Substrate change

[XJfella95]

When I first started my tank I originally put in black granit course sand and fine gravel. After doing research on accurate biotopes for my apistos and reading AGA back issues. I have decided that I want to remove this existing substrate because it's proving difficult to grow out smaller rooted plant species like lace swords micro grass and such.

What I'm entertaining is a removal and replacement with finer natural sand, a layer of latrite sp? And another layer of sand. Then replant the tank exactly the way I have now.

My water chemistry is stable at nearly zero across the board for ammonia, trite and trate. I suspect the culture in the deep substrate has something to do with this.

What are your opinions? Do you think my oversized bio filtration will be able to keep up with the change or should I do this in partials?

Bio load is 4 silver tip tetras, 2flame tetras, 1 aggi, 2 cacs. And 2 small algea eaters. For 15 gal.

 

[Hmoobthor]

Not sure what "small algae eater" you got...but for a 15g..that will be fine unless ur so call algae eater grows huge.

 

[ed seeley]

You could change it gradually by just syphoning out sections of substrate to reduce the amount.

Or, for a tank that small, I'd just do it all in one day, taking the fish out. Don't feed for a few days before and a few days after and monitor the water quality doing large water changes if you get any kind of ammonia spike and your mature filter should be fine.

 

[XJfella95]

It's a retiulated hillstream loach.

Yes. I would do the change in one day. Siphoning out the water into buckets to be placed back in once I've made the change over.

Not feeding the fish is an interesting idea. Is that to keep the introduction of ammonia after the change down to a minimum?

 

[indyplanted]

if you are looking for a white or light colored sand substrate then you might try pool filter sand(PFS). I have used it in a bunch of my tanks and it cost about 7-9 dollars for a 50lb bag. any pool store or maintenance business should have it. looks nice and dosen't compact

 

[XJfella95]

Thanks for the tip. I might look into that. It's the off season, maybe it's cheaper at my local pool maintanence supplier this time of year.

if you are looking for a white or light colored sand substrate then you might try pool filter sand(PFS). I have used it in a bunch of my tanks and it cost about 7-9 dollars for a 50lb bag. any pool store or maintenance business should have it. looks nice and dosen't compact

 

[ed seeley]

Not feeding the fish is an interesting idea. Is that to keep the introduction of ammonia after the change down to a minimum?

Yep, exactly for that reason. Just make sure you test the water and then you should be fine.

 

[XJfella95]

Went and got natural tan sand and fluorite sand tonight for the substrate. Micro baby tears and a cardinal bush to plant at the base of a sweet bog wood peice I picked up. As well as few rocks and slate to create caves. Now I just need to sketch out what I want the layout to be and do it. I'll take before and after shots.

I'm also hoping that with the fasting of the fish that once I start feeding again hopefully I'll get a spawn from my silver tips that actually stick and are usuable. I got a floating breeder refuge to stick them in once the show begins.

Stay tuned.

 

[XJfella95]

Some pics

Before:

After:

Should look nice when the grass and carpet grow out and the sword fills in the corner to shade the cave.

 

[XJfella95]

My female Cac. Spawned today in the cave. I got curious when I noticed her excavating sand from under the rock. Upon investigating how deep she made it I noticed she was darker and had eggs on the roof.

Water parameters:
Temp 78
Ph 6.8
Gh 4degrees
Amm .25ppm

 

[XJfella95]

All of the eggs hatched today and I have about 50 or so wrigglers in a clump at the back of her cave.

 

[XJfella95]

update

It's been a month or two since the change.

The sand substrate settled and became anarobic and nothing was growing. I had an outbreak of green slim which I tried to resolve twice with a week of no light each time. Didn't work. The green slime just grew back eventually. I decided to remove a half inch of sand from the whole tank to try and let the roots grow and get oxygen. Still didn't cause anything to grow fast enough to overtake the Algaes. Near the end I noticed a white fungus growing along the bottom and soon after I lost my prized male dwarf cac and his mate. She had a brood of wrigglers which I had to discard due to not having a proper way to raise them.

I gutted the tank, salvaged the remaining plants that I had and replaced the substrate with the fine onyx sand and flaurite. Hopefully the plants will grow in this again and fill the tank. She's looking pretty bare.

Replaced the cacs with another pair i had and a bunch of cardinal tetras. I really hope this sticks this time.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Sorry for your loss,

The sand substrate settled and became anarobic and nothing was growing. I had an outbreak of green slim which I tried to resolve twice with a week of no light each time. Didn't work. The green slime just grew back eventually. I decided to remove a half inch of sand from the whole tank to try and let the roots grow and get oxygen. Still didn't cause
anything to grow fast enough to overtake the Algaes. Near the end I noticed a white fungus growing along the bottom and soon after I lost my prized male dwarf cac and his mate.

It may have been the depth of substrate causing the problems. Did you have any snails? I have MTS and this hasn't happened, even with quite deep sand substrates. Also the type of plants may be an issue, plants like Swords Echinodorus, with thick roots are very efficient at "importing" oxygen to their roots, and even if your substrate has gone anoxic, they will keep the immediate rhizosphere oxygenated. Water Lilies which are allowed to form pads (Nuphar or Nymphae) spp. or a planted emergent like a Cyperus spp. are even more efficient at this, as they have access to the higher levels of atmospheric oxygen. Plants like Cabomba, with very fine roots are unable to function in the same way, Cryptocorynes are somewhere in the middle, but the larger species have immense root networks. Another possibility is that you just didn't have enough plants initially. This is a tank with a very fine sand substrate, but it has always been heavily planted.

The "green slime" sounds like a Cyanobacteria outbreak, these can be associated with the build up of organic matter. I'm not a great fan of "black outs", or algicides or antibiotics, even if they "work" there is still an underlying cause and the Cyanobacteria was always likely to return.

cheers Darrel

 

[XJfella95]

I have snails but not many as I also have an assassin in there too. MTS? I have two sword plants that had riz. But when I did the inititial change it had fallen off almost as if the plant was shedding it. All the other plants are made up of grasses, micro tears, apart sword, spiral sword, cardinal plant and red wenditii. The crypts seemed to do great but The spiral and cardinal just disintegrated. The grasses wouldn't grow and the tears didn't stand a chance because the slime grew over them. I vacuumed the substrate to keep it clean but it didn't seem to help.

Any other suggestions?

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Sounds like something is wrong somewhere. Can you get a picture of your tank now? (and do you have one when you had the sand in?). MTS, sorry just lazy should have written "Malaysian Trumpet Snails", these are burrowing snails.

Cryptocorynes and Amazon Swords are pretty could low light plants, but some of the others (micro-tears, cardinal plant) aren't. If the grass is "Mundo grass" (Ophiopogon)? it isn't an aquatic and will just decay slowly in your tank. Also a bit worried about the "Swords" they sound like they might be terrestrial plants as well, are they Dracaena or Dieffenbachias?. If you had a lot of decomposing plant in your tank that would have effected water quality, and may well have led to the BGA output.

If you aren't sure what they are have a look here: <http://www.sydneycichlid.com/non-aquatic-plants.htm> & here: <http://www.petforums.co.uk/fish-keeping-chat/63418-how-spot-non-aquatic-plant.html>

Then copy the Latin names into "Google image search" to get a picture.

cheers Darrel

 

[XJfella95]

Please refer to the pictures in my above post with before and after shots. All of these plants were flourishing, I had to even propagate and throw put a bunch leading up to the substrate change. In the after pictures just imagine the BGA being everywhere there wasn't a shadow.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Yes, you are right they all look like aquatic plants and the tank looks fine for Apistos.
cheers Darrel