I bought a 20-year-old 200-gallon Oceanic tank on the Facebook marketplace for $500.00. It's been up and running for 6 months and I absolutely love it, keep searching you'll get your deal eventually. Oceanic tanks are a great buy even if they are 20 years old like mine, they are very thick in glass and very well built. I just put in some BCB bags in my sump, it's only been a couple of weeks hoping for great results. I could not put in a plenum cause everything has been in place and running for 6 months I'm hoping that the BCB bags will do the trick in lowering my nitrates. Your tanks look amazing!
So glad I found your channel ( I have to refresh YT a ton) anyways, the tanks look great and your Discus are wow! The colors are popping! I am going to use anoxic & plenum as well on my tank. It is a 240 gl AquaDream tank. Their tanks are gorgeous and come in different sizes and colors, worth looking into, if one has the budget to make pymts on their big tanks. Hope the recovery goes well and is speedy, ty for sharing.
I've only been a discus keeper for 4 months and I feel the same. Lots of research, good vigilance, Good food, good stable water parameters. Thing is people get lazy with fish but it's not that different from your dog you gotta feed it twice a day walk it twice a day and brush it every week.
Hello. Did you do a video of the sump set-up? How're your fish now. Why change the pre-filter inside the plastic container with the white lid filled with filter material? Thanks for sharing.
Would you please help me. I'd like to make a 29-gallon 1st and then a 75-gallon tank. Do I need a sump for the 75-gallon? As far as the kitty litter, I found special kitty natural clay, but it doesn't say it's baked it says non clumping. Do you know if it is safe to use? I bought laterite and oil dry also. I really going to maybe getting anubias plant and Java Fern. I don't need to skimp on substrate. Your tank and fish are so beautiful!! 🙏 for your husband. Blessings!
your tank rocks. I'm soon to be adding a plenum so I can put sand back in but I am waiting till my flush design system is complete. I'll explain,,,, in the void underneath the sand will gather a fair amount of build up of muck over time. I am going to put a matrix of plumbing with holes in it. In one corner I'll have a 3 way elbow so I can run a stand pipe all the way up to the surface. Then I can simply fit a powerhead to the pipe so I can suck out all the gunk in the void of the plenum. I'll be doing some videos on it when time comes.
Oh, that will be awesome to see! It sounds very much like an undergravel filter... but better! I seem to remember Dr Novak saying he had a plenum he hadn't checked under for 20 years, lol - don't know if we'll let ours go that far. 😉 Can't wait to see your updates!
Amazing tanks. I watched you other video making baskets and you mentioned other videos on how they are done, very good video thanks for sharing. I am new in the hobbie , I just have a 10 gal with guppies and cherry barbs. I already lost 3 due to ammonia. I wanted to know if I have put a basket in the aquarium or this only works on a sump? Any information is greatly appreciated. Thanks
How long has your tank been set up? Did you allow for a seasoning period? That's always the hardest part - remaining patient for 4-6 weeks while the tank goes through its initial cycle. Also, how many fish do you have? It's always best when starting out to stick to one fish per gallon max. I sometimes think the smaller tanks are harder to maintain than the larger ones, lol. Anyway, in this video ua-cam.com/video/iPSBGz_8xlQ/v-deo.html I show at about the 14 min mark what I did for my small 29 gallon tank by installing little mini taco shaped anoxic filtration packets underneath our plenum (I highly recommend a plenum for every tank) since we don't have a sump for that tank. A sump is the ideal manner for housing BCBs, but in my little tank, we just use sponge filters and improvised with the anoxic medium. The plants in that tank are all planted in pots using the same ingredients of the BCBs - clay litter with a laterite core. It's not the same success as our 100 gallon with the anoxic filtration setup in the the sump, but it's nearly as healthy and low maintenance.
@@saltysphynxmuse907 , thanks for your rapid response. After more than 6 weeks for fighting with more than 8ppm of ammonia, loose 3 guppies , had made two fulla water changes, last water change was yesterday 1-14-2019. I moved the remaining 4 cherry barbs into a quarentine 2 gal tank , they seems sick and maybe internal parasites. So i have just one day fishless 10 gal tank , about 1 inch of gravel. I learnt about anoxic filtrsation yesterday night so may understand that i am urget to get more and take action asap. About your second question , unfortunatelly , i did not do my home work and followed petsupply intructiosn and got fishes after 3rd day of purchase and fill the 10 gal tank. Bad . I say your video abour taco anoxix filtration , it is an excellent idea that may work for me, i have few questions: 1. Did you use beneficial bacteria when you set your 29 gal tank or just the substrate and the taco filters? 2. Does the cycle in a tank anoxic filtration work the same as a regular tank, i mean i will get ammonia then nitrite and later nitrate? 3.If so, do i need to have ammonia (from fish or other means) to grow the beneficial bacteria and start tank cycle? 4. Is there a way to quantify how much anoxic filtration in terms of weight of volume per fish is needed? I mean, how do i know how many tacos and how big they should be for a 10 gal tank with six guppies for example. 5. you mentioned success in your replay , how do you quantify success? is it level of ammonia or nitrite or nitrate or water tubidity? 6. What determines that you need a water change? is it level of ammonia or nitrite or nitrate or water tubidity? or something else. 7. do you need to have plants for your tanks and anoxic filter to work better? 8 . finally did you separate the entire substrate with just the section where the tacos are? Thanks again for your response , i hope you have time to replay my question based on your experiecience. Alex
I'm sorry for your losses. It does sound like you basically did a fish-in cycle, and possibly lost fish during the ammonia spike. Now with that said, we usually do fish-in cycling, in conjunction with Seachem's Stability for added beneficial bacteria with our new tanks - is just sad because you know they are sacrificial fish. If you have the room and means to upgrade your tank size, I'd recommend a 55 gallon and keep the 10 as a quarantine tank - only because a 10 gallon can be more work than a bigger tank. Honestly, if I had a 10 gallon, I would keep 1 male betta (with maybe a couple of females) and that's it. I think Dr. Kevin Novak's channel has a video featuring a beautiful small tank, but it is very heavily planted. Whatever you decide, try to be patient with initial cycle and remember there are many different variables that will affect the timing and water quality; i.e. pH, substrate, rocks, plants, etc. Water hardness is also a factor - we use RO/DI filtered water, which is results in soft (definitely soft enough for ciclids) As for your questions, I hope this helps: 1. Yes. We use Seachem Stability along with a seeded sponge filter that came from the sump in our big tank (we always keep a sponge filter in the last chamber of our sump to use for potential new tank start-ups or just as a back up) 2, 3 The cycling is basically the same, however in our experience, the ammonia never really spiked. It increased a bit, but it was almost imperceptible. We did also start out with quite a few plants, which I'm sure assists with the natural denitrification process, along with cured manzanita wood. We did use the Stability and just resolved to give it all 6 weeks to 2 months, understanding that any fish added were potential sacrificial fish - we actually retained some of those original rummy nose tetras that we put in around the 1 month mark; they survived the cycle and we still have them today. 4. Not really. But you want to add as much that can possibly fit. Underneath our plenum, In the 29 gal was able to fit two 6" (approx) tacos, and every plant pot contains the same medium. Am sure the two sponge filters are doing the majority of the work, but the water tests almost identical to our discus tank. In our big tank's sump, we have 14 4" baskets, and that is our sole means of filtration aside from the DIY prefilter. 5. Water test results almost mirror the big tank exactly; 0 nitrite, approx 5 nitrate, 0 ammonia... the only variations we see in quality is pH (6.0 in big tank - almost 7 in little). 6. Since our water tests results are nearly the same every time, we rely mainly on the viscosity appearance and the need to vacuum detritus - the little tank averages about a 30% water change weekly. 7. I firmly believe plants assist the anoxic filtration process. We've now proven to ourselves that it can be either planted in the substrate or within the BCB like pots. 8. Since the tacos are underneath the undergravel filter that we use as a plenum and the black gravel is large enough, it is in fact mostly separated from that area where the tacos reside, thereby creating a true low-flow, anoxic environment underneath the plenum. In our big tank, I actually attached mesh over the egg crate used for our plenum to keep the majority of the sand out of that area - the goal is to create that extremely low flow, low oxygen environment underneath your substrate. I hope our experience gives you some good ideas, and wish you all success with your tank(s) with whatever you decide.
Looks good! As much medium/substrate as you put on top of your plenum, I think you can run the UGF at regular flow (I believe it is adjustable by raising or lowering the up-tube - we have ours set at a pretty low flow). We can also control the air flow at the air pump; if yours only has one speed and you think it's too much, you could try to clamp the air hose to restrict flow, but again, all of your substrate should automatically reduce that flow anyway. Am anxious to see how your experiment progresses as I've not heard anyone give results of fluorite in substitution for laterite. Good job and nice video!
Hi, I have a 75g planted tank and have 6 baskets in the 30 gallon sump. I'm not sure but I think I have too few baskets. My Nitrates are still coming in high. I don't have discus, I have GBRams, Bolivian Rams and Smiling Cichlids, about 20 Cardinals. I was anxiously waiting for this update to give me another boost of confidence in using this method. I also only change my prefilters twice a week. Also I wanted to ask about your plenum, do you use a pump or air line to get water to move through it? Thanks!
6 baskets does seem pretty light. Are they the 4"x4" also? I would definitely increase the number of baskets if possible, but remember it takes them about 45 days to "activate". The zone underneath the plenum is also anoxic (not anaerobic) and we just use a bubble wall line along the back wall of the tank that likely results in a gentle pulling of water through that zone. Dr. Novak has a great video on plenums. Changing your prefilter twice a week should be fine - the only reason we change ours more frequently is because it will bubble over once too full. I wish you success with your tank and hope this helps! 😊
Caesar Castillo not surprised with your results Caesar. The baskets had very little effect on my nitrates as well. I had the baskets in my sump from Nov of 2017 through most of 2018 with no success. I dis not have any plants in my tank so I could directly measure the results of the baskets. I read Novak’s book cover to cover as well, and used the laterite substitute that Novak recommended. I also added a few iron chelate tablets to the center of each basket just to make sure there was enough iron (since that apparently is the key reason to have laterite), and after many many months of observation, it just didn’t have any noticeable effect of reducing my weekly nitrate accumulation. The baskets worked just fine for nitrification, just not for denitrification. If you research denitrification publications, you’ll see that the facultative anaerobic bacteria needs a carbon source. People use ethanol for this very reason in deep sand bed filters or tower style denitrification tubes. Wood chip bioreactors use cellulose, hemi cellulose, and lignans (broken down through bacterial processes) for their carbon source in order for denitrification to occur (I’ve done a lot of research on this particular topic). The anaerobic bacteria just can’t get going well without it. So that was my result with the baskets. Hopefully you’ll have different results, Good luck!
Thanks for sharing your results; I'm sorry it didn't work for you. You may have something with the carbon. I wonder if the fact that we basically keep a full time rotation of carbon in the prefilter chamber of our sump is more beneficial than we thought - I seem to remember Dr Novak using carbon as well. Additionally, every successful example of anoxic filtration I've seen have been in planted ponds/aquariums, so perhaps that is another requisite?
@@saltysphynxmuse907 Hi, Yes I use Carbon as well. Since June I doubled the number of baskets and my results are much much better. I had 0 nitrates last week after having made 0 water changes since May ( I don't keep Discus).
kitty litter is very inconsistent, I've had better results with the stuff for oil spills, one kind is called oil sorb, it's all natural clay just like kitty litter but baked much hotter and longer resulting in a much harder media that wont turn to mush. I just used some and it worked great.
I'm in the process of setting up a tank for Angelfish. I'm going with a sand substrate and a plenum. Do you have to do anything to maintain the sand? This will be my first experience with sand so that's why I ask.
The only maintenance we perform is siphoning the detritus; Hubby will stick the vacuum down in the deeper spots (light up/down motion) just to ensure there aren't any trapped gas pockets. The key is to make sure your sand isn't more than 3 inches or so in the deepest parts - ours looks deceiving because we have an almost additional 1.25 inches in height with the plenum resting on 3/4" pvc. The sand we use is the pool filter sand available from ACE Hardware - the grade of sand is important as you don't want it too fine, nor too coarse... this sand has been very easy to vacuum. I wish you well with your project! 😊
On the little tank, we have the undergravel filter hooked up; however, we set it on the lowest flow setting, so as to gently move just a little bit of water through it - the idea being to try and keep that area underneath as close to an anoxic (as opposed to anaerobic) environment as possible.
Beautiful tank and discus...but Dr Novak's BCB setup isn't a miracle solution...those fish need a bigger tank... they've probably grown since you introduced the anoxic filter.
It's a flexible bubble wall tube similar to this: www.amazon.com/Aquarium-Flexible-Bubble-Curtain-Decoration/dp/B01GACS3JQ/ref=sr_1_56?keywords=bubble+wall+for+aquarium&qid=1567990177&s=gateway&sr=8-56
Beautiful tank and discus 👍✌️🇨🇦🙏
You need to double your recording volume! Nice work utilising Dr. Novak's research.
Lucky guy. Congrats
I bought a 20-year-old 200-gallon Oceanic tank on the Facebook marketplace for $500.00. It's been up and running for 6 months and I absolutely love it, keep searching you'll get your deal eventually. Oceanic tanks are a great buy even if they are 20 years old like mine, they are very thick in glass and very well built. I just put in some BCB bags in my sump, it's only been a couple of weeks hoping for great results. I could not put in a plenum cause everything has been in place and running for 6 months I'm hoping that the BCB bags will do the trick in lowering my nitrates. Your tanks look amazing!
So glad I found your channel ( I have to refresh YT a ton) anyways, the tanks look great and your Discus are wow! The colors are popping! I am going to use anoxic & plenum as well on my tank. It is a 240 gl AquaDream tank. Their tanks are gorgeous and come in different sizes and colors, worth looking into, if one has the budget to make pymts on their big tanks. Hope the recovery goes well and is speedy, ty for sharing.
Beautiful tanks..
Very nice tank and fish, well done!
Nice looking set up...I find Discus so much easier to care for then people make them out to be.
I've only been a discus keeper for 4 months and I feel the same. Lots of research, good vigilance, Good food, good stable water parameters.
Thing is people get lazy with fish but it's not that different from your dog you gotta feed it twice a day walk it twice a day and brush it every week.
I hope you guys are okay I see you haven’t posted for quite some time would love to know how the tanks are getting on
Hello. Did you do a video of the sump set-up? How're your fish now. Why change the pre-filter inside the plastic container with the white lid filled with filter material? Thanks for sharing.
Would you please help me. I'd like to make a 29-gallon 1st and then a 75-gallon tank. Do I need a sump for the 75-gallon? As far as the kitty litter, I found special kitty natural clay, but it doesn't say it's baked it says non clumping. Do you know if it is safe to use? I bought laterite and oil dry also. I really going to maybe getting anubias plant and Java Fern. I don't need to skimp on substrate. Your tank and fish are so beautiful!! 🙏 for your husband. Blessings!
Do you run a plenum as well?
your tank rocks. I'm soon to be adding a plenum so I can put sand back in but I am waiting till my flush design system is complete. I'll explain,,,, in the void underneath the sand will gather a fair amount of build up of muck over time. I am going to put a matrix of plumbing with holes in it. In one corner I'll have a 3 way elbow so I can run a stand pipe all the way up to the surface. Then I can simply fit a powerhead to the pipe so I can suck out all the gunk in the void of the plenum. I'll be doing some videos on it when time comes.
Oh, that will be awesome to see! It sounds very much like an undergravel filter... but better! I seem to remember Dr Novak saying he had a plenum he hadn't checked under for 20 years, lol - don't know if we'll let ours go that far. 😉 Can't wait to see your updates!
Lovely tank but the uv there will cause a leak it'll melt the sealant on sump then water everywhere happened to someone I know
Nice tank!
Amazing tanks. I watched you other video making baskets and you mentioned other videos on how they are done, very good video thanks for sharing. I am new in the hobbie , I just have a 10 gal with guppies and cherry barbs. I already lost 3 due to ammonia. I wanted to know if I have put a basket in the aquarium or this only works on a sump? Any information is greatly appreciated. Thanks
How long has your tank been set up? Did you allow for a seasoning period? That's always the hardest part - remaining patient for 4-6 weeks while the tank goes through its initial cycle. Also, how many fish do you have? It's always best when starting out to stick to one fish per gallon max. I sometimes think the smaller tanks are harder to maintain than the larger ones, lol. Anyway, in this video ua-cam.com/video/iPSBGz_8xlQ/v-deo.html I show at about the 14 min mark what I did for my small 29 gallon tank by installing little mini taco shaped anoxic filtration packets underneath our plenum (I highly recommend a plenum for every tank) since we don't have a sump for that tank. A sump is the ideal manner for housing BCBs, but in my little tank, we just use sponge filters and improvised with the anoxic medium. The plants in that tank are all planted in pots using the same ingredients of the BCBs - clay litter with a laterite core. It's not the same success as our 100 gallon with the anoxic filtration setup in the the sump, but it's nearly as healthy and low maintenance.
@@saltysphynxmuse907 , thanks for your rapid response. After more than 6 weeks for fighting with more than 8ppm of ammonia, loose 3 guppies , had made two fulla water changes, last water change was yesterday 1-14-2019. I moved the remaining 4 cherry barbs into a quarentine 2 gal tank , they seems sick and maybe internal parasites. So i have just one day fishless 10 gal tank , about 1 inch of gravel. I learnt about anoxic filtrsation yesterday night so may understand that i am urget to get more and take action asap.
About your second question , unfortunatelly , i did not do my home work and followed petsupply intructiosn and got fishes after 3rd day of purchase and fill the 10 gal tank. Bad .
I say your video abour taco anoxix filtration , it is an excellent idea that may work for me, i have few questions:
1. Did you use beneficial bacteria when you set your 29 gal tank or just the substrate and the taco filters?
2. Does the cycle in a tank anoxic filtration work the same as a regular tank, i mean i will get ammonia then nitrite and later nitrate?
3.If so, do i need to have ammonia (from fish or other means) to grow the beneficial bacteria and start tank cycle?
4. Is there a way to quantify how much anoxic filtration in terms of weight of volume per fish is needed? I mean, how do i know how many tacos and how big they should be for a 10 gal tank with six guppies for example.
5. you mentioned success in your replay , how do you quantify success? is it level of ammonia or nitrite or nitrate or water tubidity?
6. What determines that you need a water change? is it level of ammonia or nitrite or nitrate or water tubidity? or something else.
7. do you need to have plants for your tanks and anoxic filter to work better?
8 . finally did you separate the entire substrate with just the section where the tacos are?
Thanks again for your response , i hope you have time to replay my question based on your experiecience.
Alex
I'm sorry for your losses. It does sound like you basically did a fish-in cycle, and possibly lost fish during the ammonia spike. Now with that said, we usually do fish-in cycling, in conjunction with Seachem's Stability for added beneficial bacteria with our new tanks - is just sad because you know they are sacrificial fish. If you have the room and means to upgrade your tank size, I'd recommend a 55 gallon and keep the 10 as a quarantine tank - only because a 10 gallon can be more work than a bigger tank. Honestly, if I had a 10 gallon, I would keep 1 male betta (with maybe a couple of females) and that's it. I think Dr. Kevin Novak's channel has a video featuring a beautiful small tank, but it is very heavily planted. Whatever you decide, try to be patient with initial cycle and remember there are many different variables that will affect the timing and water quality; i.e. pH, substrate, rocks, plants, etc. Water hardness is also a factor - we use RO/DI filtered water, which is results in soft (definitely soft enough for ciclids)
As for your questions, I hope this helps:
1. Yes. We use Seachem Stability along with a seeded sponge filter that came from the sump in our big tank (we always keep a sponge filter in the last chamber of our sump to use for potential new tank start-ups or just as a back up)
2, 3 The cycling is basically the same, however in our experience, the ammonia never really spiked. It increased a bit, but it was almost imperceptible. We did also start out with quite a few plants, which I'm sure assists with the natural denitrification process, along with cured manzanita wood. We did use the Stability and just resolved to give it all 6 weeks to 2 months, understanding that any fish added were potential sacrificial fish - we actually retained some of those original rummy nose tetras that we put in around the 1 month mark; they survived the cycle and we still have them today.
4. Not really. But you want to add as much that can possibly fit. Underneath our plenum, In the 29 gal was able to fit two 6" (approx) tacos, and every plant pot contains the same medium. Am sure the two sponge filters are doing the majority of the work, but the water tests almost identical to our discus tank. In our big tank's sump, we have 14 4" baskets, and that is our sole means of filtration aside from the DIY prefilter.
5. Water test results almost mirror the big tank exactly; 0 nitrite, approx 5 nitrate, 0 ammonia... the only variations we see in quality is pH (6.0 in big tank - almost 7 in little).
6. Since our water tests results are nearly the same every time, we rely mainly on the viscosity appearance and the need to vacuum detritus - the little tank averages about a 30% water change weekly.
7. I firmly believe plants assist the anoxic filtration process. We've now proven to ourselves that it can be either planted in the substrate or within the BCB like pots.
8. Since the tacos are underneath the undergravel filter that we use as a plenum and the black gravel is large enough, it is in fact mostly separated from that area where the tacos reside, thereby creating a true low-flow, anoxic environment underneath the plenum. In our big tank, I actually attached mesh over the egg crate used for our plenum to keep the majority of the sand out of that area - the goal is to create that extremely low flow, low oxygen environment underneath your substrate.
I hope our experience gives you some good ideas, and wish you all success with your tank(s) with whatever you decide.
@@saltysphynxmuse907 many thanks for taking the time to answer all my question. Yes I got plenty ideas. ,👍👍👍👍👍
Looks good! As much medium/substrate as you put on top of your plenum, I think you can run the UGF at regular flow (I believe it is adjustable by raising or lowering the up-tube - we have ours set at a pretty low flow). We can also control the air flow at the air pump; if yours only has one speed and you think it's too much, you could try to clamp the air hose to restrict flow, but again, all of your substrate should automatically reduce that flow anyway. Am anxious to see how your experiment progresses as I've not heard anyone give results of fluorite in substitution for laterite. Good job and nice video!
Hi,
I have a 75g planted tank and have 6 baskets in the 30 gallon sump. I'm not sure but I think I have too few baskets. My Nitrates are still coming in high. I don't have discus, I have GBRams, Bolivian Rams and Smiling Cichlids, about 20 Cardinals. I was anxiously waiting for this update to give me another boost of confidence in using this method.
I also only change my prefilters twice a week.
Also I wanted to ask about your plenum, do you use a pump or air line to get water to move through it?
Thanks!
6 baskets does seem pretty light. Are they the 4"x4" also? I would definitely increase the number of baskets if possible, but remember it takes them about 45 days to "activate". The zone underneath the plenum is also anoxic (not anaerobic) and we just use a bubble wall line along the back wall of the tank that likely results in a gentle pulling of water through that zone. Dr. Novak has a great video on plenums. Changing your prefilter twice a week should be fine - the only reason we change ours more frequently is because it will bubble over once too full. I wish you success with your tank and hope this helps! 😊
Thanks, yup I could add more, should have done it last week. Yup mine are 4x4 also.
Caesar Castillo not surprised with your results Caesar. The baskets had very little effect on my nitrates as well. I had the baskets in my sump from Nov of 2017 through most of 2018 with no success. I dis not have any plants in my tank so I could directly measure the results of the baskets. I read Novak’s book cover to cover as well, and used the laterite substitute that Novak recommended. I also added a few iron chelate tablets to the center of each basket just to make sure there was enough iron (since that apparently is the key reason to have laterite), and after many many months of observation, it just didn’t have any noticeable effect of reducing my weekly nitrate accumulation. The baskets worked just fine for nitrification, just not for denitrification. If you research denitrification publications, you’ll see that the facultative anaerobic bacteria needs a carbon source. People use ethanol for this very reason in deep sand bed filters or tower style denitrification tubes. Wood chip bioreactors use cellulose, hemi cellulose, and lignans (broken down through bacterial processes) for their carbon source in order for denitrification to occur (I’ve done a lot of research on this particular topic). The anaerobic bacteria just can’t get going well without it. So that was my result with the baskets. Hopefully you’ll have different results, Good luck!
Thanks for sharing your results; I'm sorry it didn't work for you. You may have something with the carbon. I wonder if the fact that we basically keep a full time rotation of carbon in the prefilter chamber of our sump is more beneficial than we thought - I seem to remember Dr Novak using carbon as well. Additionally, every successful example of anoxic filtration I've seen have been in planted ponds/aquariums, so perhaps that is another requisite?
@@saltysphynxmuse907 Hi,
Yes I use Carbon as well. Since June I doubled the number of baskets and my results are much much better. I had 0 nitrates last week after having made 0 water changes since May ( I don't keep Discus).
Lovely tank , my community tank is fine but I have nothing but problems with discus
Do you use air hose as described by dr Kevin Novak since you already use BCB asa Anoxic filtration.
Amasing tank. How is your tank and BCB's, here at the 2 year mark.
Tried 2 types of of special kitty,both turned mud,iam guessing Mafia put a cap on this
kitty litter is very inconsistent, I've had better results with the stuff for oil spills, one kind is called oil sorb, it's all natural clay just like kitty litter but baked much hotter and longer resulting in a much harder media that wont turn to mush. I just used some and it worked great.
Any updates? How much do you feed over a month? And do you fertilizer the plants at all?
I sought I will see Nitrate level close to zero.... Have you tried using purigen?
I'm in the process of setting up a tank for Angelfish. I'm going with a sand substrate and a plenum. Do you have to do anything to maintain the sand? This will be my first experience with sand so that's why I ask.
The only maintenance we perform is siphoning the detritus; Hubby will stick the vacuum down in the deeper spots (light up/down motion) just to ensure there aren't any trapped gas pockets. The key is to make sure your sand isn't more than 3 inches or so in the deepest parts - ours looks deceiving because we have an almost additional 1.25 inches in height with the plenum resting on 3/4" pvc. The sand we use is the pool filter sand available from ACE Hardware - the grade of sand is important as you don't want it too fine, nor too coarse... this sand has been very easy to vacuum. I wish you well with your project! 😊
Are you using just the grids on the of the tank or the complete set up?
On the little tank, we have the undergravel filter hooked up; however, we set it on the lowest flow setting, so as to gently move just a little bit of water through it - the idea being to try and keep that area underneath as close to an anoxic (as opposed to anaerobic) environment as possible.
Beautiful tank and discus...but Dr Novak's BCB setup isn't a miracle solution...those fish need a bigger tank... they've probably grown since you introduced the anoxic filter.
Are your BCBs still working I'm looking at doing this so trying to get an idea as to how long they last
BCB's shouldn't go bad or get clogged. The idea is to have the water flow around them not through them.
Does using the kitty litter drop your ph ?
WHY YOU STOP MAKING VIDEOS
Super tank why dont you update your tank mam
How do you get the air bubbles spread out evenly under the gravel?
It's a flexible bubble wall tube similar to this: www.amazon.com/Aquarium-Flexible-Bubble-Curtain-Decoration/dp/B01GACS3JQ/ref=sr_1_56?keywords=bubble+wall+for+aquarium&qid=1567990177&s=gateway&sr=8-56
@@saltysphynxmuse907 thank you that looks awesome.
Sorry but you don't have a plenem so that's why you have nitrates u shouid t get them at all no matter how long the wc been
Too many changes. Not necessary. Please work on your volume when you record your videos. Also no negative or personal remarks.
One month without water changing is absolutely not something to be proud of.
One month it's nothing.
Much better than having to change water every week though.
@@Sinserg Specially for a discus tank.