Disaster

[altaaffe]

I’ve been away in Canada for 3 weeks (live in UK) and disaster struck on my 50g planted tank. Something wnet wrong with the CO2 setup a couple of days after I left and a full 2Kg bottle of CO2 was dumped into the water in a matter of hours. My wife informed me that the fish went spiralling all over the place and all 30 CPDs ended up in the top corner near the filter output.

Fortunately, I have several large tanks in the house and she put all the CPDs into the small fish community with the Ottos & Amano Shrimp being placed into a fry tank that was kept ready until she could drive off the excess CO2. Of course with loads of CO2 & no shrimps algae appeared and went off the scale with many of my delicate plants now suffering without CO2 for almost 3 weeks.

Thankfully though, the only casualty was a juvenile Otto which never recovered (and the plants of course).

[celestialdude]

Whew…. good disaster recovery from the wife there. Thankfully the CPDs are all OK!!!

[atlantis_child]

Sucks about the plants and otto. Glad your galaxies are ok.

Now in a shamless thread jack (I didn’t really want to start a new thread)

I just lost half of my due to an Ich infestation in my tank.

All it takes is 1 little neon with a spot on his nose…

And then a month later when it finally clears I’m left with less than half my fish total. :cry:

I lost:

3 pygmy catfish
2 (purchased with the neons) whiteclouds
3 (2 new and iched up neons)
1 otto
2 or 3 juvi dwarf platies
5 galaxies

I have left:
1 whitecloud
1 neon tetra (tough bugger!)
1 juvi dwarf platy
1 otto
1 pygmy catfish
betta
5 galaxies

The strangest thing happened with the ich. My betta in the other tank got ich too, out of the blue. He was the only one to get it. I put him in the tank being treated in a breeder net box, but when he got worse and worse he got the 5 gallon to be treated in.

He was totally covered and not moving, but made it through. Then had a little fin rot ( :roll: ) but is fine now.

Totally awesome little guy.

– Atlantis

[altaaffe]

Well it’s been a few weeks & with things stabilised all fish are back in their rightful homes & the plants have started to recover. The Glossos is slowly coming back after looking dead and I’ve even got signs that the hairgrass is coming back after it looked like it had disappeared.

and I even like looking at the tank when it’s gone dark

[celestialdude]

I see you have some “moon lights” for the night lighting, nice effect!

What’s the name of the plant that you have mostly on the bottom? The one with spiky leaves fanning in a circle?

[altaaffe]

@celestialdude wrote:

What’s the name of the plant that you have mostly on the bottom? The one with spiky leaves fanning in a circle?

It’s Heteranthera Zosterifolia, I’m letting it grow a little wild just now but have started cutting it back to the shape I want. Eventually, I want it to grow in a bank up the left side of the tank and it cut it back a bit closer to the rocks once it has fully regained itself after the CO2 debacle.

[celestialdude]

Thanks for the tip, I’ll look out for this plant to add to my tank.

Oh another question if you don’t mind — for your lighting — how many Watts per Gallon is your tank?

[altaaffe]

It’s a 180litre tank with 156W of lighting, with water displacement, etc it probably works out around the 1W per litre mark.

4 x 39W T5 tubes at 10000K

[celestialdude]

Thanks! That works out to about 3.3 Watts per Gallon. About the same as my 45-gallon (that’s pretty much 180 litres)… but your plants look way healthier! What’s your secret to such nice plants?

[altaaffe]

The substrate has 2 levels, the bottom layer is a specialist plant substrate (I’ve used Tetraplant complete) with fine gravel on top. CO2 is injected at at around 1 bubble per second & I feed the plants Tropica liquid food 10ml 3 times a week.

Lights & CO2 are on for 10 hours a day

The plants were allowed to grow unchecked at the beginning & once things were stable in the tank added shrimp (Caridinia Japonica) to keep on top of any algae issues once the fish were added. Then afetr a few days with the shrimp, the fish were added. PH fluctuates through the day as the CO2 level rises (turned off at night via a soleniod)from 7 down to 6.5, Ammonia stays at 0, NO2 & NO3 are at 0.

I carry out a 25% water change every week and have to trim the plants every couple of days now.

Other than that I can’t really think of anything else, except, that there were a lot of plants to plant in the beginning to keep algae under control.

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