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Week Three - February 13th, 2004
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| Still no activity from the Amazon Sword on the left - but
another sword leaf has popped up from the gravel out of the middle of the Java Fern.
(Just to the right of the sword.) The sword itself it looking kinda pathetic.
On the other hand, almost everything else in the tank is just growing like so many
weeds. The Pennywort in the middle is being particularly aggressive. We've also had
a real surprise - a "Mystery Plant" has popped up out of the gravel on the right
side. I realize that the phrase "Surprise Plant" is almost an oxymoron, but
there you are. Just to the right of the multi-arched 'rock', are several red-brown
leaves that are very low to the gravel. I don't actually know where that plant came
from - I never bought one that looked like that, and I never planted anything there...!
I did buy some 'seeds' a while back, but none of them germinated, so I threw
them all away. My best guess is I missed one, and it got down into the gravel and
did manage to germinate. Now it's growing with a vengeance. It's actually
kinda pretty, and I'm very pleased it's there - it'll give some good color to that end of
the tank. I installed the "C02 Reactor" this week - it's the little soda bottle in the back with the blue powerhead (water pump) on top. The output from my DIY C02 Generator is run into the top of it, and there's little holes in the bottom. The powerhead pumps water into the bottle through the neck, which creates a lot of swirling current inside the bottle - helping the little bubbles of C02 from the Generator to diffuse into the water. Too soon to tell if this is making any real difference in the aquarium. I'm going to have to recharge the C02 Generator soon, I think. I'm hoping that the C02 will give the regular aquatic plants what they need to outcompete the brown algae. The blocky whozit above the reactor is the inlet for a skimming overflow that I had leftover from another tank a long time ago. This one is connected to hose that I'm running through a small hole in the floor down to the basement drain. This will make water changes MUCH simpler and faster. it's hard to tell from this picture, but the brown algae has really set in - it's absolutely everywhere. I've purchased another half-dozen Otocinculus Catfish to try and keep it down, and they're helping. Part of the problem is that the water in this city is incredibly hard. I think it comes out of the tap at around PH 8.5 or so. I understand that this is because the city uses a combination of deep-well aquifer water and river water from the Mississippi - both filtered primarily through mineral beds. The upside is that the water is minimally chlorinated, and can be added directly to the aquarium without ill effects (as long as I don't try to change more than 50%). So, my tank tends to be high PH and very, very hard water. Brown algae is actually a diatom animal, not a plant, and thrives in harder water, as it needs the high mineral and silicate content to survive. Normally, one would deal with this by using Reverse-Osmosis filtered water - but I can't afford an RO rig (very expensive). I really screwed up this week - I bought several little angelfish, as well as the Otocinculus and added them to the tank (on different days). Between them, the Gold Barbs, the other fish I already had - it would appear that I have exceeded the capacity of the (relatively minimal) filtration equipment I have on this tank, and the water has become somewhat hazy again. I had a couple small fish die, so I finally broke down and bought some chemical test strips*, which showed that my Nitrates levels are too high to be measured. I'm not surprised, because I re-used a lot of water from when this was largely-ignored fish-only tank, to help jumpstart the biological filtration. So - I'm going to be doing lots of water changes over the next week or so. I've already done three 10% changes in the last week, and the Nitrate level has gone from off-the-scale to around 160ppm. (Yes, I know, that's a lot.) To try and deal with the hazy water, I've resurrected my old Bio-Wheel Pro 60 from the basement, and hooked it to the H.O.T. Magnum 250 that's already running. The Bio-Wheel should more than double the biological filtration that's currently running on this tank, and will hopefully help with the hazy water problem. I also gravel-vacuumed the whole tank. The Bio-Wheels are adding a lot more surface agitation to the water than I like - but it's not too bad, I guess. We'll just have to see. For those of you who've ever used these Bio-Wheel units, you're familiar with those annoying little triangular plastic wheel bearings that Marineland put into these units. They're tiny, and if you ever take the wheel out for cleaning or what-have-you, the little bearings invariably fall off and immediately become lost. Without these, the wheels themselves scrape on the inside of the enclosure, and just generally don't turn right. No fish shop I've ever found actually carries the replacement bearings, and so if you lose one, you're stuck and must get them via special order. Well - I found that very short lengths of airline tubing - preferably the harder clear plastic variety, work just beautifully as replacement bearings. Just FYI... *P.S. - Why didn't I have a water test kit before this? Well - I did! I bought the very expensive Aquarium Pharmeceuticals Freshwater Master Test Kit quite a long time ago - and promptly lost the instructions - which included the color charts that you must have in order to read any of the test results. I've contacted Aquarium Pharmeceuticals for a replacement, and they couldn't even be bothered to reply to me. They refuse to post images of the color charts on their website, because "It is impossible to match the test result on a computer monitor or print accurate color charts on a printer." Personally, I think that's a bunch of hooey, as the test kits are only accurate to a general range, not to a specific figure, and even a general idea is better than no idea at all... I also don't understand why they didn't just put the test chart on the back of each bottle, so you couldn't lose it without losing the bottle too... Anyway - I found the Jungle Labs Quick-Dip Aquarium Test Kit at Wal-Mart. It was expensive (10 bucks for 25 test strips) but it's so much faster and easier to deal with! One strip does tests for PH, Hardness, Alkilinity, Nitrite and Nitrate in one go. The Aquarium Pharmeceuticals system requires separate test tubes of carefully-measured water samples for each test, and then you have to dribble specific amounts of chemicals into each tube - wait - compare the tubes to the color chart - then clean the test tubes. It's a huge pain in the posterior. Once, many years ago, I was stupid enough to be doing the test while standing over the aquarium, and accidently fumbled the test tube and dropped it - complete with three drops of test chemical, into the tank. It was a 20 gallon tank. Everything in the tank died inside of 12 hours. With the Jungle Labs test - you just dip the strip - wait 30 seconds, and then compare colors. They even put the color chart on the test strip tube so you can't lose it. What a deal! Even considering the expense - I cannot recommend these test strips highly enough. |