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Your helpful replies.
I wrote:
>>Finally, my tank was looking suddenly cloudy this morning. Not
>>green-cloudy, just cloudy. What is this stuff, any ideas?
Karen replied:
>Probably a bacterial bloom in response to you suppressing you bacterial
>filter with antibiotics while feeding nitrogen products into your tank.
>
I would find it easier to believe that it was a bacterial bloom in response
to the non-nitrogen nutrients released by the die-off of BGA. I'm measuring
NH3, NO2- and NO3- every 12 hours, and nothing is showing up except the
usual 1-4 ppm NO3-, so there doesn't seem to be much suppression of the
biofilter. The NH3 and NO2- seemed to be pretty good at detecting their
targets when my tank was cycling, so I don't think I'm fooling myself here.
>Stop tossing chemicals into your tank, sit back and wait a bit. If your
>plants are growing so quickly that you _really_ need to add nitrogen, it
>might be preferable, particularly in such a small tank, to cut the light
>and slow the growth down.
Yeah, but then my hygrophila won't have those beautiful pinnate leaves, and
my ludwigia won't have that rich red color that goes so well with the iron
oxide on my weathered basalt.... :-)
Chlayne wrote:
>Hi! I just received an order from Arizona Aquatic Gardens and am very
>pleased with my order. However I have one question: Can anyone describe
>the submersed leaves of Hygrophilia Difformis?
>I ordered one potted from them and it has very thick stems and small rounded
>leaves with jagged edges. Is this the same plant? If it is how do I get it
>to grow the emersed leaves quickly as it is not very attractive?
My hygrophila came with lots of thick stems and small rounded leaves with
jagged edges. The degree of "pinnateness" depends on the amount of light
you grow it in, I think.
Mark wrote:
> If you are adding 3 ppm/day of K to your 10 gallon aquarium, then you
> are also adding 4.6 ppm NO3/day. Why are you adding so much? You add
> as much as I do to my 90 gallon aquarium. Is your test kit accurate?
I checked it with the 1 ppm standard provided. My nitrate seems to have
stabilized, and I no longer have to make such large additions to maintain
the 3-5 ppm; I was probably too impatient in starting with these dosages.
Perhaps the rapidly growing algae was soaking up the nitrate while other
nutrients such as P were in abundance, and then quit when these nutrients
were depleted. (Also keep in mind that I only had two otos which refused
any added food, so I wasn't putting any fish food into the tank.)
> Hardness is determined by the amount of Ca and Mg dissolved, not K.
True. I guess I meant "low dissolved solids" fishes, not softwater fishes....
> You really shouldn't be concerned about adding too much K--most fresh
> water fish typically maintain an internal concentration of about
> 100-120 ppm K in their blood plasma. Freshwater organisms are
> concerned with K retention, not excess K excretion.
Thank you for this info!!!!