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Post by kagome on Nov 26, 2023 14:15:46 GMT -5
Does the deep substrate actually lessen the need for water changes?
And when you set up a tank like this, you shouldn't try to vacuum the substrate, correct?
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Post by kagome on Nov 20, 2023 21:40:42 GMT -5
I totally agree that some of these channels are touting things that just aren't possible. I'm not expecting a self-sustaining ecosystem.
My interest is cutting down on maintenance. I'd like to try converting at least one of my 8 tanks to a "nature" aquarium: loads of plants, deep substrate that consists of lava rock and soil capped with inert sand.
I do want to treat it less like a tank and more like an ecosystem, make sure to add helpful organisms from other tanks, like snails, shrimp, copepods.
I plan on keeping the bioload fairly light.
I'm also not trying to go filterless. The 40 gallon I have in mind to try already has 2 large sponge filters. I'll use these but change out the substrate. I know I'll need to add in some water to replace minerals (although, my water is very soft and doesn't do much. I add shrimp king minerals to replacement water once a month).
I think all this will be a very interesting experiment
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Post by kagome on Nov 17, 2023 3:05:45 GMT -5
Hey all!
I've been doing a lot of research into deep substrate aquariums. I'm seeing a lot of claims that, if you create a deep sand bed, augmented with lots of lava rock and soil, that you can create an anaerobic layer that will nitrify and denitrify wastes in a freshwater aquarium.
There are lots of YouTube channels, like Father Fish, that claim that deep substrate tanks don't need water changes, that they require almost no maintenance as long as you get a self sustaining ecosystem going and don't overfeed.
This goes against pretty much everything I was taught all these years in the aquarium hobby and I was curious to get some thoughts and ideas with it.
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Post by kagome on Jul 21, 2019 14:56:56 GMT -5
I've found that their growth rate over the first year is tremendous. It will seem like they get bigger every time you see them over. Expect the pleco to gain AT LEAST 6 inches in those first 6 months, maybe even more.
Of course, this all assumes there's plenty for the fish to eat. They need a lot of algae, fiber from driftwood and at least the occasional algae wafer to give them a boost of protein. The more food they can eat, the faster their growth will be.
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Post by kagome on Jul 4, 2019 12:47:11 GMT -5
I'd say after 48 hours you can be pretty sure that they're not viable.
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Post by kagome on Jun 27, 2019 20:48:05 GMT -5
This video shows black skirt tetras spawning. www.youtube.com/watch?v=69IBErG6SvYAbout 13:30 minutes into the video, he zooms in on the spawning mop and shows the eggs. They look really similar to what you've got. So I'd definitely say they're some kind of tetra eggs. Now, now way to tell if they're black skirt or neon until they hatch and the fry grow up a bit.
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Post by kagome on Jun 27, 2019 20:25:43 GMT -5
Looks great! I've done co2 and non co2 and thing there's benefits to both. Co2 does require much more hands on. Yeah, maybe if this was my only tank I'd consider it. But with running three 40 gallon tanks currently, plus all the other craziness in my life, I just don't think it's that practical. Especially since I've been getting results I'm really happy with without it.
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Post by kagome on Jun 24, 2019 14:13:47 GMT -5
I like that you have nice plant growth WITHOUT CO2. I know that CO2 can provide explosive growth, but I have had good growth too long before the crazy amounts of CO2 fad started a few years back. I know that folks do get some crazy growth with CO 2, but it's expensive, one more thing to keep track of and you risk overdosing and killing your livestock. I'd rather pick plants that don't need it and skip the extra hassle and expense. I drop enough money into this hobby without all of that added on! BTW, I love the pleco on the dragon Carl That is his new favorite place to perch! He's there every day now. I love it, too. It used to be so hard to even get a look at him much less a picture and now he just hangs out there all the time.
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Post by kagome on Jun 22, 2019 23:11:09 GMT -5
I've made some changes to my planted tank and some of the plants have grown in. This is still a low tech set up. No CO 2, only gets Seachem Flourish Comprehensive twice a week. Here's an overall shot of the tank fullsizeoutput_46 by Katherine Morgan, on Flickr The Ludwigia repens (red plant in the background) now goes all the way to the top of the tank. I'm going to chop off the top half and root it in the gravel soon. fullsizeoutput_48 by Katherine Morgan, on Flickr I added some water wisteria (the bright green plant behind the dragon). It's one of those plants that you can see has grown each day. I'm sure I'll get sick of trimming it, but it's really reduced the amount of nitrates in the tank, so who cares. fullsizeoutput_4a by Katherine Morgan, on Flickr The Brazilian pennywort (coming up from behind the Buddha) has made a full recovery after I got scissor happy with it and the Java fern in the far right is growing like crazy and putting off babies. fullsizeoutput_4c by Katherine Morgan, on Flickr After years of being nearly impossible to photograph, Pennywise the Clown Pleco now happily sits on the dragon and lets me take pictures. No idea why, but it's cool. fullsizeoutput_44 by Katherine Morgan, on Flickr fullsizeoutput_42 by Katherine Morgan, on Flickr Here are the rainbows. They are really starting to get some color. Even these shots don't do them justice. If you click on this picture, it will take you to my Flickr and you can see the short video I took. Unfortunately, ProBoards doesn't seem to play nice with a video posted on Flickr. fullsizeoutput_4e by Katherine Morgan, on Flickr
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Post by kagome on Jun 9, 2019 12:05:55 GMT -5
So far, no luck properly identifying the species. But from anecdotal accounts, once the worm reaches maturity, it exits the shrimp either through the mouth or the anus. This is fatal to the shrimp.
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Post by kagome on Jun 7, 2019 14:40:23 GMT -5
Weird random question. So I was doing some research on ghost shrimp and came across some pictures and discussions about them coming with a large internal parasite. A lot of sites and YouTube videos call is a horsehair worm ( nematomorphs), so I looked those up. But, everything I found about the worms doesn't add up to them being parasites in shrimp. Nematomorphs are parasites when they're young, but only in terrestrial insects, like crickets, cockroaches, beetles, even praying mantis. The worms infect insects, grow to adults inside their bodies and then take over the bugs' "minds" and force them to jump into water so they can emerge. But I can't find any kind of source anywhere that says that they infect freshwater shrimp. In aquatic environments, horsehair worms are free living, no parasites. I know that ghost shrimp can get parasitic worms, but I'm curious to know what kind of worm that actually are, since they're not Nematomorpha. Anybody know what they actually are? I haven't been able to figure it out and it's bugging me.
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Post by kagome on Jun 7, 2019 14:01:25 GMT -5
Wow, I did not realize that the Spruce used to be about.com!
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Post by kagome on Jun 6, 2019 22:14:53 GMT -5
Is the tank heavily planted? That could be what is eating up the nitrates and why they test as so low.
Definitely, you're doing the right thing going for stability rather than chasing "perfect" numbers.
Is it maybe that topping off for evaporation with your tap water is raising your pH?
If there's a lot of carbonate/bicarbonate in your tap water, it could be that it neutralizes any acidic compounds produced by any nitrogenous waste and keeps the pH high.
Using 50/50 distilled would make the GH/KH/pH go down a bit. Since distilled is so close to completely neutral, you shouldn't have to worry about which brand you get. The spring water that you used before may have had a high GH and/or KH, it depends on the source water. But the distilled should be just about pure. Mixing it with your tap water would still give you some minerals in the water, but not the super high liquid rocks you've got now.
The betta spa might have more of an effect if you're mixing in the distilled.
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Post by kagome on Jun 6, 2019 21:59:26 GMT -5
I'm so glad that you wrote this article.
There is SO much misinformation about this online. So many "sources" say that detritus worms are planaria.
They're 2 different species people!!
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Post by kagome on Jun 6, 2019 18:39:21 GMT -5
I'm sorry your fish is sick!
It's better to wait for Carl to take a look as far as trying to identify the sore.
For my two cents, 25% water changes once a month is not really enough. It's better to change out 25% weekly.
Also, you might want to double check your water parameters with a liquid test kit. In a cycled tank, there should always be some nitrates present. NO3- is a natural byproduct of the nitrogen cycle. Especially if only 25% is being changed out monthly, I would expect for nitrates to be well over 40 ppm.
Since it's not a huge tank, you could mix distilled water with your tap water 50/50 when you do water changes. That would bring down the GH/KH/pH in the tank.
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Post by kagome on Jun 6, 2019 18:19:54 GMT -5
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Post by kagome on May 13, 2019 13:34:56 GMT -5
According to the guy who owns the fish farm, they do add quite a bit of water into the system to make up for evaporation. Given the heat in some of those greenhouses (120°F in some) I would imagine that evaporation is huge.
I think Cory's point is that they have so many plants going that it functions like its own ecosystem. The high volume of plants, especially plants like mangrove, eat up the ammonia and nitrate produced from fish waste. I've seen lots of videos of fish farms, but most don't have any kind of veggie filter to eat up waste. I thought this one was so cool because of the organic system they have going.
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Post by kagome on May 10, 2019 15:49:59 GMT -5
I can't stop watching this video. It's really long, but SO interesting. I love how they use the plants to pull all the nitrates out of the water so they don't have to do water changes, they just top off for evaporation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE3zTisZ_c0&t=1040sOnce again, if it weren't for YouTube, maybe I'd get some work done.
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Post by kagome on May 2, 2019 15:29:50 GMT -5
As for snail removal, you might consider fish such as Botias and also capture some with cucumber slices Carl The rainbows love to eat the juvenile snails, but they can't crunch up the adults. When the big ones come above the water line at the front of the tank, I squish them with my finger and let them drop down into the water for the rainbows to eat. As if they didn't beg for food enough, now they go completely nuts when anyone gets near the tank because they want tasty snail treats. At first, I was worried about them picking up parasites from the snails since things like gill flukes use snails as intermediate hosts, so I would just remove them. But, I couldn't find anything that comes from bladder snails. Also, there's no way to stop them from eating the juveniles anyway.
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Post by kagome on May 1, 2019 17:10:59 GMT -5
I'm a dork. They do all say that "they may harm aquatic plants."
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