timbruun

Question with that is someone just replanted their tank and stirred up the substrate alot and lost a bunch of fish... Do I have to be worried?

That would be great. I'll see if I can get up to the city soon.

Now that I know I want sand in all my tanks. What is the best way to go about the change without dealing with any old tank syndrome and any other problems. I don't want to have to catch everyone and redo the tanks. And I can do little by little if that will save me some trouble. The one tank is a 55gal and has a few plants and a few larger fish and the other is 5.5 gal and has mostly floating plants with snails and shrimp.

I'll try that light schedule. I have nowhere near 4 wpg. The one with the most lighting is right around 1.5 wpg. I was planning on switching my tanks with gravel substrate to sand anyways partly for that reason.

The picture doesn't work for me, but if it is a scratch just keep up the water changes so your water is really clean. Someone else will have to say for sure but you can add aquarium salt as long as the fish can handle it.

Just curious what the best light schedule is. I like to see my fish in the morning and night but I'm starting to get algae growth since I have the lights on from 8am to 11pm. So I cut the time to 11am to 11pm. Is that best or can I have the lights turn on in the morning then off in the middle of the day then on again later on? Would that screw with the fish and plants too much? Should it be a shorter period? In one of my tanks I have alot higher lighting than the other. Should I leave the one with lower lighting on longer? Now with the gravel vac, how often does everyone vac their substrate in their planted tanks? I did it almost every week when I just had fish but after I got plants I had a tough time doing it without disturbing all the plants so I've somewhat just left it. What's best? And with snails and shrimp in the tank, if I have to gravel vac what is the best method without sucking up half the small ones that I can barely see? Vac into a pail and look with some bright light? Thanks in advance.

Aquagiant will cut what they have to fit also. And their T5HO lights are decent and cheap also.

If I were you and didn't want to spend much, I'd just try with the low light plants and see how things go. It's very easy to add lights later.

I wouldn't say screwed. I would for sure try some of the low light plants and see how they do. They might not go crazy but will grow. I have pretty low light in my 55, I'll have to double check the actual bulbs, and things are doing ok. Slowly coming along. I also add excel to the tanks which I found helps even in the low light tank.

Terrible. You might as well just give the shrimp to me. Honestly, I think they should be ok although I can't speak from experience.

Water are your water parameters?

Jason /jvision has some I'm pretty sure. Have to ask him.

Yellow labs will look really good. Everyone comments on how the blue and yellow stand out so nice in my tanks. And actually I'd recommend a couple Synodontis Petricolas for the bottom just because they are very neat to watch and I like them. The Petricolas enjoy snails as treats too if you don't mind feeding your excess to other fish.

This is actually kind of an old thread. I ended up buying a 2215 used for really cheap and use that with my 2 ac 110

How long are you having your lights on for? Are you over feeding? Is it a planted tank? Algae grows because there is excess/imbalance in the water. So you have to find out what would be causing that.

You current fixtures won't handle the higher watt bulbs.

What's the currect stocking? Yellows aren't aggressive to start so it would be the other fish causing problems... You could try mixing a bit around right before the lights go out and add the fish. That way everyone starts the morning a little bit confused.

I always thought that some were submersible and some weren't. I've always bought the submersible ones. I have one that has a water line and doesn't looked sealed much at the top...

That's interesting since my Vallisneria took off when I added excel. But actually lately it's slowed down a bit after a few water changes with excel. Maybe I should go half rate...

My malaysian trumpet snails are starting reproduce quite a bit so I will have some in the near future. In regards to the stocking, I'll let others jump in as I not entirely sure on that end of things.

Not to rob a thread here, but what plants does excel melt? And is that only if I overdose? Back on topic. I've fairly recently started with plants. I started with a normal tank, no special lights, co2 or substrate etc... The easy/low light plants will grow in these conditions. I wanted more so I bought better lights and that helped. The biggest that helped for me was to add excel to the tanks. After adding excel, a couple days later the just seemed to take off. The one thing I did notice was that some plants seemed to almost die off before they started growing. The old leaves slowly looked worse and worse and new leaves started coming like crazy instead. I have read that that is fairly common though. If I'm wrong, anyone feel free to correct me.

They were staying at the surface after the WC. This morning I looked and found a couple dead and a couple had actually jumped out onto my glass top and died. The rest seem to be doing ok. That's actually hornwort that they are all laying in. There is a bit of Java Moss in there, but only what I got from you. I found my thermometer had filled with water. Is there something in there that could leech into the water and cause problems? Otherwise it must be the WC that is causing the problem somehow. I usually do that small tank last after the big ones. Maybe something was in the lines that shouldn't have been for only a pail of water. I've never had issues before. Unless it did have something to do with the dead snail. I really have no idea. Only other thing is my water has a pH problem where it comes out of the tap at 7.5 and rises to 8.5 after 24-48 hours. I haven't had any issues with this yet on any of my tanks. I don't think the fish enjoy it if I do large water changes, but I've never done more than 50% and they seem fine after I start the pumps up for a minute or two. I also do the couple degrees cooler water change. I'll keep a close eye on them and see how things go. And actually my holding female looks like she either swallowed or spat the eggs/fry out. She was gulping at the top for quite a while which none of my other fish have ever done before. She was only holding since Dec. 26 or so.

Here's some pictures. Oh and I do have a piece of cuttlebone, I think that's what it's called in there, to make the the snails shells stay hard.

Just tested water parameters and everything is at 0.

I have stopped feeding since. Not that I really fed much anyways. Would they still be going for air after the water changes? And the water level was lower when it first happened. I just filled it up again after water changes.