, NH3/NO2 are zero all the time, NO3 hasn't gone over 5ppm.
- Last one died yesterday.
As mentioned above, the tank has pretty good water quality. It's a 7.5G with a Fluval 105 adjust to about 50-70GPH connected to UGF with Akadama substrate.
I have about 8 to 9 mischling shrimps (one died after about 2 weeks), a trio of orange neo that never stop breeding, and these CRS from AI.
Lighting is a 13w CFL with a clipped on light, about 10 hr/day. Good amount of java moss and some flame moss, plus some floaters (the only tank I have that has these floater grows nicely).
All seem good while this is the only tank I'm seeing dead shrimp. Over populated? I'm not sure. The orange trio did give birth to somewhere between 30 to 50 baby shrimps. The second drop (both female, about the same time) seem to have very low survival rate, they were dropped at around the same time I started to see dead shrimps. Hope it will be good from now on, fingers crossed.
Cycling Netlea tank
I posted this at GTAA, thought I'd post it in my blog for my own future reference.
I am not famous for my patience, but cycling a tank isn't something I would skip on. I posted around 2 months ago about the three 20GL tanks I set up around the same time with different substrates. I learned a lot from that experiment.
Now, I want to share something about cycling a tank with Netlea (or anything similar). Before I start, I want to refer to some basics, read them if you're not sure how/why to cycle a tank.
Wikipedia's short description on Nitrifying bacteria
So, basically you want to make sure your tank has enough ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) to handle the ammonia produced by your shrimps and convert them to nitrite, and have enough nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) to convert the nitrite to nitrate.
The end result of a cycled tank is that you have enough AOB + NOB so ammonia and nitrite never will appear in your tank in dangerous concentration.
So
Ammonia (from shrimp) turns into Nitrite by AOB
Nitrite (from above process) turns into Nitrate by NOB
(How to get rid of Nitrate is not discussed in this post, maybe later)
Okay, that's basics and most of us already are very familiar with, and we have discussed a lot of things about how to do it fishlessly, either with rotting fish food, raw shrimp, or pure ammonia.
What else can help the establishment of AOB and NOB? (i.e. speed up the cycling process) These bacterias are known to spawn slower than others because they can't utilize organic food source, very unique in their own right, but the following help,
- Higher temperature (most bacterias grows faster in higher temperature)
- Higher PH (7.8+ is better)
- Higher oxygen concentration
- And of course, proper amount of food source (i.e. ammonia, but not too much, 4 to 5 ppm is about the highest, anything more actually kills these bacteria).
Okay, it's already been a long post but I haven't even touched my main topic. In my new Netlea tank set up 2 months ago, I had a big issue with the cycling process -- the PH is just way too low... it was about 5.3 when new and then gradually goes up to 5.7/5.8 after a few weeks and a few big WCs. In that kind of PH, AOB just can't establish. The reason is one, they don't like acidic water, two, at PH lower than 6.4 almost all ammonia turns into ammonum which these AOB is not very efficient in using. In my first 6 weeks of cycling, I have only tested NO2 once in low concentration. It's entirely possible that the tank was ready after that point since ammonia isn't likely to be present in that kind of PH but I took it more as an experiment than getting the tank ready for shrimp. After 2 months, there's no change, there just isn't any NO2 detected and very low NO3. I actually would put shrimp in there because from others' experience it should be safe, but I wanted to see how long it will be before I see the common signs of a cycled tank.
Anyway, about a week ago, I moved the tank to my basement and moved the Netlea from the 1x 20GL to 2x 16G (the floor areas are about equal). After a day with new tap water, the PH stayed up. One was 6.9 the other was 7.1. What the heck?! I thought by moving them to different tanks I destroyed them. I then thought maybe it's because I was using UGF in the 20GL but not in the 2 x 16G. So I bought a small double layer UGF from AI and put it in one of the two tanks. Guess what? PH dropped from 6.8 to 6.2 in 2 hours. Then it struck me -- I disconnected the UGF, then did some WC to get the PH back to near 7, turn on the heat, and started cycling. I think this should help and this will be the way I cycle these high PH lowering substrate from now on. I will connect the UGF to bring down PH to what I want after the tank is cycled.
Sorry for the long post, just something I learned the past week and may not be of any value. Hope I didn't waste your time.
I am not famous for my patience, but cycling a tank isn't something I would skip on. I posted around 2 months ago about the three 20GL tanks I set up around the same time with different substrates. I learned a lot from that experiment.
Now, I want to share something about cycling a tank with Netlea (or anything similar). Before I start, I want to refer to some basics, read them if you're not sure how/why to cycle a tank.
Wikipedia's short description on Nitrifying bacteria
So, basically you want to make sure your tank has enough ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) to handle the ammonia produced by your shrimps and convert them to nitrite, and have enough nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) to convert the nitrite to nitrate.
The end result of a cycled tank is that you have enough AOB + NOB so ammonia and nitrite never will appear in your tank in dangerous concentration.
So
Ammonia (from shrimp) turns into Nitrite by AOB
Nitrite (from above process) turns into Nitrate by NOB
(How to get rid of Nitrate is not discussed in this post, maybe later)
Okay, that's basics and most of us already are very familiar with, and we have discussed a lot of things about how to do it fishlessly, either with rotting fish food, raw shrimp, or pure ammonia.
What else can help the establishment of AOB and NOB? (i.e. speed up the cycling process) These bacterias are known to spawn slower than others because they can't utilize organic food source, very unique in their own right, but the following help,
- Higher temperature (most bacterias grows faster in higher temperature)
- Higher PH (7.8+ is better)
- Higher oxygen concentration
- And of course, proper amount of food source (i.e. ammonia, but not too much, 4 to 5 ppm is about the highest, anything more actually kills these bacteria).
Okay, it's already been a long post but I haven't even touched my main topic. In my new Netlea tank set up 2 months ago, I had a big issue with the cycling process -- the PH is just way too low... it was about 5.3 when new and then gradually goes up to 5.7/5.8 after a few weeks and a few big WCs. In that kind of PH, AOB just can't establish. The reason is one, they don't like acidic water, two, at PH lower than 6.4 almost all ammonia turns into ammonum which these AOB is not very efficient in using. In my first 6 weeks of cycling, I have only tested NO2 once in low concentration. It's entirely possible that the tank was ready after that point since ammonia isn't likely to be present in that kind of PH but I took it more as an experiment than getting the tank ready for shrimp. After 2 months, there's no change, there just isn't any NO2 detected and very low NO3. I actually would put shrimp in there because from others' experience it should be safe, but I wanted to see how long it will be before I see the common signs of a cycled tank.
Anyway, about a week ago, I moved the tank to my basement and moved the Netlea from the 1x 20GL to 2x 16G (the floor areas are about equal). After a day with new tap water, the PH stayed up. One was 6.9 the other was 7.1. What the heck?! I thought by moving them to different tanks I destroyed them. I then thought maybe it's because I was using UGF in the 20GL but not in the 2 x 16G. So I bought a small double layer UGF from AI and put it in one of the two tanks. Guess what? PH dropped from 6.8 to 6.2 in 2 hours. Then it struck me -- I disconnected the UGF, then did some WC to get the PH back to near 7, turn on the heat, and started cycling. I think this should help and this will be the way I cycle these high PH lowering substrate from now on. I will connect the UGF to bring down PH to what I want after the tank is cycled.
Sorry for the long post, just something I learned the past week and may not be of any value. Hope I didn't waste your time.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Defeated?
I'm just having too many issues with this hobby lately. Setting up a few more tanks in the basement and need to come up with lighting, heating, filtration solutions, moving established tanks to the basement and got all weird things happening to water parameters.
When you see people's setup running, you are not seeing so many small things that the owners have to deal with. Unless you choose not to care, there's no end to it.
On top of the tank moving/setting up fiasco, I'm starting to encounter challenges in this hobby. My PFR population somehow stalls, I'm not seeing shrimplets from my two female oranges' last hatch about a week ago. A nicer CRS I've kept for 3 months decided to jump out of the tank and died on the floor, and I've had 2 dead shrimps in that same tank in the last two weeks, which bring my all-time total dead shrimps in tank to 3.
Am I defeated? No. I'm just finding out what I'm not.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.
When you see people's setup running, you are not seeing so many small things that the owners have to deal with. Unless you choose not to care, there's no end to it.
On top of the tank moving/setting up fiasco, I'm starting to encounter challenges in this hobby. My PFR population somehow stalls, I'm not seeing shrimplets from my two female oranges' last hatch about a week ago. A nicer CRS I've kept for 3 months decided to jump out of the tank and died on the floor, and I've had 2 dead shrimps in that same tank in the last two weeks, which bring my all-time total dead shrimps in tank to 3.
Am I defeated? No. I'm just finding out what I'm not.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
2012/05/03 Frist shrimp talk
9 people showed up in this first event and a great time was had by everyone.
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