Pumping Iron

I made my way to Fintique today in seach of the elusive iron test. They didn't have an Aquarium Pharmaceuticals tester, but they did have one under the Red Sea brand. It was odd in that there was a liquid and powder component to the test. This isn't really to my liking, but it's certainly better than nothing. So I mixed everything into the over-sized test tube and after 10 minutes found to my mild surprise that I had very low iron (definitely less than 0.1 ppm, approaching zero). So that's one thing I'll have to be taking care of -- bumping up the iron dosing.

I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, then, that the nitrates are still fairly high (at least 40 ppm) if there's not enough iron to utilize them. I still can't make heads or tails of it dropping below 5 ppm a week or so ago, though.

While I was at Fintique, I also got three mystery snails -- one for each of my aquatic habitats. The two gold and one blackish-purplish snails seem to be taking to their surroundings pretty well and moving around quite a bit. Apparently they don't sell apple snails anymore because it's illegal, but that's great for me, since they devour plants (probably why they're not sold anymore, due to their potential to disrupt habitats). They're more fun to watch then you'd think, and I'm really excited to see how they do.

Finally, I think the new CO2 batch is finally kicking into full gear, because the pH is now 7.4 when measured early in the day or at night. That bodes well for the amount of dissolved CO2 available for plants, so let's hope they make good use of it.