seems to be the big topic. just wanted to say that since i added the three bigger discus the ph level in my tank has gone up, have kept my feeding the same as before, and changed my filter media, the problem i think is with a plant having rotting roots some where, i really don't want to have to pull all of my plants out and check the roots for signs of rot, i regularly clip any leaves that show any signs of rot. i try to take meticulous care of all of the plants, i did a ten % water change with r/o water and am going to do another 10% in the morning with r/o water hopefully this will bring it down, have yet to ask my partner if he's been feeding the fish while i am at work checked my params ammo 0, nitrites 0, a bit of a jump in nitrates, from 5ppm to 15ppm. a ten point jump is something that prompted me to check my ph again, ph currently at around 7.0, bought some ph down and am adding that to the tank a little bit at a time so that i can gradually bring the ph down to the 6.5 i was previously at. i think i may go through the tank with a kabob stick and see if it easily pushes into the root system right near where the leaves grow out of the substrate. any suggestions or ideas would be great.
Thanks in advance.
Brandon
Brandon i haven't done research on this... but when i was having rot issues with my wood it made the water much more acidic, not alkaline... do you think it could still be the rotting leaves or another factor?
am almost wondering if it is the little piece of bog wood i have in there, the big piece of wood has been cured for quite some time and kept in a planted discus tank before i took it. so i don't think it's the big piece, also am not sure if the wood would cause the nitrates to go raise in just about a weeks time... thanks for the advice though, i will take out the little piece of bog wood and see if that is what's causing the problem as far as ph, nitrates being high almost lends me to think that my partner has been feeding while i am away... if this is the case it could also be the problem with the ph. as any rotting food can cause nitrates to go up and the ph to raise, although i would think that my ammo and nitrite levels would raise as well. that's i guess why i am confused. lol rot usually causes a rise in everything. just bought a new super high quality test kit. was special ordered for me from the lfs. so i know the test kit isn't off.
thank you for the speedy response.
Brandon
Yeah my wood has always lowered my ph... so don't take the wood out just yet, test the other factors first, cuz the wood is a pain to reintroduce, with you having to water log and cure and such. Oh, by the way, i just emailed you something
hey just replied to the email, thank you very much for that. am going to cut the food way back for a couple of days and do small water changes with r/o water, i think 5 gal a day for the next three days will be enough to do it.
Thanks again,
Brandon
I sometimes go on www.plantgeek.com When I have questions about co2 boosted tanks. I wonder if the plants are missing some key ingredient? Co2 boosted tanks cause the plants to use up nutrients much faster than tanks with out co2. Maybe some of the plants are dying because there is a certain missing nutrient. These plantgeek people are always tweaking all the different nutrients in their tanks. It could be that, other than the high temp you use for the diskus, you may need to add something to the tank.
Also, I've heard that there is a product called R/O Right, which should add the trace elements R/O water is devoid of.
Haven't you been manipulating the CO2 in your tank the last couple of days since you introduced the new discus? I wonder if this is the problem as CO2 concentration can have a huge impact on pH. Decreased CO2 concentration would cause your pH to raise.
Also, like Spongebob said, the wood would lower your pH, not raise it so you can keep it in there. It is probably helping you.
Are you able to really vacuum the substrate with all the plants you have? I have never had a really, really heavily planted tank so I'm not sure how hard it is. It could be that there are areas you are not hitting and you have some buildups of waste.
I wouldn't use that pH down stuff. It is not a real solution and will only work for a very limited time. A better solution would be your r/o decision or filtering over peat moss. Both of these would be more natural methods. You could also try and increase the CO2 concentration in your tank.
Oh, and plantgeeks i an excellent site for planted aquariums like Peter said. I used to go there alot when I had plants in my tank.
ok after some mass investigation of my tank i found what i believe to be the culprit, there is this unnamed bunch of plants that i believe is related to the cobamba family of plants, i am using it as background in the tank, however due to the step down to the front of the tank i found that i couldn't see the bottom six inches of this, well i pull my mother swords out and was able to look across the back of the tank, this plant or atleast the bottom six inches of it was brown and dead and rotting in the tank, about fifteen inches total i had to cut from the plant and discard due to it being dead, what a pain, the top of the plant and what i can see looked healthy as all get out, just a pointer to those keeping live plants, keep all your plants where you can see the whole thing this will allow you to in advance see any issues and act immediately with out having to go through the painstaking processes that i have had to go through, keep searching when you have an issue it sometimes is not always right in front of your face, it may be hiding behind a leaf somewhere. thank you all for your help and caring, my tank is now settled back in at 6.6 and maintaining steady, lots of r/o mixtures and water changes has allowed me to bring the ph down quite considerably over the last 32 hours, thankfully all of my fish have survived this ordeal and now are starting to act normal and happy again.
Brandon
learn from your mistakes, and learn from others as this will make your life much easier in the end
very good to hear Brandon, and definitely didn't know that plant rot could raise ph... i will note this for when i make a planted tank... i figured plants were like wood, guess not. Glad things are settling for you, especially so you can enjoy the tank over the weekend. Keep us updated, so we confirm that this was the issue.
lol my tank looks a bit bare again, out of worry i took out anything that didn't look like it was growing right if i could tug it and it pulled up with ease it came out and is now in a quarantine tank with my older metal halide bulbs ultra dose of heavy liquid ferts i try to do things 100 % natural but sometimes things need a boost. so i have separated about 25 of the larger plants, also another note for planted tank owners and future planted tank enthusiasts when buying potted plants, remove the plant from the pot as carefully as possible and peel away the foam that is in the pot, as much as you can. i am finding that all my potted plants were struggling with root growth as the pots inhibit the roots from being able to spread naturally, also when you get larger root balls, the roots start to strangle each other out and the roots will die off very fast. this is a major issue as rot causes waste and waste causes ph spikes
please head this and take this into consideration when purchasing plants. also consider your water current, you need to have enough current around the base of your plants to move water and waste freely. because i have two diff co2 water pumps aiming through the base of the jungle that i have, it keeps stuff from building up at the bases and causing food and other (poop) to get caught up and causing those unseen issues. even after almost completely rearranging my tank the clarity of my water is phenomenal, you would think that it would turn gray or white in coloration however there are not many particles to be found. once i removed the culprit plant everything else seemed to be better than normal.
hahahahaha even when you are doing everything right if something can go wrong it will, don't get discouraged, just make sure you act appropriately and not too rashly. take time to sit back and consider all options carefully and move forward from there. many lessons to be learned here with this experiment in playing (god) not being god but if you think about we are all striving to recreate what (god is suppose to have created in the world) if ou believe or don't it's the cold fact, that for our enjoyment and curiosity we are trying to create what is already existing in nature. in doing so we have to consider all things and if we are to do this in a perfect sane and natural way we must consider what nature is comprised of.
Just a few rambling thoughts that i had today while pondering the issue at hand. (also after work over a few vodka cranberries) woooooops have to work at 8 in the am LMFAO
hope all can take something away from this.
Brandon
Will update regularly over the next few days regarding the stability of the tank.
just an update, the tank is stabilized and running at a cool 6.6 ph steady for the last 48 hrs or so and my fish are starting to come back around to normal all discus are now feeding ferociously as i stopped the feeding during the water treatment phase of this operation, seems to me that everything is coming back to normal and my plants haven't suffered much either, no fish loss to report at this time water quality is near perfect nitrates are back down to around .5 ppm, which is where i like to keep them. *wipes days of sweat from forehead* lol all is normal and back to enjoyable for the time being have to get a bit of stress coat though just want to be way on the safe side of things and make sure the slime coats of the fish weren't harmed during the ph spike. this will help them to recover even faster. if anyone thinks this is a bad idea let me know.
Brandon
Glad you figured out the problem and it wasn't a big deal. This reminds me of when as a kid I went out with my dad and thinned trees. We'd remove some of the spindlier trees so the ones we left got more light and would bush out more, and we cut them up and stack it in the wood shed.
I just bought some dwarf hair grass and I'm going to grow a field of that next to a field of microsword. I'm making the "stream bed" idea I've been talking about so when it grows in a bit I'll show you what I'm talking about.
I gave most of the 100 mosquito fish to my stepfather for mosquito control in his coy pond and I'll remove all 35 of the now almost 2 inch long tilapia babies and feed them to the gars I guess.
Then I want to add about 30-40 Cardinal Tetras and this tank should be ready for the camera.
pk it's the same principal however in a planted tank more difficult to see, the plant that i found to be the issue was growing an average a foot every two days. this was no indication that the bottom of the plant was dieing, so be careful what you buy, my tank now is a be more sparse however when it fills in again it will be back to what it was and even better. have figured out a topiary type setup that should work, it's similar to what i have used in many landscaping projects tall broad leaf plants in the back, under them low light broad leaf plants and up front and in the middle plants that fill in as ground cover with diff types of leaf shapes and sizes, so if my calculations are correct in a months time i should be back to a completely full and stable setup with the plants being thinned out every two weeks or so, i have setup as i have already posted a secondary quarantine tank for plants with high powered smh lighting and heavy ferts incase i have a plant die i can replace it, along with using this tank as a propagation tank for new plants, it's a bit crowded but running a 55 gal with duel cascade 1200 series filters over pete moss and heavy ferts and r/o water should prove to be beneficial to the plants i have quarantined along with several i have ordered, soon i will have a whole room dedicated to breeding plants and will use these in my new tank setups that i do for old and new clients. which will reduce my overhead by roughly 45% so more money in my pocket. have co2/o2 pumps on timers alternating for day/night times so that the conversion of co2 to o2 during the day is maximized along with conversion of o2-co2 at night is right on, if all goes well, a prospective client that i have semi lined up, once seeing the quality of my home grown plants will decide to go with me instead of the several competitors in the area, if this happens i am looking at nice added 9k to my income this year.......... WOOOT lets hope all works out well. lawyers pay top $ for top services lets hope......
Brandon.
pk if you have any questions or ideas feel free to email me i will send you my main email addy so that we can deff keep in contact in case i don't have time to check the site
Got it Brandon. I Had a little cash and I haggled the sales guy to lower the price on 16 Cardinal Tetras to 25 bucks with a quick off register transaction!. That made them about $1.60 each! One got munched by a shrimp, but it was still a good investment. I think I saved your e-mail in my inbox. Will write it down though.
