Zoone

I have had some deficiency problems with my plants (small / twisted leafs), I now know what it is.

CO2 CO2 always CO2, despite the fact that i have checked all my values to get 30-40ppm i now know that that was the cause, and how do i know that?

During the summer my pH controller / electrode has been drifting in value which caused a very high CO2 level. But the growth has been excellent and the water has been like champagne.

A while ago i re-calibrated the system and tuned in the system to 30ppm with the controller and fluid pH test, but after that the growth has again been small and twisted with bad bubbling.

I have now riced the CO2 level a bit and the bubbles are back and i hope that i will see some normal growth as well.

In the future i will be aiming at 45ppm because it seems that the actual level is always lower than you think, if you aim at 30pp and it drifts a little bit you are easily running it low, especially with a low KH as i have (very small changes in values affects the CO2 level a lot).

A previous entry with pictures:

http://zoone.se/?p=323

To my surprise I found roe yesterday evening which was eagerly guarded by the parents, unfortunately the stir was to much for them, half an hour later it was all gone.

My discus fries has reduced a lot in quantity from 77pcs when i moved them from the parents to 15pcs at the moment, I recently moved them back to the parents and they seem to get on better there.

I think most of them died when i changed the feeding from live artemia to deshelled artemia which i was told was fine to feed directly with, does anyone have experience with this kind of artemia?

Today I discovered that my pH and redox electrodes was no longer possible to calibrate.

This judgment is done automatically by the IKS Aquastar, it is a bit of PITA because if you do it manually it’s possible to get a fairly OK calibration even om quite bad electrodes.

The pH electrode was not a problem because i had spare ones at home but the redox one was worse, but i think i will find a new one fairly easy.

I just installed a cashing function which should speed up my web site, when i try it my self I experience it as a substantial improvement in loading time.

Edit: not relevant any more as i use another server and another system.

After an interesting discussion about co2 or not in Swedish municipal tap water in this thread (Swedish) http://www.zoopet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92855 i tried to verify some part of it.

The text here is the same as in my post in the thread but translated into English.

Test 1

Test 1 was made to establish how the bubble rate is from a normally running aquarium.

The test was done in my 325 liter aquarium with 4x54W T5, pressurized CO2 and PMDD dosing, the light is on between 12:00 and 22:00.

I cut a leaf in half at 17:35 and measured the time between bubbles a couple of times;

22,9
22,8
25,6 -
15,1 -
24,8
17,6
21,5
17,0
25,0

I removed the highest and lowest value and calculated the mean value of the rest, 21,66 seconds (with all values 21,37).

Test 2

The test was done in my 325 liter aquarium without the lights on and in a room which was as dark as it could get, the CO2 was shut totally off at the beginning of the water change.

The water change was of the in-line type (in and out at the same time) and was running between 8:25 – 9:50, i was monitoring some measurements all the time and quit the change when they stopped changing, this was done to have only tap water in the aquarium (no CO2 or other accumulated nutritions).

I cut a leaf in half at 9:40 and measured the time between bubbles a couple of times;

29,8
29,6 -
30,2
30,1
30,9
41,4 -
33,8
31,9

I removed the highest and lowest value and calculated the mean value of the rest, 31,1 seconds (with all values 32,2).

Pictures of this could be found here http://zoone.se/?page_id=515&g2_itemId=5803 , the pictures is so so because of the focusing problem in the darkness but they clearly show all kinds of bubbles from the plants, the pictures are taken between 9:43 & 10:03,the pictures is naturally taken with flash, but the light from the flash is so short i cant imagine it affecting the photosynthesis.

According to me this clearly shows that there is bubbles from the plants at a water change without a running photosynthesis.

Edit 1: It’s somewhat embarrassing that out of the few algae affected leaf i have is clearly shown in some of the pictures.

Edit 2: I would also like to add that the bubbles is extremely hard to see by the eye in the darkness, the bubbles below the leafs is quite easy to see but the bubble bands is almost impossible to see.

Edit 3: My tap water has according to the municipal water company a pH of 8.5 (according to my measurement 8.3) and a KH of 2.5, the Swedish municipal water probably differs some from place to place but from what i have heard from Swedish forums my water represent it quite well.

I finally got enough time to clean out the aquarium, There is not to much left.
I saved all the plants but i don’t know which plants i like in it or what layout so i will wait a bit and see what happens.

The discus fries are growing and seems to be well, but a huge mistake from me was about to cost them their life.

I forgot that i was doing a water change and all of a sudden i remembered that i was emptying the aquarium ouch!
When i got back to the aquarium there were only one centimeter of water left next to the front of it, i started to fill it again at once.
It looks like they managed quite well but i have lost some of them, i had 77 when i moved them from their parents and i think i have 70 now, I think that two more will have to go soon, they don’t seem to be OK (i don’t think that i have lost any of them due to the water change, the one that has died has been really small and does not seem to eat like the others).