Harem in 120 gallon 4ftx2ft

[Fig1]

Hi everyone, I've been doing some reading on this site and wanted to ask your opinions.
I was thinking about keeping 3 males and 5 females (no more are available) A.cacatuoides, in my 120 gallon planted tank. I would add 6 to 8 more caves to this and use terracotta pots and plants to create some pretty defined lines between them. I've read 3 or more males can lead to new and interesting behavior but I wouldn't want to put any fish at risk if my tank isn't big enough to house all 3 males. The tank has a foot print of 48"x24" or 122cmx61cm.

 

[MacZ]

While I love me my biofilms, aufwuchs and algae and stuff, but you might want to take care of the cyanobacteria before adding any bioload to the tank. Otherwise you might risk the tank turning inhospitable.

After that and depending on how you structure the tank, you might pull off 2m/3-4w. For 3 males the structures as they are right now are a somewhat too lose and open.

 

[Fig1]

Thanks for the reply. Do you have any suggestions for taking care of the blue algae? This tank will remain empty for at least 8 weeks so I can balance it and make sure it's safe for new fish. I am willing to rescape the tank I'm just wondering if 3m is too many. I have read cacs to be more tolerant than other species but I only have experience keeping them in pairs.

 

[MacZ]

For the bacteria (it's not algae):
1. Siphon out as much of it as you can
2. Remove all driftwood that it's on (and toss it! Sorry, that's beyond rescue)
3. try to reduce nutrients in the tank to a minimum.
and 4. blackout the tank for a week.

The plants won't like that though and might die off. If it all doesn't help you will likely have to completely restart the tank including new substrate.
I would stay away from any chemicals, as those that seem to help kill off everything else in the tank, too. The chemical free solution is more labour intensive, though.

So... with that problem at hand I guess it's almost trivial to ask for the number of Apistogramma males. As I wrote, 2 might work, 3 rather not without a bigger redo.

 

[anewbie]

Well i disagree on the need to toss the driftwood - as i've had this issue before and it went away 100% without problem. It would be good to know the root cause in your tank and there are several options. In my case the compacting of the substrate cause arobic behavior that produce nitrogen which fed cyano - a small current across the substrate was enough for it to dissipate in a couple of weeks. In another tank i had to treat with chemi-clean (https://amazon.com/gp/product/B00025YRJS) but i would use chemical as a last resort. My understanding from different readings is that this stuff occurs for different reasons and relies on different nutrients. The common reasons seem to be nitrogen from substrate along with stagnation and excess phosphate from decaying food. It is not clear to me if the different types are actually the same bacteria though they look very similar.
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You said the tank has no fishes are you using an artifical method (such as decaying food) to cycle the tank? Anyway I would start with adding a slight current across the substrate and if you are adding something to the tank to induce a cycle see if it is being over done. I would not toss the driftwood initially and see if it clears up when you manage to clear it from the rest of the tank. It has been about 14 months since i've delt with it (as i noted in one tank it just went away as soon as i angled the spray bar down a bit - but that was in a 20 long - in your case with a 2ft tall tank i would probably go with a low power wave maker and put it low). The other tank was a 29 which i treated with the above chemi-clean and the stuff cleared after about 7 to 10 days. The fishes seemed to do fine. In that tank it was quite bad much worse than your tank with a thick carpet over 80% of the substrate and driftwood - i never understood why it formed in that tank but once gone it never came back.
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If your substrate is compacting there might be longer term issues and you might consider replacing it with something more porous or find something to burrow into the substrate. I know as a 120 it is a pia to work with due to the depth (mine is 4x2x2) and volume.
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Last but least there should be no problem keeping 3 males in a 120 gallon tank - there is quite a bit of distance to cover - your picture does not show the full scale of the tank but there is plenty of room to establish territory. More landscaping will of course help but even then I think your current tank has adequate areas. I suspect you could keep more than 3 males with ease but don't take that as encouragement to do so.
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I wanted to note that in my case i only dealt with the blue-green version of cyano. On further examination of your picture you also have the red version which i have not dealt with before and that might give you some hints as to what is causing the out break.

 

[MacZ]

On further examination of your picture you also have the red version which i have not dealt with before and that might give you some hints as to what is causing the out break.

Yeah, that's why I said the wood should be tossed. The red ones are hard to get rid of, when they have colonised organic material. If it was rocks I'd say scrub them in clean water, dry them, done. But with wood the stuff tends to stay in cravisses and spread again from there.

 

[Fig1]

A little background on this tank; It's been cycled and running for over a year. It housed 4 Bolivian rams and a school of angels until they paired off and were separated to pairs. The rams were moved to a 29g. The tank sits next to a window in a plant room and gets intense light for 12 hours a day (grow lights for plants+window). It usually had some algae in it from the beginning. For the compacting there are a number of Malaysian trumpet snails in the sand but not as many as I've seen in my other tanks.

I didn't realize cyanobacteria was different from regular algae so I was not overly concerned at first. Once the fish were removed I mistakenly started dosing more fertilizer thinking it would help the plants but it just made the cyanobacteria go crazy. If I'm tossing the driftwood in the end and possibly resetting the tank, would it make sense to treat it with chemicals in a last ditch attempt to save it?

Thanks for the chemi-clean suggestion, I also read about using "Ultralife Blue Green Slime Stain Remover"
( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QSK31M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) does anyone have any experience with it? I would only try these if all else fails like the redirected flow and manual removal. I have also stopped adding fertilizer.

 

[Fig1]

Should I continue dosing nitrogen to keep nitrate levels up? What do you guys think is the best way to keep the tank cycled for the next two months? Thanks for all the help.

 

[anewbie]

A little background on this tank; It's been cycled and running for over a year. It housed 4 Bolivian rams and a school of angels until they paired off and were separated to pairs. The rams were moved to a 29g. The tank sits next to a window in a plant room and gets intense light for 12 hours a day (grow lights for plants+window). It usually had some algae in it from the beginning. For the compacting there are a number of Malaysian trumpet snails in the sand but not as many as I've seen in my other tanks.

I didn't realize cyanobacteria was different from regular algae so I was not overly concerned at first. Once the fish were removed I mistakenly started dosing more fertilizer thinking it would help the plants but it just made the cyanobacteria go crazy. If I'm tossing the driftwood in the end and possibly resetting the tank, would it make sense to treat it with chemicals in a last ditch attempt to save it?

Thanks for the chemi-clean suggestion, I also read about using "Ultralife Blue Green Slime Stain Remover"
( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QSK31M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) does anyone have any experience with it? I would only try these if all else fails like the redirected flow and manual removal. I have also stopped adding fertilizer.

You might measure the phosphate level to see if it is elevated - also you might poking into the substrate to the bottom of the tank to see if there is gas build up. The only chemical i used was chemi-clean - it was quite effective (i just followed the instruction and added some airstones which are not require without fishes); it did not break the cycle and the fishes that i had in the tank at the time are still alive now (sterbai and kuhli). In my case as i noted it was quite thick and i could peal it off in sheets from the substrate. 2 weeks ago (some 14 or so months since i dealt with the cynao) i replaced the substrate since i was getting a large amount of sulfur gas build up - the substrate was not porus and very fine and quite foul when i removed it - causing various issues with the plant life. It is too soon to say if the problems are resolved in that tank but it has certainly been a lot cleaner since the change (again this was not cyano but other issues due to sulfur gas - not to mention it stank).
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Trumpet snails should help some - i have them in my 40B which has the same fine substrate as the one in the above 29 and so far it has done ok - in the 40B the fine substrate is not so deep and a more porus substrate is on the surface (basically a substrate with larger grain size).

 

[MacZ]

Should I continue dosing nitrogen to keep nitrate levels up? What do you guys think is the best way to keep the tank cycled for the next two months? Thanks for all the help.

I would keep them low, removing the surplus nutrients the cyanobacteria live from.
Impossible to say if you can keep it cycled at this point. Depends on how and if you get the bacteria problem fixed.

 

[FishMonkey]

iirc ramshorn snails eat cyano rapidly, they don't burrow under your sand so they're easy to remove, and you can get very nice colors. I've got blue and pinks ramshorns and I just pick out any bad color offspring.

 

[MacZ]

iirc ramshorn snails eat cyano rapidly, they don't burrow under your sand so they're easy to remove, and you can get very nice colors. I've got blue and pinks ramshorns and I just pick out any bad color offspring.

Ramshorns eat black beard algae which are technically also a (harmless in contrast to the cyanos in this tank) type of cyanobacteria. Also the hint with the trumpets was specifically so the sand gets burrowed in, which is a good idea in this case.

 

[FishMonkey]

They are both great little snails but my experience with MTS is I brought some beautiful jet black ones once and my god do they breed relentlessly, never again lol.

Ramshorns don't breed that rapidly in my water or I get a boom at first then numbers just seem to dwindle down (your experience may vary!). For some reason I find this especially the case for dwarf flat ramshorn (planorbis planorbis) which I try to keep going just for the sake of it even tho they're so small they're pretty useless as cleaners.

 

[MacZ]

They are both great little snails but my experience with MTS is I brought some beautiful jet black ones once and my god do they breed relentlessly, never again lol.

Ramshorns don't breed that rapidly in my water or I get a boom at first then numbers just seem to dwindle down (your experience may vary!). For some reason I find this especially the case for dwarf flat ramshorn (planorbis planorbis) which I try to keep going just for the sake of it even tho they're so small they're pretty useless as cleaners.

I think we are talking about different things. This is about how trumpet snails might help reduce substrate compacting in context of working against cyanobacteria, and not the pros and cons of different snails as cleaners.

 

[Jason Peculiar]

Just a thought but are you perhaps overdosing when adding your ferts etc? I'm wondering if you have miscalculated the volume of water in the tank. I have a 4ft x 2ft x 2ft and it holds around 120g (US). That is with nothing in the tank and the water up to the brim. Obviously my water is a couple of inches below the brim and I average around 3 inches of substrate throughout the tank. Then there is the displacement caused by the addition of rocks, wood and other decor. Just accounting for the water height and the substrate displacement brings the actual volume of water in my tank down to around 95g. I still have to then factor in the displacement caused by the decor too. This brings my tank down to almost 90g actual water volume. This is the number I use when dosing anything into that tank. You may in effect be adding 25% more than you need of everything.

Best of Luck with it

 

[Pete010374]

Hi with the Cyno this product is all natural and works.
Made by Easy Life, all natural - algae-cyano/blue-exit

worth a go

 

[MacZ]

But only as a last resort. Only use the chemical nukes when absolutely nothing else works, including a complete restart.

 

[Jon Webb]

A question: since Cyanobacteria are bacteria, is there an antibiotic that would kill it?

 

[MacZ]

A question: since Cyanobacteria are bacteria, is there an antibiotic that would kill it?

No, and actually it's good there isn't, because that kind of stuff should then not go down the drain with a waterchange.

 

[Jon Webb]

If it’s killed, why not drain it? Anyone else got an antibiotic idea?