Interesting. There seems to be a lot less algae 'dust' on the pre filter today, so I conclude that I was right to suspect the helical scrubber was dumping it into the water. Fortunately, that will...
Type: Posts; User: amwassil
Interesting. There seems to be a lot less algae 'dust' on the pre filter today, so I conclude that I was right to suspect the helical scrubber was dumping it into the water. Fortunately, that will...
May23/16
I am officially taking the helical scrubber offline. It's had almost 4 months now and the scrubber does not seem to grow much algae. There is algae in the tubes, but it's patchy and has...
May22/16 (posted May23/16)
Cleaned the scrubber today. The acrylic cover worked well to contain the algae in the scrubber. There was, however, algae growing both on the glass and the outside of...
I decided to isolate the screen by adding a .080 clear acrylic cover. The plastic tray has small lips in each corner, so by cutting the acrylic square and then rounding the corners slightly, it fits...
May08/16
I cleaned the scrubber yesterday. There was a huge amount of algae growth on the inside of the glass, much less on the actual scrubber screen. Unfortunately, I found it very difficult to...
Apr27/16
10 days in. I think this is pretty good growth for the first 10 days from a brand new, clean screen. :rolleyes:
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There was also a lot of algae on the glass which I scrapped off...
As I've noted in other posts, I have an 80 gallon fish tank, a 110 gallon turtle tank and an ADF/snail tank all with high nitrates. All of these tanks have filtration systems that use biological...
So far! Still have about 5 weeks to go before the 4 packages are expended.
Oh, I think you're likely getting better advice from your book. :rolleyes:
I think I've figured out my water change issues with this tank. Today, instead of removing 2 gallons while cleaning the...
Apr24/16
As noted in the helical scrubber thread, I removed two of the LED panels from the scrubber and used them in a new upflow scrubber in the main tank. The current position of the scrubber is...
Apr23
It looks like the cycle has restarted successfully. Ammonia went to 0.0 about 10 days ago and I took the AmmoCarb reactor offline. Ammonia is still 0.0, so I presume the biofiltration is...
I am starting to wonder whether the helical scrubber is actually doing much of anything. Although there is a fair amount of green, presumable algae, dust in the main pre filter, I collect very...
Apr23
Nitrate still remains at 40.0+. In fact, based on taking the API test on 50% diluted aquarium water, nitrate is around 80.0. Of course, it's very possible that nitrates were much higher than...
Apr23
1. pH: 7.2
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrate (NO3): 0.0
I removed the Algone about 7 days ago. I put the sponge back for mechanical filtration. The water just gets too full of debris...
Apr07
Nitrate went to 0.0 today! After pulling the sponge filter on Apr03 ammonia went up to 0.25 (as indicated in my previous post) for a couple of days. Today it went down a little to < 0.25....
Apr05
I removed the sponge filter yesterday. I also added a small hang-on filter that has a pouch of Algone in it. This was in my main fish tank for the past two months, changing out the pouch...
Apr05
Just a quick note. Since adding the two pouches of Nitra Zorb on Sunday (Apr03), the two pouches are getting darker daily. They started out as a pale beige and are now about the colour of...
Thanks! There is still detectable nitrate (0.0+) so another day or two of water changes to reduce it. There was also detectable ammonia (0.25). With the pH holding steady at 6.6 I don't think the...
My 80 gallon tank with about 75 gallons of water has high nitrate. With my API test kit, it's somewhere between 40.0 and 160.00. My opinion is that 'old tank syndrome' is just another name for high...
Apr03
I pulled the sponge filter today, cleaned off all the algae growing on the back and changed about 60% of the water. I also added an airstone where the sponge filter was. pH is now 6.6. Later...
I don't know what else to do to stimulate the growth. Running a brush through the tube is impossible; I tried, and it only goes a few feet before it binds up. I bought some API Nitra Zorb today and...
Apr03
I bought some Seachem Stability today so I can try to re-inoculate the bacteria. I now wonder whether the lights from the algae scrubber killed the bacteria? Any ideas about that? I am going...
My guess is a combination of ammonia and nitrate. Ammonia peaked 'off the chart' with my API Ammonia Test kit. At that level and pretty much any/everything above 1ppm I had to bump up the pH daily....
Monthly update Apr01/16 (dwarf gourami tank)
1. pH: 6.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0+
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): ~ 10.0 (Apr01)
4. Nitrate (NO3): < 5.0 (Apr02)
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
...
Monthly update Apr01/16
1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40.0+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 2.0+
The scrubber seems to be growing lots of algae and I added a...
Apr01/16
1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.5
3. Nitrite (NO2): 2.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40.0+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
This is taking far longer than I expected to start cycling again. It still...
Monthly update Apr01/16 (standard gourami tank)
1. pH: 7.2+
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): ~ 20.0 (Apr01)
4. Nitrate (NO3): < 5.0 (Apr02)
5. Phosphate (PO4):...
Monthly update Mar08/16
1. pH: 7.2
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 1.0
Dropping down to monthly reports. Not enough happening to...
Monthly update Mar08/16
1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 8.0+
3. Nitrite (NO2): 1.0+
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
Needless to say, this got my attention! I had noticed that the...
I now have three female dwarf gouramis in a 2.5 gallon Aqueon Bow Tank. This tank comes with a small mechanical filter designed for a small cartridge containing activated carbon (I presume). The...
Monthly update Mar08/16 (standard gourami tank)
Mar08/16 (standard gourami tank)
1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40.0
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.25
I'm...
Weekly update Feb13/16 (gourami tank)
1. pH: 7.4
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): < 5
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
Weekly update Feb12/16
1. pH: 7.4
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 2.0
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Thanks. I'll leave the LEDs on 24/7 and watch what happens.
The water in this tank still has an odor, a lot like poop. So I cleaned the sponge again today and changed 3 gallons of water while...
Several of my fish species eat it, some enthusiastically. The snails love it. Unfortunately, the turtles don't like it. I think I'll try it with them again, though.
Feb07
I added a filter sock to the drain in the scrubber box when I cleaned the scrubber last week. It has cut down on the amount of algal fragments getting into the MBBR and the turtle tank. That...
Weekly update Feb07/16 (gourami tank)
1. pH: 7.4
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.25
4. Nitrate (NO3): < 5
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
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Feb01 Water params
1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
Dolomite has proven to be a disappointment. I think the stuff...
Weekly update Feb05/16
1. pH: 7.4
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 2.0
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Monthly update Feb01/16
1. pH: 7.4
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.25
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 2.0
First monthly report! For some reason Nitrites spiked a little....
Weekly update Feb01/16 (gourami tank)
1. pH: 7.4
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 0.0+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
Weekly update Jan30/16 (gourami tank)
1. pH: 7.6
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.25
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 0.0+
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
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Weekly update Jan29/16
1. pH: 7.2
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): > 2.0
Not much happened this week probably due to the airline feeding...
Jan23/16
Not sure what to make of it, but nitrite is back to 0.0 today. I really doubt that the new Hel-x media got colonized completely overnight, so possibly yesterday's tests were false for...
Weekly update Jan23/15 (gourami tank)
1. pH: 7.4
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
4. Nitrate (NO3): < 5.0
5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0
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Weekly update Jan22/16
1. pH: 7.0
2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.50
4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
5. Phosphate (PO4): > 2.0
After making the above tests, I immediately added 3 capsful of...
Jan20/16
Today I incorporated a Seachem 'The Bag', 180 micron pore size, as the return filter from the scrubber. Here are photos of the components prior to and after assembly:
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The...
For algae or bacteria? I could move the other drop back from the frog tank. Or I could stick a light on the tank and try to grow algae in the tank where the fish will probably eat most of it. I'll...
Jan19/16
I reamed out the top hole in the drop in the gourami tank to 3/16" on the premise that I can always make it bigger if need be. My hope is that small bits of algae will work their way...
Jan18/16
Pleased to report that ammonia and nitrite are still zero after Saturday's cleaning. So I know now how much to clean the drops. :) While phosphate remains at zero, nitrate remains...