Hiya And A Question!

[Greyghost]

Hello, my name name is Steve and I live in Lincoln. Upto 15 years ago, I used to keep a community tank, but because of working away a lot couldn't keep it up and eventually the tank and contents were given a good home.
A couple of weeks ago, I was given a tank (Juwel Delta 100 - 150 litres) and some equipment and have just set it up, with the view of eventually keeping a community tank with some "peaceful" cichlids.

The question - I've set up my tank and have planted it, but after a few days, one of the plants with long variagated leaves (sorry, I don't know what it's called) has developed a white wooly growth on the underside of the leaves. It is only on one plant - should I be worried about it?
This plant and three others were my first purchase and from a "pet" shop, the other plants were from very good fish shops.

Best wishes,
Steve

 

[Scotty001]

Hello, my name name is Steve and I live in Lincoln. Upto 15 years ago, I used to keep a community tank, but because of working away a lot couldn't keep it up and eventually the tank and contents were given a good home.
A couple of weeks ago, I was given a tank (Juwel Delta 100 - 150 litres) and some equipment and have just set it up, with the view of eventually keeping a community tank with some "peaceful" cichlids.

The question - I've set up my tank and have planted it, but after a few days, one of the plants with long variagated leaves (sorry, I don't know what it's called) has developed a white wooly growth on the underside of the leaves. It is only on one plant - should I be worried about it?
This plant and three others were my first purchase and from a "pet" shop, the other plants were from very good fish shops.

Best wishes,
Steve

to the Forum steve, i cant say i have a clue about this, not something ive had, you may be best reposting this in the planted section, those guys will def be able to help you out more.

Scott

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Steve and Welcome to TFF!

Sounds just like a plant I got recently from a PetSmart recently here in USA (but who knows of course since plant descriptions can sound the same for wildly different plants!)

If it able to stand up on its own out of water (stays quite stiff), like mine did, then it may be a marsh plant, not really an underwater plant. Mine died and I had to take it out to cut down on all the ammonia it was going to create when it broke down.

Hey, are you up on all the Nitrogen Cycle stuff and fishless cycling? That's one of the great things this forum has to offer. Take a look over in the "New to the Hobby" section and read the pinned articles -- start a thread there and ask questions or post up how things go for you!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Greyghost]

Hiya,
Many thanks Scott and Waterdrop,
The plant in question is very rigid and stands upright, somewhat liked a stunted bamboo. The plants I got from reputable fish outlets are as you say, very limp out of the water - these do look very nice in water though. I have removed the other plants, just to err on the side of caution as the rest of the tank is now looking very nice.

I must admit, I wasn't thinking along the line of fish less cycling - is this the norm these days?
My tank has been set up a week now and have been treating the tank with Seachem's Stability as per instructions. I was looking at introducing maybe a small shoal of either danios or Barbs after 10 - 14 days and quite literally testing on a daily basis, with a 25% water change weekly and only introducing further fish when the test results are satisfactory.

I still have all the time in the world to read and ask questions as I haven't commited myself to buying fish yet.

Best wishes,
Steve

 

[kj23502]

Cycling with fish is really hard on them. Ammonia burns them and nitrite literally suffocates them

Here's a good link on fishless cycling.

And to the forum!!!

 

[Greyghost]

Hi kj23502,
Many thanks for the reply, I will be going for the fish less cycling as other articles I've read have concurred with yourself in that cycling with fish is cruel - it's just unfortunate that many years ago, that was the norm and certainly was the done thing when I last kept fish (many years ago).

We have at least got an advantage in that we have a number of good fish shops in our city and some superb ones with half an hours drive, so advice every step of the way is there to be had.

I work in a large supermarket, so I'll check tomorrow for ammonia and already have an API Master Test Kit, so here goes.

Best wishes,
Steve

 

[Corleone]

Just in case you have trouble finding the right kind of ammonia (all the supermarkets here carry brands that are either scented or contain surfactants), try hardware stores.

As for the past, a lot of science has improved in recent years, and just like almost every hobby out there, the internet has helped get good information to more people. I'm the third generation in my family to keep fish, and even as a newbie, I can amaze my grandfather with all this "fancy modern stuff" i just parrot off these forums When he started, the basics of the nitrogen cycle were understood, but he'd learned that even an ammonia source with no fish present can't establish a viable biofilter. He was kind of upset when I showed him the results of my fishless cycle - he figures he lost several hundred dollars worth of goldfish to traditional cycling (he also learned the virtues of "old water" and rarely did water changes).

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, young people on this forum could probably not imagine how much noise and misinformation was made about the virtues of "old water" back in the 60's/70's - and I'm convinced that most of why people thought it was good then was because filters were getting cycled a little faster with all the ammonia build-up from doing no water changes. Sad situation for the fish that were in there!

Grayghost - hope to see you over in the "New to the Hobby" forum telling us about your fishless cycle!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah fishless cycling is very much the norm nowadays

it's relativley quick and easy and much less harmful to the fish. I appreciate when you've kept fish sucessfully before using the old methods it's easy to think it was fine then so it'll be fine now.... so here's a couple of things to think about when making your decision

1 - the amount of research done into fish in the last 20/30 years gives the average aquarist a much better understanding of how to set up a suitable home for the fish, a lot of older fishkeeping practices worked in their own way but no one really knew why, now we know why they worked.... but as we understand it all a lot better we also understand how we can make them work better. For example using salt as a 'cure all', it was thought that salt had properties which would help the fish and that it was a form of treatment. We now know that what salt actually does is reduces the effects of high nitrate on the fish, very high levels of nitrate used to be a common problem because tanks used to be run with minimal water changes. Nowadays we keep nitrates low with regular water changes and as such have no need to reduce the effects of them, so when somethings wrong with the fish we don't just add salt, we've a whole array of proven medications to help us out. If your not sure go have a dig around in the scientific section of this forum where you'll find all sorts of interesting articles which expound on this sort of thing.

2 - common fish are now unfortunatley much weaker than they were 20/30 years ago, years of inbreeding to produce vast numbers and fancy varieties has left the gene pool somewhat diluted for many species, good old hardy neon tetras will now flounder in a tank under 6 months old, the same for guppies.

The combination of weaker fish and better knowledge has lead pretty much all of us to the conclusion that fishless cycling is very much the way to go, as waterdrop said there's loads of info in the new to the hobby section so go check out the pinned topics over there.

 

[Greyghost]

Hiya,
many thanks to all who have replied.
It looks as though I am very "old skool" in thinking. I first kept tropical fish in the late 70's when we had two 3' tanks that fitted into alcoves in our old Victorian terrace. In those days, you would fill your tanks and leave it a week, then slowly start adding fish, just a few at the time. There was an understanding of the nitrogen cycle, but it was rudimentary. In those days, filtration was purely undergravel, and what a pain that was as when it worked well, it worked well, but when they needed cleaning - well that was another story.

Sometimes, with some things, when science is introduced, it can just complicate things that already worked, although not as to why. But it looks as though fish keeping has come a long since I last had tropical fishes and at the end of the day, if it is for the benefit of the fishes - then so be it!
Will pop my head into the "new to the hobby" section and have a look around.

Best wishes,
Steve

 

[Miss Wiggle]

my Dad's an old skool fishkeeper, he set up my first tank for me using the traditional, 'leave it a week then stick some platies in' method, lost most of them and he couldn't understand why, just the species are a lot weaker now so we have to be a lot more careful.

as you said though, it's all for the good of the fish, and really what else do we get into this for if not the fish?!