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Advice needed on new tank


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Those bacteria usually is one of the following:

  1. Come from inside driftwood. It will be gone when your driftwood is "seasoned", which takes a few months. Otocinclus will eat them, except for some that they don't even touch (not sure why, maybe it taste bad or toxic). My suggestion for you is to take it out and clean, if possible. In future if you are starting a new tank, clean the driftwood with H2O2 and brush them with toothbrush. After that soak them in dechlorinated tap water (if your tap water is hard) or dechlorinated water with a little bicarbonate (sodium and potassium bicarbonate is good) for a week or so. This soaking is to season the surface of the driftwood to minimise it leaking too much humic substances into the water column or encouraging too much redundant bacteria growth.
  2. Did you pump CO2 into the tank? There is a type of similar looking bacteria love CO2. Otocinclus eats them too. Shrimp will not touch them.

Look at the bottom of your tank, between the tank glass and substrate. Do you see tiny white dot zaping around or tiny white lines? Those are cyclops and white worms and they are your best friends. If you started to see a lot of them, then it is about time your tank is ready. If you don't see any or only a handful, then your tank is far from ready. If you have wheat bran powder or barley straw pellet on hand, it is a good time for you to put a little into your tank. Alternatively, you can crush your shrimp wafer into powder and sprinkle a tiny pinch every 3 days.

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Noted on the driftwood. No, I don't use co2. Just got home and tested ph.. It is back to 4.7. Same as before I did a 90% water change yesterday. Guess I've to add some baking soda or equivalent in.

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No no... Don't be bother by the pH too much. It's a bit late for now to increase the pH. The myth of pH below 5 inhibit bacteria growth is not 100% truth. As long as it is not pH 4 and below there will still be bacteria growth but may not be fast (however, there are too many other factors; plenty of bacteria food will overcome this too). Just look at slime on your driftwood and you will know microbe still flourish.

 

The low pH can be caused by 3 things:

  1. The driftwood
  2. The substrate. I don't recall BorneoWild substrate is this acidic. Thus, we can eliminate this.
  3. The salt you use to replenish the RO water. This is usually the main cause. Are using RO water and what salts are you using?
  4. Those fertilizer/additive you are adding. I saw you adding humic additive, these will lower your pH further. Don't add anymore as it is useless at this point. Your substrate and driftwood will leech a lot of humic substances at this stage. Humic additive is useful around 2 to 4 months old tank, when the substrate and driftwood are exhausted and the substrate do not have enough waste to produce more organic acid. By the way, humic acid is good to be kept in substrate and not water column.

Don't perform any more large water change until your tank glass has thick layer of slime; totally don't perform any water change or just do 10% weekly. Performing large water change will slow down bacteria growth; you are throwing away bacteria in water column. Once you have thick slime on glass wall, then perform a 90% water change. When not changing water, be careful with algae bloom. Since you only have moss, cut your lighting period to 4 to 6 hours until your tank is stabilized.

 

In summary about cycling tank, don't change or do anything too much, cut back the lighting and be patient. ;)

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Activated carbon/charcoal tube is a bad idea. I got burned few years ago. After that I did some research and testing and discovered they leech acid and adsorb oxygen when it is wet. Thus, you will find shrimp die in it frequently from suffocation. However after few months in the tank, it will be exhaust then it will be safe.

 

Personally, I will advise you stay away from it.

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By the way, if you want to accelerate the cycling and if you are from US, get a bottle of Seachem Stability. It does help to build up the bio-film very fast.

 

Get a 500ml bottle, which is more cost effective. Dose the recommended new tank dosage for a week or two (depending on how fast the bio-film build up). After that, dose 1ml per day until you finish up the bottle or forever. Putting it into a pump bottle will be easy to dose 1ml per day.

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Yes but to make sure, does the worm has flat or round body? Round body is correct and flat body is planaria.

Did you restarted the filter or pump? Usually when your tank is cycling, their population will boom in the filter and substrate.

If you see significant amount of them swimming but did not restart the filter or pump, then it is a bad sign for something is irritating them or killing them. Do you see a lot of them gathered at the tank glass above substrate area or near water level? If yes, your tank is lack of air circulation (too little O2 or too much CO2)

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It's round and wiggle in water in a S shape.

Nope. Didn't restart anything. There is only a few of them floating around and I'm able to steal a peep at some inside the substrate. They are not gathering anywhere. My ehiem 2213 is making pretty good circulation for a 2 feet. I've tiny air bubbles due to the surface agitation. So might not be lack of oxygen.

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If you don't mind noisy, it is better to place the rain bar above water level to generate more air exchange. I'm pretty paranoid on lack of air as it is a silent killer, which sometimes can't be detected and killing shrimps slowly; the acute massive type can be detected.

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If you don't mind noisy, it is better to place the rain bar above water level to generate more air exchange. I'm pretty paranoid on lack of air as it is a silent killer, which sometimes can't be detected and killing shrimps slowly; the acute massive type can be detected.

that's what I'm doing now. kinda noisy at night but been weeksso used to it. It's spraying and creating so many bubbles that I got afraid that there is too much aeration. lol

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