Hi Everyone And A Few Questions

[Rubric]

I've had my tank for a few months now.

I've made many mistakes along the way and i am probably still making some.

I have and elite 95 tank with the Elite Jet Flo 100 filter and the 150 heater and whatever light it comes with.

I have a kuhli loach, 5 neon tetra's and 2 guppies.

I seem to have problems keeping my nitrate levels low, and a i get alot of brown algae. I am doing 15% water change roughly every week and vacume tank. i used to vacum with syphon when i did water change but now i have a battery vacumn i use before i then syphon off for water change.

I have the zeo carb filter and the sponge in the filter, i rinse them once a week, sometimes once a fortnight in water i have siphoned from the tank. Am i doing anything wrong? Should i have "biological media" in the filter, or is this what the sponge is? Should i be taking the zeo carb filter out until i need it to remove medication? i'm so confused. Also i dont have an air pump, do i need one?

i used to have a siamese figther, 3 plattys, 12 tetra's and the kuhli loach in the tank.

THe fighter died first, then i lost one platty and the tetras had worn ragged looking fins. I kept the healthy tetra and the loach and the rest have gone. I got the two guppies today after a week of no more deaths.

Where am i going wrong.

I have 0 amonia and 0 nitrite it the nitrated that often get up to 80 which is my concern.

any advise greatfully received.

 

[OldMan47]

Try using much larger water changes Rubric. I would do at least 30% changes until I got the nitrates down to a reasonable level.

 

[Rubric]

Try using much larger water changes Rubric. I would do at least 30% changes until I got the nitrates down to a reasonable level.

Ok great.

Or should i do changes 2 or 3 times in the week?

Will i always have to do that? I am guessing that the nitrates are not going to get less in any other way than water changes?

Also im not sure about this filter malarky, should i be taking out my zeo carb cartridge and cutting up some fine sponge stuff to go above the course foam that you get with the filter?

 

[mystus]

you could buy plants to absorb some nitrate and for the water changes just one 30% once a week i think

 

[K-Holed]

You can do multiple smaller water changes or one larger one. As long as you're maintaining the stats you want, it makes little difference. Some fish are sensitive to large water changes (black neons are reported to be a little sensitive to large water changes.)

 

[Rubric]

You can do multiple smaller water changes or one larger one. As long as you're maintaining the stats you want, it makes little difference. Some fish are sensitive to large water changes (black neons are reported to be a little sensitive to large water changes.)

What about the filter?

 

[gremlin]

welcome

 

[Essjay]

According to what I can find, the filter has a foam sponge and a zeocarb cartridge. You don't need the zeocarb. Since you've had the tank a few months, the zeolite and carbon in the cartridge will have become staurated, and will no longer work as they were intended. But they will have become colonised by bacteria, so if you were to take the catridge out, you would lose a lot of your bacteria.
Is there any way you can remove part of the cardridge? If you can, then the best thing would to be to remove part of the cartridge every few weeks and replace it with sponge. If not, you can just leave it there and wash it when it starts to get clogged.

 

[waterdrop]

Right, the advice from oldman47 is the most important, even more so than the filter. You are being to "wimpy" about your gravel-clean-water-changes and unfortunately are losing some of the good effect by doing some of your gravel cleaning with the "keep the water in the tank device." Surprisingly, to beginners sometimes, its the simple gravel siphon that's taking plenty of water out of the tank that actually acheives the most benefit usually. Although I agree with K-Holed up there (very interesting info about black neons if true, had not heard that and will try to keep it in mind!) about some fish being sensitive, I believe in the vast majority of times here in the beginner section, its much more likely that the beginner is too timid with the deep gravel cleaning and allowing larger amounts of water to be changed. Once they work up to larger cleanings with larger amounts of water changed they are amazed at how clean their tank is, how good the stats are and how happy the fish are! So go with that as your main maintenance change to work on!

As to the filter, you may need to make a judgement call on the relative size of the sponge versus the "zeocarb" cartridge (which was probably what helped kill your early on fish along with lack of real cycling knowledge and info!) The rule of thumb is that you can usually remove up to 1/3 of your "biomedia" (which means the media holding most of the tightly clinging autotrophic bacteria) without a "mini-cycle" (which means the condition where you retreat to having now quite enough bacteria to process your bioload of ammonia and nitrite(NO2.)) But your problem is in knowing how much and where the bacteria are! The sponge will be the better surface for them and it may be that the vast majority are there. The carbon and zeo materials will not be as good surfaces for them but still, as said above, may harbor some percentage of them and so may be important. So I agree, you may want to swap out (and yes, the worthless carbon/zeo (worthless for your purposes) would be better getting out of there) a fraction at a time, depending on your feeling about the relative percentages of rough "amount" of sponge vs. zeo/carb thing that's there. Does that make sense? You'll swap it out for more sponge or ceramic gravel or whatever good biomedia you can manage to cause to be in good position in there.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rubric]

Right, the advice from oldman47 is the most important, even more so than the filter. You are being to "wimpy" about your gravel-clean-water-changes and unfortunately are losing some of the good effect by doing some of your gravel cleaning with the "keep the water in the tank device." Surprisingly, to beginners sometimes, its the simple gravel siphon that's taking plenty of water out of the tank that actually acheives the most benefit usually. Although I agree with K-Holed up there (very interesting info about black neons if true, had not heard that and will try to keep it in mind!) about some fish being sensitive, I believe in the vast majority of times here in the beginner section, its much more likely that the beginner is too timid with the deep gravel cleaning and allowing larger amounts of water to be changed. Once they work up to larger cleanings with larger amounts of water changed they are amazed at how clean their tank is, how good the stats are and how happy the fish are! So go with that as your main maintenance change to work on!

As to the filter, you may need to make a judgement call on the relative size of the sponge versus the "zeocarb" cartridge (which was probably what helped kill your early on fish along with lack of real cycling knowledge and info!) The rule of thumb is that you can usually remove up to 1/3 of your "biomedia" (which means the media holding most of the tightly clinging autotrophic bacteria) without a "mini-cycle" (which means the condition where you retreat to having now quite enough bacteria to process your bioload of ammonia and nitrite(NO2.)) But your problem is in knowing how much and where the bacteria are! The sponge will be the better surface for them and it may be that the vast majority are there. The carbon and zeo materials will not be as good surfaces for them but still, as said above, may harbor some percentage of them and so may be important. So I agree, you may want to swap out (and yes, the worthless carbon/zeo (worthless for your purposes) would be better getting out of there) a fraction at a time, depending on your feeling about the relative percentages of rough "amount" of sponge vs. zeo/carb thing that's there. Does that make sense? You'll swap it out for more sponge or ceramic gravel or whatever good biomedia you can manage to cause to be in good position in there.

~~waterdrop~~

thanks for all the help.

i use the in the water to vacum up all the debri and i get right into the gravel with it. I then also use the gravel cleaner syphon and hoover up even more when i take the water out. I will do another 15% this midweek and then do a 30% on saturday and then continue with 30% saturday changes.

The zeo carb cartridge is quite small. the phone is alot bigger. i brought some fine foam today which i thought i could but on top and some nitrate removal sponge i thought i could add as the last layer. I think i could take the zeo carb cartidge out, its not the original as i have changed it twice in the 4 months i have had the tank. the sponge however was only ever changed once.

let me know if this is a bad idea.

I never knew u could put other stuff in your filter until today, just thought u had to buy spares designed for ur filter. should i also have some wool stuff or will, course sponge, fine sponge and nitrate removal sponge me enough?

 

[arobinson1984]

How old is the tank?

Is anybody else wondering if the tanks actually cycled seeing as there has been zeolite in the filter?

Andy

 

[discus_lover]

your partial watewr change will be on more amount than 15%..try to do the water change of 30-40%...

 

[OldMan47]

Zeolite and nitrate remover sound like the same thing to me, they are something that I keep away from my filter. The filter should remove particles, control ammonia and nitrites by converting to nitrates using a biological process and that is about it. Everything else can be done best by doing a water change.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with Andy and OM47, we always need to be suspicious of both zeolite and of anything calling itself a "nitrate remover sponge" as we don't really need or want either of these in a good filter. However, my hunch is that both may possibly be harmless if it turns out the zeolite is a tiny amount, as some of these small filters have, and if the nitrate sponge is just one of those green things that gets promoted by one of the filter manufacturers (fluval internal?) and is really just a sponge colored green basically.

Rubric, I suspect two coarse sponges and one fine sponge would be fine, with hopefully your longest running sponge (whatever type it is) being preserved such that its bacteria is still alive (ie. has not been replaced or cleaned in bacteria-killing tap water.) If you've already obtained a "green nitrate sponge" then hopefully that will just look roughly like your other coarse sponge and can just count as one of those. You don't need the zeocarb cartridge and the fine sponge can probably serve ok as your "floss" for fine mechanical filtration. In the future you could just use a coarse sponge instead of the green type but that should be a long time off as its not good to replace sponges unless they are at end of life and falling apart.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rubric]

Agree with Andy and OM47, we always need to be suspicious of both zeolite and of anything calling itself a "nitrate remover sponge" as we don't really need or want either of these in a good filter. However, my hunch is that both may possibly be harmless if it turns out the zeolite is a tiny amount, as some of these small filters have, and if the nitrate sponge is just one of those green things that gets promoted by one of the filter manufacturers (fluval internal?) and is really just a sponge colored green basically.

Rubric, I suspect two coarse sponges and one fine sponge would be fine, with hopefully your longest running sponge (whatever type it is) being preserved such that its bacteria is still alive (ie. has not been replaced or cleaned in bacteria-killing tap water.) If you've already obtained a "green nitrate sponge" then hopefully that will just look roughly like your other coarse sponge and can just count as one of those. You don't need the zeocarb cartridge and the fine sponge can probably serve ok as your "floss" for fine mechanical filtration. In the future you could just use a coarse sponge instead of the green type but that should be a long time off as its not good to replace sponges unless they are at end of life and falling apart.

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks you been a big help,

I shall keep the coarse sponge i got with the filter and take the cartridge out. The cartridge is small with black and white stones in it. I took it out a while ago for about 2 weeks when i had a treatment in the tank.

Ill replace it with some fine sponge. The nitrate removal sponge is a green sponge that looks alot like the black sponge for coarsness. I take it i should have coarse sponge at the bottom of the filter and finer towards the top. Actually that really is a silly question lol, thats quite obvious
the coarse sponge i got with the filter is quite big but has a hole all the way through the middle of it.

Thanks again for the help.

Nitrates seem under control for now and i have added two dwarf gourami's and they are doing well. I have dropped feedind to every other day as well which i think will help.

One day i would like a largeish cichilid fish in the tank. Like an oscar only not one that grows as big, can anyone recomend anything?