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Latest thoughts
Hi!
I hope everyone had a great holiday. I know I certainly did. Before going on
I'd like to thank all of the people who were kind enough to send me emails
recently in response to my last set of questions. I've been very truant
about replying and I'll certainly try to correct that today.
This christmas I managed to rescue an old Magnum 350 filter, a 35 Gallon
fish tank, the metal stand and a huge amount of old aquarium equipment from
my parents home where it had been sitting for more then 8 years. Amazingly
enough I actually had some new filter media including a Micron filter for
the Magnum and some phosphate remover which was unopenned. I used to use it
to remove phosphate in salt water.
So now I have my main tank along with a second small tank which I'll use for
experimenting (and so it begins.......).
My biggest disappointment from the holidays was the non-arrival of my CO2
system from Dave Gomberg. I'm really looking forward to trying this out.
Hopefully it will appear in the next few days once the holiday backlog is
eliminated.
For the smaller tank I plan to setup DIY Yeast CO2 just to try it. I imagine
I'll get sick of it pretty quick.
In terms of experiments, some things are quite interesting. I purchased a
bag of Nu-gro Tropical Plant soil which is already pre-fertilized. I placed
this in a bucket, covered with water and then added some poorly plants to
the bucket (there is a 60 watt incandescent plant bulb over the bucket).
What I find interesting is that the Algae which was heavily coating the
plant is completely gone. The plants themself are really green and there is
new growth. This bucket has reduced the pH from 7.9 to 6.4. There is no
water movement or C02 supplementation. I haven't tested Ammonia, nitrite,
nitrate or phosphate but I expect to find high Ammonia when I do. Needless
to say there are no fish in this tank.
I've noticied that certain plants around here seem to melt like Microswords
and even red polysperma (I have the Micro swords but not the red poly. A
fish store told me about that one). I believe the high pH might be the cause
but I won't know for at least a few days. I took one of the micro sword
pieces out of my tank and planted it in the bucket. I'm looking forward to
checking out the results of this in about a week.
Enough rambling for now. My next post will be a five store fish store
review.
~Jamie N
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