Help Please! Plant Related Emergency

[N0body Of The Goat]

I bought my first bottle of Easycarbo today, to add carbon to my Korrall60 and Nelly's old 5x2x2. Only I went off a conversation I had with the LFS staff, rather than re-reading the instructions on the bottle...

In the last 20 minutes I've discovered that I have massively overdosed the 540l with Easycarbo, adding 50ml (which would have been fine for the new Waterlife Profito as a weekly dose), rather than the suggested maximum for a heavily planted tank of 20ml!

The pH is still 8.2, but I believe the overdose is more critical as regard to poisoning the fish? (They are still swimming around fine, two hours after the overdose)

Consequently, I'm now part way through doing ~60% water empty of the 540l (gravel siphon left siphoning to level I want while I type), before I start many trips up/downstairs with two buckets (total of ~ 5 gallons per trip) of fresh de-chlorinated water...

Does this sound adequate?

(A rather annoyed with myself) Steve

 

[ian]

i'd be happy with a 60% water change steve, its halflife is only 12-24hrs anyways. So hopefully you won't harm anything.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Thanks for the input, Ian, I feel like such a wally for creating this crisis!

Just went down to garage to check on siphoning and had a panick when I saw one of the baby Leopard Bushfish against the Eheim filter inlet, thinking maybe chemical poisoning was already happening... Thankfully, when I temporarily turned off the Eheim, it eagerly swam away and had just been "vacuumed" against the grills!

On a related note, the filter is producing a really good current with the tank about 40% full. Considering none of the fish in there make use of the upper levels, I'm now contemplating leaving the tank no more than half full, until at least I get the Magnum8 powerhead. This will mean I can do something else besides refill all night, plus give the fish some better current to swim against and enjoy. After all, they are all riverine fish from the likes of the Zaire/Congo river!

 

[ian]

sounds good mate, make sure you get some pics up here once it's planted.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

~150 minutes later after starting to rectify my blunder, the water change is finally done!

I ended up removing ~66% of the overdosed water and then adding fresh back upto ~66% height, effectively a 50% dilution. By this stage I had ran out of hot water to add 22C water back into the tank, even adding ~ 10 gallons of slightly cooler water to dilute the overdose at the expense of lowering the water temo a little (and consequently the heaters having more to do to raise ~60 gallons by 1C).

I added 25Kg of sand yesterday, giving ~1cm or so depth, which looks pretty good considering. I do have another 25Kg in the garage, but I'd rather hold back on opening it if I can for now, in case we do move in the near future.

The three bits of bogwood originally in the Rio240 are all in there, one of them covered in the Anubias barteri nanas and some Java Fern, while the other two bits have a giant fake plant attached to each!

The tank did not come with a lighting system, but I cannot complain for £51, especially when I discovered it was our very own "Nelly"'s tank (which he has sold to "fishsouth.co.uk" some four days earlier, very small world). Consequently, the real plants rely on ~4 hours of direct sunlight through the garage window and the expense of something like a 150cm T8 needs to wait as money is tight

Just uploading a video clip taken this morning, will either edit this post, or if the edit is "borked" again (happening to me lots recently) I will add a reply...

 

[ian]

if theres no lighting, with those plants, i wouldn't bother with the Easycarbo.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

http/yfrog.com/jvpict0017z

I mainly bought the Easycarbo for the Java Fern in the Korrall60 and the soon to be transferred Windlov Fern (to help give my new Filament Glassfish some more security), but as the Java Fern in the 540l had developed some dark patches on the leaves I added (way too much) down there too... Thanfully I had realised my doseage error before poisoning the Korrall occupants!

 

[PDSimon]

Java ferns with black patches on there leaves are how it reproduces new plantlets. Unless its algae

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

I saw my Java Fern mother plant do the plantlet thing, with andome black spots all over the underside of leaves

The key words are "dark PATCHES"

 

[SuperColey1]

I wouldn't worry too much about water temps. When I was doing WI for the whole 2-3 years I did a 50% change every week and always just put cold in. Fish didn't mind it and that was dropping the temp from 26 to 20 in some cases (winter)

AC

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

It was tempting to use the hosepipe to refill, but when I used that to setup over the recent bank holiday, there were no fish in there. Back then the final temp was 16C the next morning before connecting up the heaters and adding several buckets of hot water to a ~75% cold water filled tank.

Presumeably you spread out the cold refills over a lengthy period of time, allowing the fish to adjust gradually to the temp drop?

 

[atuin]

In the last 20 minutes I've discovered that I have massively overdosed the 540l with Easycarbo, adding 50ml (which would have been fine for the new Waterlife Profito as a weekly dose), rather than the suggested maximum for a heavily planted tank of 20ml!

I use such dosage as normal : ~1ml per 10L of water and nothing wrong happens except needing to prune plants bit more often

 

[SuperColey1]

It was tempting to use the hosepipe to refill, but when I used that to setup over the recent bank holiday, there were no fish in there. Back then the final temp was 16C the next morning before connecting up the heaters and adding several buckets of hot water to a ~75% cold water filled tank.

Presumeably you spread out the cold refills over a lengthy period of time, allowing the fish to adjust gradually to the temp drop?

Of course I do. Takes at least a minute to fill the next bucket and then 2 minutes to transfer the water via hose, thena nother minute....then 2 etc you get what I mean here

The filter and heater are on all the way through. probs takes 20 minutes to draw 50-60 litres out, then another 20 or so to put it back (5-6 buckets x1min+2min etc)

And of course 4 days later (sometimes)) the corys spawn

AC