75 gallon Planted Office Tank Journal

Hey Geek, things are looking really great. Keep up the good work.

Where'd you get your info about GH? That's something that I need to read into a bit more as I'm not currently monitoring it and I'm sure I need to be.

Thanks!

This link here.

Under 60-80 gallon he says "+/- 1 tsp once a week (water change only)".

And in more detail Tom says:

I generally suggest adding GH booster to raise the GH about 1-2 degrees from what ever it might be in the tap.

That covers both Ca and Mg, some tap has low Ca and high Mg, but generally most has high Ca and lower Mg.

Adding more Mg and Ca causes no issues near as I could ever tell.

I was doing 1 Tablespoon each week for about a month. My water is very soft, so no big deal. But I just dont think it was necessary.

The Test kit I use for GH is Nutrafin, and as far as I can tell, it's very good. Hope this helps.
 
Well folks,

Came in to work today and the power was off on the tank. We had some electrical storms and looks like my GFCI freaked out and did not come back on. So I had no filters, heaters, power head, etc. Tank was down about 6 degree F, not too much. It's been hot here. Water looked nasty. Figures, as soon as I started to make progress, 10 steps back.

Everything esle seemed fine, just need to play catchup on filtration. Maybe do an extra water change. Meh.
 
I hope it comes back quickly for you.
 
With my dead snails and dead otos, the tank is getting worse again, not better.

I am going to pull out 100% of the plants tomorrow and do a dip using either beach or excel. The tanks looks NASTY and the plants are absolutely covered in algae. :footinmouth: I cannot fathom why I am having such a hard time. I cant even decided what type of algae I have, and I know I have said this before, but it's true. Looks like beard algae on some plants, and fuzz alage on others, and staghorn, etc. But I really think it is mostly the same type, I just dont know which.

There is only one plant in the tank without ANY algae, it's very odd. It's totally immune to algae in my tank. It's the Dwarf Aquarium Lily. ????

When the plants are out for the dip, I am going to gravel vac like crazy. I am also going to break down and clean both filters I think, but not replace the bio media. I think the return tubes, which are loaded with algae, may be seeding the tank over and over again.

If I have to, I will toss the whole lot of plants and do a hardscape, which will be sad.

All bad news, sorry guys. At least I will have so pics tomorrow from my attack on the algae. It's war!
 
I gassed my fish. I have a drop checker and have been pretty much perfect with my co2 concentrations up until now. I thought I would increase co2 very slightly yesturday, and when I went into office today to check, I was bright yellow and the fish were all gasping for air at the top of water. 1 dead fish only. The needle valve adjustment I have it horrible. I have marked positions on it, and sometimes the same position will be too much co2, too little, or just right. I dont know if dirt inside causes the problems, but I made the most slight increase and it ended up being way way way too much co2. :mad2:

So, I did a 20% water change, and aimed my powerhead to cause surface water agitation. This willl cause the pH to drop, but had I not done this, 100% of the fish would probably been dead in the morning. lesson learned. I have read many times not to adjust co2, and then not stick around to see the results. I guess I learn best by making my own mistakes.

In other news, I on friday I tossed about 25% of my plants. Tank looks much brighter, but I did not end up doing a bleach dip on the plants, so there is still algae in the tank. I am hoping that having left the plants out of water for an hour or so while I basically tore the whole tank down, will cause the algae on the remaining plants to die off a bit.

I took photos of the massive water change I did, which included cleaning one of the filters after swirling all the eco-complete up and then running both filters for 1/2 without any plants in the tank. This took an amazing amount of mulm and crud out of the tank. I only added this filter a month ago, you will not believe the black oil I found when I opened the eheim up.

Pictures later. I just wanted to post about the gassing of the fish. Dont let this happen to you.

Tank does look better, but there is no way to tell if the tank will just get nasty again, or start to get better.
 
I would replace the needle valve that came with your reg to a better one.
 
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