Cloudy Without Cycling?

[aquaidoka]

Thanks... The main difficulty in this kind of learning is that many pros provide contradictory information. Of course, I would prefer heavily peer-reviewed literature, but there isn't a lot of time for this kind of research. Well, I can imagine that nutrients together with water and air are friends of all living beings when used moderately, and heard that algae are not quite the enemies of the aquarium but one of the indicators of good conditions. There is no doubt, that being the living beings, algae do need the nutrients (not the same ones as those needed by fish, but rather produced by fish, plants other wastes). So it may be not correct to say that when algae lack their nutrients, they thrive. Of course if everything will start to die and rot in the aquarium because there would be a lack of nutrients for plants and fish, the algae would bloom for some time because of their food appearance. But it is hard to call as a "lack" of nutrients. So, I'll continue to think that nutrients (for algae) should be removed/should not be added to overcome bloom of algae.

Concerning CO2, usually people write that 3 W/Gal is a critical amount of light when you can decide whether to use CO2 or not. As a chemist, I feel an internal resistance to the addition of CO2 to aquarium with alive fish, which can be harmful for them if proper addition is not guaranteed (if used compressed in cylinder - potentially dangerous to my family). On the other hand, as a beginner of fishkeeping, I would really like to have a lot of plants. So I decided to use for now the amount of light, which does not critically demand addition of CO2 yet, and plants, for which CO2 addition is not necessary, and minimum amount of needed light is 2 W/Gal. Well, I can reduce the light to 2.4 W/Gal, and sit down and think about the proper use of CO2 probably produced by yeast. Again about the time of using the lights, only on these pages we can read about the recommended proper use of 8 to 12 hour (and more if needed for algae growth). In this case, I think, I should come to the correct answer by experiment and observation. 10 Hours show positive dynamics of clarification in my case for now.

Does somebody have answers for the aeration questions above?

 

[RadaR]

You may have misunderstood me (my bad). When I said

it's a lack of nutrients that can bring green water about.

I meant that if nutrients (mostly macro, but can be micro) are lacking, then the plants suffer and begin to break down and uncontrollably leach ammonia. This triggers algae.

Nutrients can be used to FEED algae, however the algae is not there in the first place because of nitrates/phosphates etc. It's triggered by two main factors. Light and ammonia. Once they get enough of both of these then the algae can bloom and flagellate. Therefore no matter how much nitrate and phosphate you have, it can not induce algae, because algae does not need these two things to bloom. It can easily be proven that nitrates and phosphates dont cause algae by simply dumping (literally) potassium nitrate and potassium phosphate to excess into a planted aquarium. All you will see will be good plant growth.
As for CO2, I'm not going to try to persuade you. You'll figure it out on your own. If the plants are needing CO2 in your tank then you will see little plant growth and lots of algae growth.
The only thing I will say is, is to read lots of info, both on this forum and other places. Try to look past the 50+ years of mis-associated views/myths that have been blindly passed down over and over again.

The Barr Report is great.
Another good website, made by a former member.

 

[waterdrop]

(I know Radar is already writing but I want to say this)

Aquaidoka, I feel you've somewhere been misinformed about the 3 watts/gallon. I totally agree with Radar up there. 3w/g is a huge amount of light and well past where you need to start using CO2. 1w/g, as he says, is more like it.

RadaR is very experienced with this stuff.

I know the feeling about coming in from peer-reviewed papers. Forget that, its the wild, wild west in a hobby like this, so you have to fall back on judging info and sources over time.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

I'm afraid that I must agree with WD on the availability of well researched results when it comes to algae. the best that I can do is provide you the results of my less than scientific observations. Although I can provide almost no scientific data, I do take my observations quite seriously. For that reason I will make statements about my own observations as simply that. They are nothing more than data provided based on what I have noticed in my own tanks. If you find those observations useful I am happy to have helped but if you don't, please feel free to ignore them. If I had infinite resources available, I would be very interested in performing scientific inquiries into many of these subjects but I am sorry to say that my resources and time are very limited.

 

[aquaidoka]

Guys, I am so sorry - didn't mean to disturb anybody... It was just a cry of my soul you know . Especially after contacting again my ... how you call them... LFS! They gave me quite a bit of misleading information about fish sizes, age, food, light, schooling, behavior etc. Mostly as I realize now, they were grounding on "let's-sell-as-much-as-we-can" and "if-we-don't-have-something-than-it-is-bad" bases, which was IMHO unprofessional, but well, their business is okay. So, at first I believed them, and now I have to re-learn. We all know that everything becomes fuzzy and wild-wild-westy when it goes farther than arithmetics (still with some exclusions). And professional is one who manages to achieve great results under those fuzzy conditions as all of you, who so kindly give me your advices here. Thank you. (And it is so great to have friends who stand for you!)

Well, after your words and reading some literature around I started to design of my DIY CO2 contraption. I think to finish it together with 2.2L reactor with safety container (bubble counter, if I understand correctly) in 3-4 days. Then, I'll post the real picture. It will include 4 known methods (some improved) enhancing CO2 dissolution (no powerhead for now - will see how it works). Here is a sketch of it:

What do you think, should it work?

 

[waterdrop]

Looks great! I love it when people work on variations of reactors and diffusers for their DIY CO2.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[aquaidoka]

Thanks, Waterdrop!

 

[OldMan47]

A nice ladder arrangement you have designed there Aquaidoka. They are very good in situations where the actual CO2 need is fairly low. By having the bubble stake a long time in their zigzag path, the bubbles often cease to exist as bubbles before they reach the top of a ladder like yours. That principle is available prepackaged by Hagen in their DIY CO2 kit.

 

[aquaidoka]

Thanks, OldMan! Yes, I used the idea to retain a bubble in water as long as possible, however, I used a circular spiral put in a conical shape from bottom to top instead of ladder design. It will allow for the regulation of flow, say with a ping-pong ball with a punched hole through it, which can be put inside of the conical spiral and rotated. In turn, it may create strong tangential flow under pseudo CO2 bell to disturb gas surface there (interesting to see how it'll work). Please see corresponding updated picture below (new information shown in orange).

 

[waterdrop]

I anticipate one of your challenges may be that the DIY CO2 source may not provide a gas pressure that stays linear for long. Another interesting thing would be whether the bubbles might collect enough (despite your small entrance point as a last thing before the filter intake pipe at the top) to leave the impeller without liquid at some point.

But all these will be part of the trial and error design stage and I think your ideas are very interesting. I don't quite understand how the ping-pong ball will do its job, but maybe I'm picturing the spiral tubing as being more stiff than what you will have. Is the ping-pong ball supposed to squish the tubing somewhat?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[aquaidoka]

Non-linear supply is a drawback. However, I think it should not effect the functionality except for the spikes, which can lead to that that you wrote about -- the formation of gas lock on the filter intake. One possibility to avoid it, is to position the water-filling hole on the side of glass just in a couple of millimeters below the top of notch in the 3/4" tubing on the top. Then, the gas compressability should allow impeller to suck in the small amount of gas left (anyway, filter usually starts working having quite a big air cork inside). Yes, we will see it experimentally, but altogether, taking into account quite a turbulence expected under that CO2 bell, the fact that people often put the CO2 tubing just inside the intake, and gas compressability, I wouldn't expect that CO2 should lock the intake. Nevertheless, maybe we all who read this thread can think additionally how to guarantee it since if filter stops working for several hours and biofilter doesn't stand it, it may have a serios impact on the aquarium, is it correct?

Yes, silicone (and some vinyl) tubing is very soft and flexible (hardness Shore A, 50 to 68), and ball will just stick in easily squishing slightly the tubing.

 

[aquaidoka]

Yesterday analyzed water before change. It is slightly cloudy. Parameters are quite strange. Nitrates dropped to zero. Ammonia and nitrites are also zero. pH 7.4-7.6. Only today I'll have all materials for DIY CO2 supply and eventually start its construction. Is it possible that plants consume all nitrates?

 

[waterdrop]

Anything is possible with nitrate(NO3).. it could be that you've got enough plants and/or plants of species that like to absorb nitrate that you truly do have a zero reading. OR, its possible that its just the usual "flaky" nature of nitrate testing. A relative of mine is a dye chemist and tells me that even professional chemists consider the measuring of nitrate difficult and making inexpensive testing kits for non-chemist use just makes the lack of reliability of testing NO3 even worse.

 

[aquaidoka]

Thanks, Waterdrop! Well, I am a professional chemist-researcher for the last 20 years. I recalibrated my kit on solutions with known concentrations of tested substances/pH values. So, my nitrate reading is zero. Is it because of plants? I read somewhere that people even add nitrates to the aquarium when the reading is low. Do you know something about it? Should I add nitrates?
P.S. I will be installing my CO2 contraption tonight!

 

[waterdrop]

It could be that the reference that you read was referring to the fact that many plant enthusiasts do dose plant nutrients directly to the water column.

As you may know, the macronutrients are N - Nitrogen, P - Phosphorus and K - Potassium. These are needed in somewhat larger amounts than the rest of the so-called micronutrients that make up most of the 17 nutrients that plants ultimately need (hydrogen and oxygen are readily available and C - Carbon is a whole separate topic as you know, as CO2.) Since various dry fertilizers can supply combinations of these nutrients, one sometimes hears people refer to adding nitrate to a tank, meaning the dosing of a fertilizer that supplies a form of Nitrogen to the plants.

As a practical matter, our UK members usually have probably the best all-round solution in the world sitting right at their doorstep in the form of "TPN+" (our abbreviation for Tropica Nutrition Plus - where the Plus must not be left off as it is a particular formulation of total fertilizer from Tropica.) In the USA we have sources for dry ferts that may be mixed up or some of us, me included, continue to be lazy and simply have a whole shelf of bottles of individual liquids for N,P,K and various "Trace" formulations. I do dose a Nitrogen-only liquid as one of my macros.

~~waterdrop~~