Lest I Forget...

I suppose I'm posting more often because CO2 speeds everything up -- the good, the bad, the blogging. This time, however, I want to note a fancy I had while I was checking out my little 5 gallon this evening.

Noticing the java moss has done so well and the foxtail has its moments, I thought it was a great opportunity to formally have an El Natural tank. I may yet buy Diana Walstad's book, "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium: A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise for the Home Aquarist", but for now, this website gives a very good summary.

Ok, so I have something to say about the planted tank. This "little" BGA outbreak does not seem to want to go away, and since I'm out of town this weekend, I'm going to go ahead and black it out for the next three days and try to nip it in the bud.

Reading something like this helps me feel better about algae in my aquarium.

Nutrient Juggling Act

Well, it's not as if I'd given the added calcium a whole lot of time to take effect, but some of the plants grow so fast (rotala indica, I'm looking in your direction) that I would have thought I'd seen some improvement today.

Because the Plantex has fewer nutrients than the Flourish micronutrient supplement, I added a dose of that to the aquarium while there were still a few hours of light, in hopes that would help, although I remained skeptical.

Further research into excess nutrients or nutrient toxicity indicates that it can present similar symptoms as nutrient deficiency. I was fairly certain though, that after my water change last night, that would have helped correct such a problem (for instance, phosphates were down near a more reasonable 2 ppm level). I hadn't checked iron (and in turn, the other micronutrients that are dosed at the same time) in a while, thinking I had overdosed with that, too. Granted the iron test is about the least reliable of the test kits, but I figured it would at least show up really pink and indicate I had too much. Lo and behold, it was devoid of any color. No iron (and maybe no boron, leading to the calcium deficiency syptoms)!

I guess I shouldn't have given up on dosing it this morning so prematurely! I need to start over-reacting to everything and just stay the course. If I kept up with EI, I probably would have seen improved growth this afternoon (and not ripped up a bunch of under-performing rotala). So back to EI tomorrow (probably micros and potassium), and hopefully better new growth (and less algae). In addition to the green spot algae, I'm seeing hints of BGA here and there despite my high nitrate load. Go figure.

Reactor Assembly

Here is the unassembled, exploded view of the reactor on the left, as well as the assembled reactor to the right. Now, to be fair, that assembled reactor is not truly assembled, as evidenced by the lack of purple dye all over the joints. I had to prime and seal the joints with some of the most caustic, eye-burning liquids I've ever dealt with.

The purple primer was quite volatile and very runny, so it tended to run all over the pipe and leave permanent stains. Fortunately, the glue was a little goopier and easier to apply.

I didn't seal what I didn't have to. That is, I tried to have as many of the parts be threaded as possible, just needing some teflon pipe tape. That includes the bottom cap, the gray hose nipples, and the CO2 input shown below with a hole drilled into it.

I plugged up that hole with a hose connector and some aquarium sealant. Additionally, I put a small piece of silicone tube on the inside so that the bubbles would get inserted in the center of the flow stream.

After assembly, it was just a matter of hooking it up to the Rio 600 with some 1" tubing, and I let it rip.

Back on my Feet

I picked up 6 golden kuhli loaches (Pangio doriae) from Fintique, but they seemed to have a hard time finding a place to hide. I thought, since they had such an easy time squirming into the gravel at the store, they would burrow comfortably into my substrate. For whatever reason they either couldn't or wouldn't do it, and eventually four of them ducked under a plant I need to pull up in the front, left of the tank. I would have thought they would have liked the rotala indica like the previous kuhli loaches, but I'm getting the impression that they need something on top of them, too. I might need to get them something they can wedge under.

I saw some zodiac loaches there as well that I held out on because they said they'd get up to six inches, but this website says they max out at 2.5", so I might consider those over cory cats (though I might find success with them without a gourami in the picture).

I saw some pretty sad looking new growth on the green foreground plants I have (white, twisted), so I figured there was some sort of micro-nutrient problem. I found this pretty neat page on The Krib that lists common nutrient deficiencies and their symptoms. The initial list is helpful, but a response further down on the page gives much more thorough symptoms that helped me conclude it was likely a calcium deficiency.

A boron deficiency displays similar symptoms, but this deficiency is less likely, since I believe Greg Watson provides Plantex CSM+B, where the B stands for boron. I found the ingredient list for Plantex CSM

• Copper (Cu) - 0.1% - 0.038 ppm (concentration at 0.5 oz/100 gal)
• Iron (Fe) - 7.0% - 2.6 ppm
• Magnesium (Mg) - 1.5% - 0.56 ppm
• Manganese (Mn) - 2.0% - 0.75 ppm
• Molybdenum (Mo) - 0.06% - 0.038 ppm
• Zinc (Zn) - 0.4% - 0.15 ppm

It does not appear that calcium is included, so I might have to start supplementing it, since apparently there is not enough in the tap water.

I was at a loss for a remedy until I remembered the feeding blocks I sometimes drop in when I leave town for a few days. They are mostly chalk, and therefore have quite a bit of calcium in them, so I broke of a little piece and dropped it in. Of course, the shrimp swarmed it, and after they had had their fill, I took what was left and dropped it in the filter so that it would dissolve faster and be distributed better. Now I need to see if that works, and then consider buying yet another bag of fertilizer from Greg Watson, this time of calcium carbonate.

Refill

Well, it's officially time for a CO2 refill. The tank is definitely falling away from 950-1000 psi, so that probably means the liquid CO2 has been consumed. Because I'm literally running on fumes at this point, the working pressure has rised to 50-60 psi with no adjustment to the coarse valve. So I've been closing up the needle valve not only to keep the bubble count from getting too high, but to bring it down due to all the trimming I've been doing.

Oh, you're wondering what running on fumes has to do with a higher working pressure? I did too. This diagram from Docsmachine.com helps to understand what's going on. Normally, the CO2 tank has a constant pressure as the liquid evaporates to whatever the vapor-pressure-related equilibrium is (in the 950-1000 psi range depending on its temperature). When the pressure drops because the liquid has completely evaporated, the pressure drops from that level, and now the spring has an easier time pressing on the reservoir CO2. That releases gas that raises the working pressure until a new equilibrium is achieved. As the tank pressure continues to drop, the working pressure will continue to rise and the bubble output will follow suit. Therefore, I am attacking the problem by reducing the bubble count below 1 per second.

In order to wait twice as long until my next refill, I'd like to actually use the solenoid on a timer so that I can stop dosing CO2 at night without killing my tank inhabitants in the morning. To play it safe for now, I'm manually plugging in and unplugging the solenoid myself to prevent a discharge. I'm still not quite sure why it takes to long for the bubbling to respond to binary solenoid changes, but I'm guessing it has something to do with internal system friction and the finite time it takes for pressure to equilibrate.

In order to help me in the future and do this EI dosing thing correctly, I'd like to really be able to nail down my CO2 levels at all times, specifically, holding it steady at 30 ppm. I've read about a really neat way to do it using something called a "drop checker". Here are do-it-yourself building instructions as well as instructions for how to fill it. We'll see if I can find it at any stores tomorrow while I shop for bioballs and interesting/useful driftwood/rocks (if I actually make it to any).