Designed By A 4 Year Old - 10 Gallon
- Thread starter jmiller
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waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
OK, good you're keeping on top of it there. WD
Tonight's readings:
HR PH 7.9
ammonia .25
nitrite 0
nitrate 10
Did a 60% WC and just for grins I tested each prepared bucket. I dosed one bucket (approx 3.5 gal) with the recommended dosage per Prime directions which worked out to be seven drops (assuming 20 drops per ml) and the other with 1 1/2 times or 11 drops. The 11 drops tested fine but the seven drops showed a trace amount of ammonia. I was surprised that 4 drops wuld make that much of a difference.
HR PH 7.9
ammonia .25
nitrite 0
nitrate 10
Did a 60% WC and just for grins I tested each prepared bucket. I dosed one bucket (approx 3.5 gal) with the recommended dosage per Prime directions which worked out to be seven drops (assuming 20 drops per ml) and the other with 1 1/2 times or 11 drops. The 11 drops tested fine but the seven drops showed a trace amount of ammonia. I was surprised that 4 drops wuld make that much of a difference.
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Be aware that nearly all dechlorinators, including Prime, do not remove ammonia but instead convert it to ammonium. Ammonium is detected by most test kits, including the API kit, as being the same as ammonia. Ammonium is not harmful to fish and also has the characteristic that it is processed by the autotrophic bacteria just as if it were ammonia.
Unlike chlorine, when chloramine is used by a municiple water system, the dechlorinator will break the ammonia and chlorine apart, leaving a trace of ammonium in the fresh tap water, which would then be detected by the test kit as a trace of ammonia of course.
There are a few ammonia test kits out there (Seachem makes one of them) that use a different method that distinguishes ammonium from ammonia but its important for beginners to realize that this is just another one of those areas where its better to learn to understand the *context* in which the test is performed. Its very rare to actually need the ammonium/ammonia separation tests for an action one would take.
~~waterdrop~~
Unlike chlorine, when chloramine is used by a municiple water system, the dechlorinator will break the ammonia and chlorine apart, leaving a trace of ammonium in the fresh tap water, which would then be detected by the test kit as a trace of ammonia of course.
There are a few ammonia test kits out there (Seachem makes one of them) that use a different method that distinguishes ammonium from ammonia but its important for beginners to realize that this is just another one of those areas where its better to learn to understand the *context* in which the test is performed. Its very rare to actually need the ammonium/ammonia separation tests for an action one would take.
~~waterdrop~~
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Sounds good. You know, fish can be amazing at hiding. My son Oliver and I have a pretty sparse tank right now as we're waiting for some good specimins to come in so we can add them to our recently cycled quarantine tank. So its not hard to see the fish that are there and I got pretty convinced the other night that we'd lost a neon tetra (which wouldn't surprise me given that they're kind of old and bumpy looking, lol) but the next morning there he was, right back with the shoal. I could swear he laughed at me.
~~waterdrop~~
~~waterdrop~~
I just lost a guppy. He was one of the originals from the tank start up. I had taken a reading last night and everything was good but I went ahead and did another one and it's still good. I came home and fed them like normal and he ate good just like always and a hour later I find him dead on the bottom.
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Sorry to hear this. Guppies can be sensitive. You can file this away as some personal experience to remember years later when someone just presents fishless and fish-in as a simple personal choice of "method." WD
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Yeah, they'll just start sitting on pale yellow and pale blue when the filter is cycled. How are things out there - did you get sunshine today? WD
Nope, been cloudy all day. It started to flurry a few hours ago. We're suppose to get 3" inches of snow overnight and another 3" during the day tomorrow and possibly a little more tomorrow night. Sad to say but it looks like it's heading your way.
Four straight days of 0 ammonia readings. 
I've been thinking lately of swapping out the fake plants for real ones. I've started doing some reading but needless to say it is quite overwhelming. The current situation is 2" plain black gravel, 2 15watt incandescent lights, 79* & PH 7.8/7.9 . Here is the tank:
The only thing that has changed is I moved the green plant to the driftwood, the orange plant to the back center, layed the far left hand rock flat and added a long skinny clover plant where the green plant was. I really like the shapes of the silk plants that I have and would like to find similar in real if possible. If someone could point me to some possibilities I really would appreciate it.
Needless to say I am looking for something extremely low tech that anyone can grow and would fit into my temp/PH range. At this time I really can't see myself messing with Co2 either.
I've been thinking lately of swapping out the fake plants for real ones. I've started doing some reading but needless to say it is quite overwhelming. The current situation is 2" plain black gravel, 2 15watt incandescent lights, 79* & PH 7.8/7.9 . Here is the tank:
The only thing that has changed is I moved the green plant to the driftwood, the orange plant to the back center, layed the far left hand rock flat and added a long skinny clover plant where the green plant was. I really like the shapes of the silk plants that I have and would like to find similar in real if possible. If someone could point me to some possibilities I really would appreciate it.
Needless to say I am looking for something extremely low tech that anyone can grow and would fit into my temp/PH range. At this time I really can't see myself messing with Co2 either.
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
One approach to very low-tech beginner exploration of live plants is to simply add a liquid carbon (in your case this will be Seachem Excel as EasyCarbo is UK only at this point, so there's no competition) dosed per bottle intstrucs (do not overdose) perhaps with the addition of a very small amount of general nutrition (plain Flourish) to slightly supplement the fish waste and excess food that will already be providing general plant nutrients.
The light type/amount/duration might need some verification or going over but that's too much to get into at the moment and might not need changing yet anyway.
The tropica web site in europe can be used as a way to work through listings of plant names along with drawings of the plants (tropica unfortunately is too far away to ship to us) and then you can come back to usa web sales sites and usually see photos and of course you can use google images to see lots of photo variations. I think we identified one of the lists of easy plants before, right?, inside Farmers article pointed to by Aarons's basics article? There are some Anubia types that have larger leaves and there are several stem plants that follow the shape of your red one although as you know red will be out.
As far as aquascaping critique per your pic of the tank, here are some thoughts: All of the items except perhaps the red silk plant are out of scale with the tank size, although in each case they might be used differently to lessen that effect I would think. Eventually, larger numbers of plants could mostly hide either the wood or rock or both and render them more mysterious. Your current layout gives the impression of two focal centers evenly centered (white rocks are left one, wood is right one.) This violates two oft-cited basics. Focal centers work better in odd numbers, not even. Their placement usually follows the "golden triangle" or whatever its called from greek architecture but basically you just don't want evenly measured placings (one place you find this sort of stuff is in manuals that teach new landscapers how to place bushes along the front of a house etc.) You can of course go back to the IAGA pics we've looked at before to stare at when thinking about these principles. As with all art, rules are made to be broken of course but they break better when you understand them in the first place!
~~waterdrop~~
The light type/amount/duration might need some verification or going over but that's too much to get into at the moment and might not need changing yet anyway.
The tropica web site in europe can be used as a way to work through listings of plant names along with drawings of the plants (tropica unfortunately is too far away to ship to us) and then you can come back to usa web sales sites and usually see photos and of course you can use google images to see lots of photo variations. I think we identified one of the lists of easy plants before, right?, inside Farmers article pointed to by Aarons's basics article? There are some Anubia types that have larger leaves and there are several stem plants that follow the shape of your red one although as you know red will be out.
As far as aquascaping critique per your pic of the tank, here are some thoughts: All of the items except perhaps the red silk plant are out of scale with the tank size, although in each case they might be used differently to lessen that effect I would think. Eventually, larger numbers of plants could mostly hide either the wood or rock or both and render them more mysterious. Your current layout gives the impression of two focal centers evenly centered (white rocks are left one, wood is right one.) This violates two oft-cited basics. Focal centers work better in odd numbers, not even. Their placement usually follows the "golden triangle" or whatever its called from greek architecture but basically you just don't want evenly measured placings (one place you find this sort of stuff is in manuals that teach new landscapers how to place bushes along the front of a house etc.) You can of course go back to the IAGA pics we've looked at before to stare at when thinking about these principles. As with all art, rules are made to be broken of course but they break better when you understand them in the first place!
~~waterdrop~~
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