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Thread: New Drop1.2x scrubbers installed: progress report

  1. #41

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    A week ago I moved one of my Drops from the big fish tank to my small Dwarf Gourami tank (10 gallon tank with about 8 1/2 gallons of water). I did this because I am getting a bit frustrated trying to get the nitrates down in that tank by water changes. I've been changing 4 gallons of water daily (2 in the morning and 2 in the evening) for a couple of months and nitrates stubbornly remain between 10-20ppm. Yesterday I did full tank cleaning/maintenance, changed about 75% of the water, pulled the canister filter offline and added my second Drop. Starting water params were:

    Nov 07:
    1. pH: 7.0
    2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
    3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
    4. Nitrate (NO3): 3.0
    5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.25

    This morning (about 18 hours after the above tests) nitrates are 2.0 (excellent!) and pH, ammonia and nitrite the same. I did not test for phosphate but will at the end of the week.

    So now, the only filtration on that tank are the two Drops. I'm going to test daily for the next week. I expect nitrates to stay low or maybe go to zero because the canister nitrate generator is gone. My concern now is that ammonia/ammonium also stay at zero. I have a male and female Dwarf Gourami and a couple of big apple snails in the tank. Feeding is pretty light.

    If the Drops can keep the water at or near pristine, I will swap tanks with my Dwarf African Frogs, who are currently in a 15 gallon tank. The 10 gallon tank is adequate for the frogs and the larger tank will enable me to get a second pair of Gouramis. You may wonder why. The short answer is I've lost nearly half a dozen Dwarf Gouramis to nitrate poisoning. These guys need pristine water and are very sensitive to any nitrate. You may wonder why bother. These little guys are very beautiful and friendly.

    I will definitely report how well the Drops maintain water quality as the sole filtration in this tank.

  2. #42

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    Nov9 9:30 pm. I am very pleased to report that nitrate went to 0.0 by this evening. Curiously, pH dropped to 6.6.

    This morning the water had a lot of visible debris floating around and looked a bit cloudy, like there was some very fine stuff. Maybe that brought the pH down. I don't know if that is a temporary phenomenon or if I'm just feeding too much. At any rate, I changed 2 gallons of water. Then I put online an idle Eheim Classic 150 canister to filter out the debris. The canister is filled with coarse and fine sponges, topped by about 1 1/2" or so of floss. Within an hour the water had cleared noticeably. The cloudiness is gone and there is very little debris floating around. So that works. I'm going to clean the Eheim every month or 6 weeks with bleach to kill any nitrifying bacteria that might try to get established in it.

  3. #43
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    You probably don't want to kill any bacteria; if bacteria are there, then they are consuming ammonia and/or nitrite.

  4. #44

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    Nov10 8:00 pm. I am very saddened to report that my female Dwarf Gourami died this afternoon. Water params this afternoon:

    1. pH: 6.6
    2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
    3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
    4. Nitrate (NO3): 0.0

    The water also became cloudy today and I changed 2 gallons of water again, which cleared it up. The female looked better and became more active after I changed the water. But she died a couple hours later. I also noticed the water has a methane/swampy odor. So now I'm thinking something is producing methane but I don't understand how. Anyone have any ideas?

    The male gourami looks pretty stressed as well, but at least he's still alive. We pulled him out of the tank and put him in a smaller container with no filters attached. We'll just keep changing water and hope he recovers. I'm really not having much success with these fish. All my other fish are happy and healthy, but what a challenge to keep these gouramis alive.

    You probably don't want to kill any bacteria; if bacteria are there, then they are consuming ammonia and/or nitrite.
    I'm using the Eheim strictly for mechanical filtration. If the drops can keep ammonia and nitrite at zero, then I don't really care about whatever bacteria might colonize the Eheim.

  5. #45

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    Nov28 Water params:

    1. pH: 7.2 (Note: I added about 1/4 tsp baking soda on Nov23 to account for additional water added to keep the tank topped up)
    2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
    3. Nitrite: 0.0
    4. Nitrate: 20.0
    5. Phosphate: 1
    6. dKH: 4 (~70ppm KH)
    7. Calcium: 380ppm

    I have not changed water since Nov11, although I have added about 500ml this past week to keep the water topped up. Nitrates have not decreased measurably yet, but phosphate continues to decrease. I expect phosphate will hit 0.0 before next weekend and hopefully the algae will start eating nitrate. The algae grew much thicker this past week than previously. So it looks like maintaining pH at 7.0 or above is good for the algae.

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    I've also started measuring dKH and Calcium. I supplement calcium using white chalk sticks. The snails are much more active now with the increased pH and calcium.

  6. #46

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    Dec01 Water params

    1. pH: 7.2
    2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.0
    3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
    4. Nitrate (NO3): 10.0
    5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.5
    6. dKH: 3 (~53ppm)
    7. Calcium: 420ppm

    Finally, nitrates are coming down!

  7. #47
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    Nice, and no hassle with water changes.

  8. #48

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    Weekly update Dec05

    1. pH: 7.5
    2. Ammonia (NH3/4): 0.25
    3. Nitrite (NO2): 0.0
    4. Nitrate (NO3): < 0.5
    5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0 - 0.25
    6. kH: dKH 3 (53ppm)
    7. Calcium: 280ppm

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    I swapped my 10 gallon and 15 gallon tanks yesterday because I had to make some space where the 15 gallon had been located. So the two drops are now in the 15 gallon tank. I reused as much water as I could from the 10 gallon tank and then topped up the tank to about 12 gallons with fresh filtered water. So the above parameters reflect conditions after that change and added water. It's interesting that I did not add any baking soda, yet the pH increased from last week.

    Also, for the past couple of days there is detectable ammonia/ammonium. Does anyone have any ideas why that might happen after weeks of 0.0 ammonia? Because the pH is above 7 I'd say it's all ammonium. Plus there are only snails in the tank, so I'm not too concerned about it. Yet, why would ammonia suddenly appear, especially after the algae has started to grow much more vigorously. The algae is consuming both nitrates and phosphorus, so maybe it forgot about ammonia?

  9. #49
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    Algae does not forget about ammonia.

    You probably just moved something.

  10. #50

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    Thanks. I forgot my

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