[APD] Re: Aquatic-Plants Digest, Vol 8, Issue 21

["Robert Flory" <wyogeo at astound_net>]

> From: Michael Skidmore <mskidmore at alamedanet_net>
> Subject: [APD] Lost an oto, not sure why.
>
> I'm asking this in a plant group since many of you keep oto's ,
> probably more per tank than general aquarists do. A post in another
> group was unfruitful.
>
> My  first fish died in a 1 month old 75 long community, planted tank
> - an  Otocinclus  affinis, the bigger Peruvian  variety. They had
> been in about 3 weeks and I have about 1" fish / gal which had been
> doing  okay at first. Other fish are 7 2-3" young discus, 3 SAE's, 5
> clown loaches, 3 amano shrimp, 3 adult broken line tetra- Hemmigramus
> ulreyi, 6 very young panda corys and a 6" Botia longiventralis.
>
> I checked the water chemistry with my Nutrafin/Hagen dropper kits and
> don't see anything too bad (to my newbie eyes after much reading):
> p H 7.00
> kH 7.8
> gH 10.08
> NO2 0.3 ppm ? (Hagen kit really doesn't work on N)
> NO3 5-10 ppm?
> NH3 0
> Fe chelated 0.1 ppm? Maybe 0.0
> PO4  4 ppm
> temp 76.1= 24.5 C
>
> I took my water sample over to Albany Aquarium (perhaps the best LFS
> in SF Bay Area)  about 1 week ago and they measured  NO2 = 5 ppm and
> NO3 = 0 ppm on a different kit when I was showing 0.8  on the Hagen
> kit. It is purple, which is not really the expected Hagen  color.
> I've since read online the Hagen's No2 & NO3 kits are very poor.
> After that I added some Aquatech ProBiotic Cleaner Plus to the filter
> intake. Which store owner  said this was the only bacteria product he
> thought was really alive, since it comes from Yosemite to him every
> few months or so. He suggested that to avoid a NO2 spike building. It
> had been 9 days since I added it.
>
> The only dosing I am doing now is 8 ml of TMG daily. My substrate is
> 1/2 Profile Aquatic Plant Soil, 1/2 Turface Proleague (kicked up a
> notch with Diamond Black Humic acids and pyrosol) with about 7 lbs of
> worm castings which explains why my N and P are high. The worm
> castings raise the hardness from 5.6 to 7.8 dkH in 5 days of leaching
> due to egg shells in them, I am trying to minimize what I dose.
> Plants pearl like crazy (4 w/g compact fluorescents) and are not
> turning yellow on tips anymore now that I kicked up the TMG and the
> Alternanthera reineckii  is the proper purple color and others I
> can't id are rust/ red color. I have been doing 50% water changes
> each 5 days, I found it  on morning of 5th day.
>
> The one thing I think maybe happened was that it starved? I noticed
> that none of the other 4 otos had fat bellies. I stopped adding New
> Life spectrum wafers about 4-5 days before it died, since I added
> young discus and with the frozen blood worms and live brine shrimp I
> was concerned about over feeding. They otos previously been eating
> the wafers and scanning of the plants for algae which are present.
> The tank is pretty clean overall, there are algae growing on the
> walls of the tank and now I am getting long wavy brown hair like
> algae, but maybe the algae are not what the otos needed to thrive.
>
> Of the other 4 otos, 2 now have fat bellies and 2 do not after adding
> 2 wafers in yesterday.
>
> Any ideas?
> --
>
> -- 
> _________________________________________________________
> Michael O. Skidmore
> Alameda CA
>

Are you using CO2 ? What are your light levels?

I upped my CO2 and ferts to get rid of algae.  Search the archives for
algae/fertilizer/Tom Barr or just wait, you'll get lots of response here.
;-)

Bob


_______________________________________________
Aquatic-Plants mailing list
Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/aquatic-plants