Quote:
Originally Posted by jrman83
Most low light plants can survive quite a while with no light. Others can be less tolerant. If the algae is really bad, a blackout may become necessary.
What preparation do you do to your water?
|
By prepare I meant letting it sit for 24 hours to dechlorinate. It was Xmas eve so I couldn't really run to the store.
For the next three days I did 50% water changes (tap water that had sat for 24 hours), but the snails and shrimp all hung out at the top, and the water smelled bad. I then attached the filter (had never used it as was using the "beaslbob build") and w/in minutes/hours (?) the snails went back down into the water. (Wish I had done that sooner!) Sadly, the shrimp did not make it that far.
I changed the filter w/in a few days because the water had been so foul. The next filter I changed after another week. Now I'm on the third filter which I will keep to the end of the month, but I only run it for a couple hours after chow time. The ammonia was very high. The color wheel was on "toxic" shade. So I put some ammonia rocks in a bag in the filter compartment. The ammonia levels went down immediately, and now are at <0.02.
All the fish and snails seem to be back to business as usual, now.
I had remove all the wisteria as it went "slimy" and seemed to rot. Yes, it was bad in there. I bought a few new plants and rearranged. I have a pretty well planted 10G: (dwarf hair grass, 2 annubias, red lilly, 5 baby clumps of tropical fern, mint charlie, aponogeton ulvaceus, aponogeton proliferous, and something else aponogeton-looking, and java moss) but that darn algae is still persistent. But I am gathering that maybe I should ease up on the filter changing (not more often than once/month); that the bacteria in the filter help keep algae down? Correct? And I did rinse it in tap water once! Oops.
So, I did a two-day black out after the crisis--no peeking, but the algae did not fully go away and came back in full force.
I am afraid to black out too much because of all the live plants. About 3 months ago, I had been leaving the lights on about 12-14 hours/day. Then I went out of town for the weekend and left an algae wafer for snails and a weekend feeder for the fish. Biggest mistake. Algae bloom ever since. I only have the lights on 2-4 hours/day now, and it's been that way for the last 3 months, since before the fish flake disaster, in an attempt to combat this algae. But this new red lily does not like the 2-4 hours of light. I need to fix the problem so my tropical fish and my plants can get the 6-9 hours/day light they want.
So should I keep lights out and absolutely no feeding until algae gone? Lights are two 10w CFLs. There is a lamp about 6 feet away and another one about 12 feet away that also have 10w CFLs; and a window facing SSW about 14 feet away. So even with tank off, there is some indirect light. Will killing the lights, but having a lamp on 6 feet away defeat the purpose?
My PH is good. In the 7-8 range. Hard to tell precisely on those color wheels. I don't know what it is in my tap water before adding it to the tank. I wasn't monitoring levels before this disaster as everyone seemed so happy. When I did buy an indicator after the crisis, PH was really high, maxed out on the color wheel, but I had just put in 5 large snail shells with the new plants as hiding places for fry and a calcium source for the snails. So I removed all but one and the readings went down right away and are in the 7-8 range now.
When the plants flesh out and I get a handle on the algae, I want to try again with the shrimp, but I want to make sure things are good before I add anything else.
HELP! Son dumped entire can of flakes in 10G!!!
Banana
