I mentioned in an earlier thread that I redid my 2gal betta hex as a
"real" planted tank. Before I had Mayaca and Rotala indica growing on
ambient sunlight and UGF. Shoulda left well enough alone, but I wanted
to grow something in the foreground. Not enough light was making it
past the tall stem plants and I was in the process of killing a banana
lily after killing some nice dwarf Sagittaria.

Now, I have a 14 watt 5500K spiral compact screwed into the hood (it's a
LOT of light), a nanofilter, and the UGF has been replaced by 2" of
fluorite. After the changes, the Rotala indica started growing 1/2" a
day, two tiny crypt offshoots that I scavenged from the "big" 5gal tank
have put out new leaves, and the banana lily seems to be keeping its
leaves. Current supplements are Kent Botanica iron, trace elements, and
K, and Flourish Excel. All are dosed as on the bottle and iron tests at
0.25 ppm chelated iron.

However, I've started getting cyanobacter on plants, sparse green fuzz
algae on the glass, and the Mayaca that was doing fine before refuses to
grow and is going brown. I just did my usual water change routine, and
to my surprise nitrates are only 2 ppm now. My Mardel test strips led
me to believe there was more, but I just got an accurate Seachem test
and the tapwater has only 3-4 ppm at the moment. I use half tap and
half RO or rainwater so I'm actually adding very little nitrate with
water changes. I don't know phosphate levels at the moment - no kit for
that one.

I'm rather amazed that a betta in 2 gallons isn't putting out enough
ammonia for more plant growth, but that seems to be the case. This was
a 50% water change, so I was only at 4 ppm before it.

So...

Earlier this month when someone else had BGA and it was diagnosed as
nitrate deficiency. Is adding nitrate what I need to do now? I have
cleaned all the algae out of the tank, of course. I would prefer not to
black the tank out if it's not absolutely necessary.

I know CO2 is also an issue for plants vs. algae, but trying to balance
CO2 and pH in a 2 gallon tank seems like a really good way to either
kill my betta or entirely fill the tank with C02 equipment. Flourish
Excel will have to do.

I'd appreciate any feedback before I add nitrates, in case there's
something I've overlooked.

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__

Why not get a female betta to add to the tank? It will make the whole
system more interesting and you'll get to see more natural betta
behavior plus it will double your nitrate output. You win all around
that way.

-Daniel

In message .com,
dfreas writes
Why not get a female betta to add to the tank? It will make the whole
system more interesting and you'll get to see more natural betta
behavior plus it will double your nitrate output. You win all around
that way.

Don't male/female bettas only come together for mating and then go their
own separate ways? I'd understood that having a pair together in a small
tank was a recipe for disaster...
--
sophie

Well I guess I should have read a bit more about bettas before making
the suggestion. I did a little research just now and from what I can
see they can be kept together but not always with perfect results. Sort
of a ymmv situation. Probably not a good idea to just throw one in and
hope for the best. But I do think a second fish would solve the problem
better than adding nitrates directly. Maybe a couple small corys or
kuhlis would do nicely. Or if that's too much load perhaps one of the
pl*co strains that don't grow much...I've always liked clown pl*cos and
they wouldn't outgrow a tank this size I don't think. Also a pl*co
would immediately solve the algae problem which would increase the
available nitrates for the rest of the tank.

-Daniel

Don't male/female bettas only come together for mating and then go their
own separate ways? I'd understood that having a pair together in a small
tank was a recipe for disaster...

Totally unpredictable. They may get along fine or one may beat up, shred
or even kill the other. I see all three with about equal frequency.

--
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dfreas wrote:
Why not get a female betta to add to the tank? It will make the whole
system more interesting and you'll get to see more natural betta
behavior plus it will double your nitrate output. You win all around
that way.

-Daniel

That's an interesting thought. Thanks. Do you think a 2 gallon is
really big enough for the female to be safe if there is some aggression?
The hex shape doesn't give much length for swimming. I do have a
community tank where I could put her if things go badly, though.

I had also thought of adding a couple of Otocinclus since there's some
soft green algae now.

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__

That's an interesting thought. Thanks. Do you think a 2 gallon is
really big enough for the female to be safe if there is some aggression?
The hex shape doesn't give much length for swimming. I do have a
community tank where I could put her if things go badly, though.

I have a pair in a 1 gallon fishbowl. Been there since xmas.


--
Need Mercedes parts ? - http://parts.mbz.org
http://www.mbz.org | Mercedes Mailing lists: http://lists.mbz.org
633CSi 250SE/C 300SD | Killies, killi.net, Crypts, aquaria.net
1970 280SE, 72 280SE | Old wris****ches http://watches.list.mbz.org

Not to be difficult but, dosing nitrates to from 0 to 10ppm didn't seem
to help me at all, although your situation may be different and it did
rule out one possibility. I don't know what the critical level is so I
don't want to go any higher than that 10 ppm for fear of poisioning the
fish. Also, my common pleco doesn't touch the BGA. Other types of
plecos may, I dunno. I haven't heard of any fish that actually eat the
stuff.
I'm not sure if that helped any. It doesn't seem killing BGA is really
a problem. Keeping it from growing again seems to be the challenge.
my aquarium page, info and pics at:
www.geocities.com/spiral_72/Spirals_page.html

I didn't mean to suggest a pleco would eat BGA - I was refering to the
other algae Elaine mentioned, the "sparse green fuzz." Otos would work
just as well - whatever your personal preference for algae eating fish
happens to be is fine. The BGA problem will solve itself when
everything else is fixed.

-Daniel

spiral_72 wrote:
Not to be difficult but, dosing nitrates to from 0 to 10ppm didn't seem
to help me at all, although your situation may be different and it did
rule out one possibility. I don't know what the critical level is so I
don't want to go any higher than that 10 ppm for fear of poisioning the
fish. Also, my common pleco doesn't touch the BGA. Other types of
plecos may, I dunno. I haven't heard of any fish that actually eat the
stuff.
I'm not sure if that helped any. It doesn't seem killing BGA is really
a problem. Keeping it from growing again seems to be the challenge.
my aquarium page, info and pics at:
www.geocities.com/spiral_72/Spirals_page.html

I don't know of anything that eats it. I'm going to LFS to day to grab
some nitrate fertilizer and also a posphorus kit if they have one.

One difference between our setups is I think I have a lot more plants
per gallon (inventing a new measurement here) than you do, unless your
tank has changed a lot since the shot on your website.

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__

As a side note I've had tanks that continually tested 0ppm for nitrates
but had enormous amounts of plant growth. They were heavily populated
south american cichlid tanks with about three inches of hornwort
covering the top of the tank. Ammonia got eaten up as soon as it was
produced and those guys produced a lot of it. So I don't expect there
is a perfect number for nitrates out there - I always keep adding
plants until it reads zero consistently and I've never had a problem
with nitrogen defficiency.

-Daniel

In article . com,
spiral_72 wrote:
Not to be difficult but, dosing nitrates to from 0 to 10ppm didn't seem
to help me at all, although your situation may be different and it did
rule out one possibility. I don't know what the critical level is so I
don't want to go any higher than that 10 ppm for fear of poisioning the
fish. Also, my common pleco doesn't touch the BGA. Other types of
plecos may, I dunno. I haven't heard of any fish that actually eat the
stuff.
I'm not sure if that helped any. It doesn't seem killing BGA is really
a problem. Keeping it from growing again seems to be the challenge.

If you dosed to 10ppm what do they measure at 1, 2, 5 days after?

Have you tried changing LOTS of water every day.

--
Need Mercedes parts ? - http://parts.mbz.org
http://www.mbz.org | Mercedes Mailing lists: http://lists.mbz.org
633CSi 250SE/C 300SD | Killies, killi.net, Crypts, aquaria.net
1970 280SE, 72 280SE | Old wris****ches http://watches.list.mbz.org