Help Please - Peat "emergency"

You guys are THE BEST! :dance

Thanks to all who replied. I will definitely take to heart all of the info and will be testing my water (as mentioned in this thread) over the next few days to get this all figured out. Right now all fish are fine and happy, despite my panic. :o

OG - wow - Khulis breeding! I hear that it is hard to get them to breed in captivity. We have 5 (dh loves them - his only request as I stocked the tanks). I only regularly see 2, unless I sneak out at dark and try to get a peek. It drives me crazy wondering where they hide out all of the time. I hope they are OK.

Thanks again!
 
Glassyfish--Mine are fairly active. I have lots of wood and rock piles for them to hide and play in, so they are very comfortable coming out. They are supposedly very tough to breed, but mine have done so 3-4 times a year for the past 2 years. I've never seen the eggs, but find many tiny wrigglers when moving stuff around, so know they are up to something. The more hiding places you have, the more active they will be. If they don't have lots of hiding places, they tend to dig into the substrate, and can uproot plants. Don't add any snails--they slurp snails down, even the large apple snails will be toast.
 
oooh! More great information! Thanks.

OK, I am going to hijack my own thread...

Khulis -- I did not know that they eat snails! Good thing, because we have some. :rolleyes: I didn't plan this, they must have been stowaways on a plant or something (the snail eggs?). The snails are multiplying, but not to an alarming level. I see a handful easily when looking in the tank, but not an overwhelming number.

Hiding places -- gee, they should feel comfortable :( my tank is densely planted (with a few plastic ones too, from the early days when I was getting the real plants in there). Also have driftwood, rock, and a glass block (decorative, does not have any glue or cement on it).

We have only had them for ... hmmm a month now. So maybe in time. Two are regularly "out" hanging in the plants during the day, in the back of the tank, but the others... don't know.

Funny, I was most worried about the Khulis with the initial question of this post - ph! Seems that they are the ones that like it lowest. I better get to reading up on my fish (again).
 
I find that my kuhli's prefer being under stuff. They will hang out in plants, but like a little cave under some driftwood best. They are tough fish--that oldest one of mine went AWOL for months--I tore the tank down, and found him, fat and happy, under the undergravel filter. I don't keep them in with UGF anymore, but this guy clearly thought it was an okay place to live. They didn't eat snails until they were about one year old, but they are certainly good at it now. I removed them from my puffer tank because they were outcompeting the puffers for the snails.

You will want to be careful when vaccuming the gravel--tehir tendency to bury themselves can be a rpoblem. I usually start vaccuming in a corner I know they don't hide in, and work my way slowly around--they've learned to get out of the gravel pretty quickly.

If you start seeing too many snails, reduce your feeding a bit. Snail numbers are directly related to the amount of available food.
 
hmmm - no "cave like" items in my tank to hide in. Yah - another excuse to shop for fish stuff! :D

I do have UGF in my tanks...!

<raises hand> yes, probably guilty of overfeeding now and then. Only feed small amount once a day and try to fast 1 day a week. Looks like the snails are helping with algae, I hope. The two niger otos are busy all of the time!

Thanks again.
 
Can you look at the bottom of your tank? If you can, take a flashlight and look up from the bottom--you might see the kuhli's under there.
 
Their comment about the pH changing after coming out of the pipes is true--but i was under the impression that this primarily was true for those on city water, rather than wells.
Click to expand...

OG, I have a thought on this and maybe one of the experts can clarify more. a while back I was reading one of the plant posts where Tom Barr ( fairly credible source IMO :D) mentioned natural rivers and water bodies as having high co2 levels. It was questioned how this could be and he explained that water fed through underground means, could not equilibriate, and that (paraphrasing here) there were natural sources that drove up the co2 content in a lot of underground water. I would think that this may have some effect on well water also, depending on source of water, depth of aquifer etc type of well etc. I'll try to find the thread in case anyone is interested. It might beworth some testing or an additional post as well.
 
ph testing update...

(reference: please see my previous post in this thread re: tap ph vs tap sitting in open air ph)

I tested my tap water ph -- first out of the tap = 6.6
tap water sitting in open container for 11 hours = 8.0

So that explains what is going on with my tanks!

Thankfully, my tanks are stable at 7.0 (46-gal) and 7.2 (10-gal). I pulled half of the peat yesterday and the rest today at noon. It is now 6pm, and I just retested - ph has held at these levels for 30-36 hours.

Now to get rid of the brown water! :-p Any ideas on that? I thought putting the carbon filters back in would take out the tannins, but... no. :(
 
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