The Whole Shebang

[Vale!]

And a bit of of Sheba 4 :




(The Corys came from Stephen)

[plankton]

That's more than a little annoying about the foam........

[Gingerlove05]

I cant imagine you would have missed that Vale!, I reckon there’s either been problems, or they have changed the type of foam and it is no longer aquarium safe.
Either way its still annoying

[Ric]

A bit late but at least now there is an explanation for the initial wipeout of your fish. The disintegrated foam does look quite *yuck*

[Vale!]

Yes - incredibly annoying. I don't think it's worth moaning at ADD Filtration, though (I may be wrong) because I did get refunded for the fish that perished. It's just so sad that they had unsuccessfully to endure it all.

Anyway, I've sourced some foam which should be reliable and it should be here in a couple of days' time. Meanwhile ...

[Vale!]

I need to make sure that when I syphon out all of the remaining rotten/rotting foam I have measures in place to replace the substrate for the nitrifying microblighters which will be removed as I do it.

For those of you who might be yearning for those days and wailing: "Where, oh where, are Vale!'s buckets?", I have good news!


Eighteen months ago, perhaps more, I replaced a tank because of a leak. The filter media was alfagrog ; I shoved it in a bucket of tankwater and put it in the garden shed, out of the way.



The water evaporated long ago and it's been dry for a year or so, but is it at all nitrifyingly-active ; in other words, were any of the resident microblighters able to encyst? There's only one way to find out! So I dragged the bucket out of the shed.

I added a heater and two airlines to it :



And filled it with 9 litres of the water that I'm currently preparing for water-changes to community/planted tanks. Switched heater and airlines on :




It might be useful to describe the preparation so you can see what's in it (it may sound a terrible faff, but I've got it down to a fine art now!).

My No.1 water butt holds 220L of RO/DI (Reverse Osmosis and De-Ionised), peat-infused water.

To that I added : 0.5g of chelated trace elements ; 2 capfuls of Fresh Trace ; c300mls of leaf-liquor ; 4g of calcium nitrate ; 3.5g of magnesium sulphate ; 3.3g of potassium phosphate ; and 3.5g of potassium nitrate.

The resulting parameters are :

pH 6.20
Conductivity (EC) 158.1uS/cm
Total Ammonia (TA) 0.89mg/l
Nitrite-N (Ni) 0ppb (when there is enough nitrite in the bucket, I'll convert its test results to mg/l)


I'm going to leave it for 24 hours and retest tomorrow. Will TA go up, or down? Will any nitrite show? Will there be any significant change in pH or EC? Make your own guesses, but be sure to tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling episode!

[Gingerlove05]

I have faith, i reckon TA will go down, as will the conductivity, even just a little.
Nothing else will change
I have no scientific reasoning, just what mg mind decided

[Vale!]

Your post prompted a sudden thought : it might be useful to do an interim set of tests. So that's what I'm doing! It's roughly nine hours since I commissioned the bucket.

I've got a TA result. Nitrite is cooking (7 minutes 42s to go). Just about to read off the EC and pH.

Excited? Results coming up after this break ...

[Vale!]

OK we have :

pH 6.74 EC 403uS/cm TA 0.66mg/l Ni 1ppb

[Andys temperate tank]

It looks like its started hasn't it.

Opening the spoilers was fun too.