worms growing out of the head, help!!!!

[boydvd]

ok this is abit heartbreaking. as i turned the co2 down some of my lovely plants have started to disintegrate

i have limited space so will need my big display tank for breeding and will look at hardier less co2 needy plants. do u think i should turn the gravel heater on or just leave it off? thanks for your advice guys much appreciated.

before i discovered apistogramma i would have said the plants were more important, but i love these little critters and they win hands down over the plants.

 

[Apistomaster]

Thanks Apistomaster,

the thing about trying GBR is they are relatively cheap and available. borellis and trifasciata are very difficult to source in Melbourne, australia, so are not a good choice for me to use.


also do you have comment on the colour of pool sand? do you use the white stuff? i'm wondering if the white sand bothers them and am considering a swith to a darker subtrate like small black river pebbles of 2mm. I find the plants have problems staying rooted in the white sandy substrate i have.

I have equally good results with pure white silica sand or the more natural gray. The fine consistency is desirable for Apistogramma spp because their fry stand out and the adults can sift through it easily.
Gravels can cause some fry or newly hatched larvae to fall in between the grains. With fine sand that is never a problem and the fry find all the live brine shrimp easily.
Most plants will root well in pool filter sand. Perhaps you need to use a temporary weight on some plants until their root systems develop?
I like Sagittaria pusilla because it is only a couple inches high and sends out lots of runners and new plants fairly fast. It is a nice size for Apistogramma to swim through. It is easy to grow and I don't even fertilize it.

 

[ed seeley]

You can keep the Apistos and the plants happy and without lots of stress. The only thing you really need if you're going to inject CO2 is a drop checker filled with pH solution and 4dKH solution (you can buy both of these pretty cheaply). This solution in the drop checker will be a nice light green when the CO2 is at 30ppm CO2. If you want a lower CO2 level then tunring the CO2 down will make it dark green and if it's blue then generally it's too low. Slowly acclimatise the fish to this CO2 level by gradually turning the CO2 bubble rate up until you get a green colour in the drop checker. Bubble rates vary between counters so don't just rely on adding 1 bubble per second or similar.

As to the other measurements I'd ignore them and do some large water changes to reset the water conditions. A few 50% water changes each week generally help hugely in getting the system back in good health IMHO.

 

[Apistomaster]

I sure am glad I don't specialize in aquatic gardening although I do love to see those of others.
I have had too many "worms growing out of the head, snip" to keep the CO2 levels just right.
But I sure do throw a lot of plants out on the yard to thin mine out enough to see the fish I'm breeding.

 

[boydvd]

i've been reading about the co2 ph and KH relationship and an article i read said the ph swings are the same wether you have high or low carbonate hardness.

the only difference it is easier to get a lower pH with low carbonate harness.

and now i've got the CO2 on less than 1 bpm and the reactor connected to the output of my eheim filter. the plants are responding. my mini native australian pennywort seems to be growing well and also the glossistigma. i also got some RO water filter for the breeding tanks. i was advised by the RO guys who keeps discus that the straight RO water can be used in a gravelled tank as it will leach minerals out of the substrate and induce spawning.

 

[dw1305]

pH is directly related buffering

Hi all,
Boydvd, I'm not sure where you read this, but it's wrong, there is a very clear relationship between CO2, pH and carbonate hardness (buffering).

The CO2 goes into solution as "carbonic acid", and then is in equilibrium as:
CO2 + H2O ⇌ H2CO3. The chemistry of this is actually quite complex, but doesn't really need to bother us, what is important is that the pH will be reduced, even though carbonic acid is a weak acid, particularly if there is a continual source of CO2 being added (as it will de-gas, be taken up by plants etc.) .

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid>

The carbonate hardness is a measure of the amount of buffering in the water, this is the capacity to neutralise acids. More carbonate harness means a greater ability to neutralise acids and more stable pH (think of Lake Malawi or Sea Water).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate_hardness>

The reason I suggested turning the CO2 off was because I wanted you to stop feeding the plants, as my suspicion was that the addition of the nutrients was causing many of your problems, the CO2 itself only becomes a problem if it is at high enough levels to stress or even kill the fish.

"High Tech" is based upon unlimited amounts of Light (PAR), macro/micro nutrients and CO2, as these are the factors that limit plant growth - No limitations to resources = the optimal possible plant growth. It also means some basically terrestrial plants can be grown submerged, as the extra light nutrients and CO2 replicates conditions when they are growing emersed.

If you stop adding nutrients, the limiting factor for growth is almost certainly then going to be a macro-nutrient - N, P or K (although Ca, Mg and Fe would also be possibilities), and the CO2 concentration of the water becomes irrelevant.

Many plants will grow well in nutrient poor ("oligotrophic") conditions, as long as they have sufficient light, but they won't grow as fast, or be able to support anything like as much foliage. Most "low light" plants - Ferns, mosses, Anubias etc have low potential growth, it's not the light that is important, they just don't show much response to nutrients.

To floating plants aquatic CO2 is always irrelevant as they have access to the CO2 in the atmosphere.

The problem with just R.O water is that it has no buffering (It's just H+ and OH- ions), so any addition of acid e.g. your CO2 is likely to cause a crash in the pH, which is why we buffer it, (although only a very small amount for "Black water" fish).

Hope that helps, I'd really recommend Diana Walstad's book for this sort of thing "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium".

cheers Darrel

 

[ed seeley]

That's not quite right, in a high-tech planted tank actually light is the limiting factor. Nutrients and Carbon available to the plants should be in slight excess and then the plants, which are far more efficient at utilising the light in the system than algae, can dominate the algae.

Indeed people who up their light, even in supposedly high-tech systems, often have algae issues as they find light is no longer limiting but some nutrient or, most commonly, CO2 are which can trigger an algae outbreak.

If you up the light you need to keep a careful check on CO2 and nutrient or fertiliser levels to make sure they are still slightly in excess rather than limiting.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Ed is technically right about the light, as I stuck a lux meter outside in the sunshine today and it read somewhere about 60,000 lux (it's not really calibrated for very high light levels).

However realistically for most aquatic plants 3 wpg will provide all the light they can use. (with apologies for the units).

cheers Darrel

 

[boydvd]

thanks forall your information guys.. i am trying to get my hands on diane walstads plant book...

my question is, if i want a ph of 6 and i up my kh from current 3, then the co2 levels will go insance according to this calculator : http://atlas.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_co2chart.htm

i am really confused about this. what is a good kh value to have with pH of 6?

also, would you recommend having a pH controller regulate the pH? this one is relatively affordable from ebay http://atlas.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_co2chart.htm

i'm upping my co2 slowly and leavig it on continuously to avoid massive swings. i am bubbling air in the internal cannister filter. i hope the oxygen there will help the filter bacteria.

good news is the panduros pairs look like they are in breeding. they love the RO water i been giving them

 

[ed seeley]

I wouldn't personally use a pH controller as what you want in a planted tank is a stable CO2 level to help reduce algae and a pH controller trades fluctuating CO2 levels for a stable pH. IME the pH can fluctuate pretty wildly due to CO2 and the fish don't mind at all. I turn my CO2 off an hour before lights off at night with a solenoid on a timer (it saves CO2 and prevents me gassing the fish at night) and it comes on an hour before the lights so the level is stable before the lights come on. It works well for my plants and the fish all like it and breed well with it.

In fact I tend to almost ignore pH and just aim for the KH and GH I want and then find the pH looks after itself. I don't like to make life more complicated than it needs to be!