Just like that the nitrate jumped back up. It seems to be having a positive effect on the plants, as I am seeing a lot near growth and existing foliage is looking healthier. Here is a gallery of all of the plants in the tank: No water change this week …
Surprised to see the nitrate drop this low after the last water change. Added 1 pump of APT-1 after testing. Continuing to marinate new filter.
Did a 2 gallon water change after testing. In the photo you can see a new smaller sponge filter I am running. After it runs for a few weeks I will put it in the left corner and remove the larger filter. The larger filter has always been an eyesore …
I'm seeing the nitrate rise, I suppose due to the new fertilizer. The Pennywort which took over the tank originally and then died back, has been returning, I assume this is due to the nutrient changes APT-1 has created.
Added 1 pump of APT-1 after testing. Not seeing any real changes yet.
I have decided to move away from Easy Green Fertilizer in this tank and switch to APT-1. It has lower nitrate levels and some vitamins/minerals that I suspect the plants are lacking. I started this change by putting 1 pump of APT-1 into the tank.
I removed my friends sponge on August 26th and did a two gallon water change so that I could give him some of the water. After testing I did a 1.5 gallon water change as the nitrate was getting high. I did a nitrate test after and it went …
Had a really busy month and neglected the tank a bit. The shrimp and fish seem to be doing well. Algae is a little high. I added two pumps of easy green and two roots tabs under the Monte Carlo. The Monte Carlo hasn't been doing well basically since I …
Added 2 pumps of easy green after testing. Not much to report, everything is going well. Increasing my fertilizer usage hasn't had any negative effects yet. Seeing a slight uptick in Nitrate so maybe the fertilizer is outpacing the tank at this point, we'll see.
Added 2 pumps of easy green after testing. Rotala has started growing back and is looking nice. The spider plant on the surface also seems to have finally really taken to the tank, especially after moving it to the side. It's been pretty hot here and I have struggled to …
Added 1 pump of easy green after testing. Been a while since I have posted an update. I added a net for the pathos to climb. I have let the tank get quite dirty. In the last few weeks I decided to weigh down the rotala stems on the left …
I was surprised to see TDS jump by almost 50 points in the last 7 days. The weather was a little strange this week and my house may have been drier than usual. It was very windy and dry out, leading to more water evaporating and more tap water top …
I did a 20% water change a few days ago. This lead to GH drop of 1 degree, KH drop of 1 degree and a TDS drop of 27 between today and my last test . I try to change the water a little bit when GH reaches 9 or TDS …
Didn't test the tank for a few weeks and I'm happy to see the parameters have been stable. GH/hardness are creeping up as usual, but I will save a water change for next time. Added 1 pump of easy green after testing. I have been letting the Rotala go …
Added one pump of easy green after testing. Love watching the progress of the pathos climbing up the wood.
Added one pump of easy green after testing. Forgot to take a picture.
Added 1 pump of easy green after testing. I don't like the nitrate being near zero and would prefer it to be in the 5 to 10 range. The new plant seems to be doing well and the pathos is really thriving. I'm not sure why I fed the tank …
Cruising thru the winter and things are looking good. Seeing lots of shrimp activity and plant growth. Going to continue letting things grow. Parameters all seem stable which is very nice. Interesting to see that nitrates have dropped to zero. In December, I bought the plant photographed above for my …
Added 1 pump of easy green after testing. Have seen a bunch of baby shrimps running around recently.
Have been really slacking on testing the tank recently. Then I do the test and everything is fine, I'll probably fall back to a monthly cadence on testing unless there is something obviously strange happening. TDS/GH is a little high, so I did a 2 gallon water change. A …
Had a very busy Christmas season and did not properly test or document the tank for the entire month of December! Things are going great tho, I'm basically letting everything grow out at the moment.
Loving the Pothos growth I am seeing. I am seeing the GH rise quicker. I have forced air heating and now that it's winter time, the air in my house gets much drier and the tank water evaporates quicker. As such I am topping off a lot more and seeing …
I haven't talked about the Weeping Moss I added to the tank on August 27th for a while. The moss was in a bad position sunlight wise and has mostly died off, this isn't very surprising. I removed the metal ring on one tuft of moss, probably 90% of it …
Everything looking good. It's nice to see the nitrate level not immediately rising this week. Still haven't seen any planaria. It's been over a month since I dosed no-planaria, and I think I can officially consider the planaria eradicated. With the planaria seemingly gone, I'm hoping to see the shrimp …
Everything looking good in the tank this week, forgot to take a picture. I mentioned last week that I wasn't sure how well the shrimp population is doing. It can be difficult to count the shrimp because they are so good at hiding. I added an "estimated shrimp count" to …
Did a ~2 gallon water change after testing. I was surprised to see the Nitrate get so high, especially with how rapidly the pathos is growing. I still haven't seen any planaria and I haven't seen any dead shrimp in weeks, possibly months. Weirdly, I'm not seeing the diversity of …
Things are looking good, I still haven't seen any planaria since the final dose. A while back, I recorded on this very blog that the lights were on a schedule of 8 hours a day. I am still experiencing symptoms of too much light and went to change that this …
No-planaria did not appear to cause any issues. I haven't seen any since the final dose. The snails are quickly repopulating, which makes me worried that the planaria are doing the same thing. Time will tell. Added these lego parrots above the tank which I think are looking pretty sweet …
Parameters still looking good. I thought I could get away with only doing one dose of no-planaria, but I am still seeing some moving around in the tank. Today I added a 1/3 spoon (using the included spoon).
While the shrimp danced quite a bit after the first dose yesterday, everything seems to be going well. I have definitely witnessed a die off of snails and some dead planaria. Their corpses have not caused an ammonia spike so far, and honestly I don't really expect that to happen …
Today's the day, I am finally going to start a No-Planaria regimen. I started by adding 3/4 of a spoonful (using the included spoon) to the tank. While I didn't notice anything immediately, later in the evening I observed the shrimp acting quite strange. While it is not unusual …
As noted on August 25th , quite a few shrimp babies were born. While I didn't see a ton of them, I did see them and there are many places to hide. At roughly the same time, babies were born in my red shrimp tank, since then, I have seen the …
I was so busy this weekend I didn't have time to test the tank or even take a picture of it. I did do a two gallon water change after testing, since it had been a while.
It has now been a week since adding the new filter and I have seen no issues with the parameters. So it looks like we had a successful filter switch. Not much to report on the fish or shrimps. I am loving how this pothos is growing out tho. I …
I finished making updates to the tank. The new filter has been in there for about 24 hours and there are no signs of a crash so far. In fact, everyone appears to be doing great. I will probably test every other day out of an abundance of caution. One …
Let the chaos begin. The test results posted above are after I moved a bunch of sand around and switched out the filter. One thing I was worried about was that disrupting the sand ~could~ release ammonia and other trapped gases into the water. This is something I have read …
It's been a couple weeks since I noticed the number of berried shrimp go down. I have been waiting to see some babies before I change the filter as I didn't want to cause any egg drops with the chaos of moving things around in the tank. I finally saw …
Did not do my usual tests this week. I plan on setting up the new filter and making a few other tank changes later in the week, so I will be testing then.
It's strange to me that the GH / KH are dropping, not really sure what the deal with that is. Will keep an eye on it, want the GH to be slightly higher. I switched out my old 3D printed dividers with a new design. The new design is diagonal across …
Had an excess of cucumbers from my garden, so I finally tried out putting blanched cucumbers into the tank this week. Unlike the Shrimp Lollis, the fish are completely uninterested in them, leaving them for the shrimp (and snails) to enjoy. Which they seem to be, in fact, I think …
Did a 2 gallon water change after testing, just to bring the nitrate down a little bit. There are at least 7 berried shrimp in the tank right now. They all seem to be doing well. My battle against Planaria continues. I have purchased both "No Planaria" and glass traps …
While nitrate levels have begun rising since I began my increased feeding experiment, they hadn't reached critical levels until this week. With the nitrate in the 20-40 range we are reaching a shrimp danger zone, which I especially don't want because there are at least 4 berried shrimp in the …
Did a 1 gallon water change after testing. I still haven't been concerned about any parameter changes related to increased feeding. I decided to do a small water change just in case, as I will be away from home for a few days this week and not as actively monitoring …
The increase in feeding seems to be working better than when compared to the period of time I did it around May 12. I will stick with it and lower feeding if Nitrates get too high or algae breaks out.
I doubled the amount I feed the fish this week without negative results. I will continue this or increase it more over the next week. I also finally calibrated an electronic Ph detector I bought a while ago, so that is the second Ph value I will be providing in …
Saw a lot of little shrimp molts this week, so it seems like every one is doing good. For the time being, it seems like GH/KH is dialed in. I will probably change a gallon of water any time either gets above 6dips from here on out. I have …
Did a 1 gallon water change after testing. I earlier reported that I spotted a dead juvenile shrimp. Since then... I am not so sure. I have since discovered numerous molts with yellow coloration. Upon further inspection, I realized these were not dead shrimp, just that the yellow coloring had …