How's my tank?

Spikor

[insert witty title here]
Feb 15, 2005
125
0
0
Los Angeles, CA
So, anyone care to give pointers/advice/criticsm on my tank?

It's a 29 Gallon tank with 65 Watts of PC light (2.3~ WpG)
It's fairly heavily planted.
I have Flora Base as a substrate.
I have the Hagen CO2 yeast system
2 pieces of driftwood for the fishes to hide in :)
see my signature for fish stocking
water specs:

PH 6.4
Ammonia 0 ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm
Nitrate 10 ppm (is this too low?)
KH 4dKH
GH 10dGH

that puts the CO2 ppm @ 48! but if i bring the PH up to 6.7 it'd be 24ppm
is 48 way too high? None of the fish seem to be gasping or going to the surface for air.

anything else i should be keeping track of with this tank? thanks!
 
Sharks get pretty big though and with gouramis you need at least 2
 
CO2 is a bit on the high side. I wouldn't panic yet unless your fish are acting eratic. Since it's the Hagen system you have no real control over the output so I'd suggest adding some surface turbulence to get CO2 to ~30ppm.

I'd add another gourami if you can get a male/female pair otherwise they may get aggressive to each other.
 
Yeah, I wouldn't stress, I've been up that high with DIY and no adverse effect, unless you include lots of pruning. OTOH, your yeast batch will die off that much sooner with the higher output. Be ready to mix up a new batch within a week, probably less. I wouldn't want to maintain that level for too long, but recall that the pH-KH-CO2 relationship gives you an upper estimate, only truly accurate if all your KH is from carbonate species. But then, CO2 is fairly insensitive to KH anyway. Try entering a KH of 10ppm lower and see what it reads, that's what I do and figure that my pH is somewhere in that range. I also do a +/- 0.1 on pH, but that's just because I'm usually around 6.7 (I guess) and it's nigh impossible to tell between 6.6 and 6.8 on the test kit.
 
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