Finally went bottomless

nzafi

Goliath Tigerfish
MFK Member
Mar 14, 2008
2,177
1,236
179
USA
I have a 75gal running a FX5 housing 1 9-10in Rhom. I was struggling to keep my nitrates down by doing 50% weekly water changes. My nitrates were not horrible, but within 1 week they would hit about 40ppm. I only feed him once every 3-4 days. I added a bunch of pothos which helped by reducing my nitrates to about 20ppm in a week. Unfortunately, the light I was using (2 separate lights running about 5hrs a day) was leading to algae. It became a bigger pain to scrub the algae every week than to just siphon 50% of the water. I originally had the lights on 11hrs a day and slowly reduced them to 5hrs a day, but the algae still came.

I have left the plants on the tank, but removed the lights so I am expecting the growth rate of my plants to drastically be reduced. I have no removed 100% of my gravel though, and hope with no gravel it will be easier to keep my nitrates down.

Ultimately, my goal is to have the easiest setup possible. I know I will need to stick with water changes every 7-10days, but just trying to keep my nitrates as low as possible during that time. I have a baby due in 3 weeks and will not have time to scrub algae and other maintenance. A 50% water changes takes me 25-30min max and with a python I can easily just walk away and come back periodically to check on it.

Wish me luck!! :)
 

livebearerfreak

Dovii
MFK Member
Jun 15, 2006
6,634
27
105
34
no where
well i was going to say up the water changes to twice a week but your due soon, so have a friend or husband or family do twice a week water change to help reducing nitrates low..
 

xraycer

Arapaima
MFK Member
Sep 5, 2013
5,383
2,571
203
Southern NH USA
If nitrate is still an issue after gravel is removed, go to Kens Fish and get some Safe. It'll help detoxify nitrate/nitrate/ammonia/chlorine - good stuff. Also, there's Purigen, which you just put into canister and forget about it for around 6 months.

Good luck with baby
 

Daonni

Gambusia
MFK Member
Dec 5, 2012
331
1
18
58
nh
How often do you do clean the fx5?

Sent from my LG-L38C using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 

Pole

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Sep 8, 2013
1,157
3
53
10
Here
train the baby to do it...or what you can do is just continue maintenance.. it only takes a few minutes.
 

BuffaloPolypteridae

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 5, 2013
3,011
7
0
Buffalo
Good luck with the birth!! My cousin just got the news she's got one in the oven, first time that side of the family has had a new baby since the 90s

I would say add a flag tail of appropriate size to eat the algae. Or maybe a BIG pleco that the Rhom wouldn't think about eating. When I would go on vacation, I would drop in a dozen Otocinclus sucker cats, which would be gone by the time I got back (eaten by big bichirs and wolf fish) but managed to clear up the tank before being eaten up.

I would try something similar, if you can't get a BIG pleco or flagtail (I wouldn't try one under 10 inches with that size rhom).

Sent from my DROID4 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 

Drstrangelove

Potamotrygon
MFK Member
Oct 21, 2012
2,693
1,227
164
San Francisco
To go from 20 ppm in Nitrates to 40 ppm in 1 week with a 75 gallon and one 10 inch fish, seems to me that could be over feeding. At 50% protein and only 4 meals a weak, I'm calculating that as feeding 6% of his body weight each meal. A lot of that could be ending up in the substrate, but that's a symptom, not the cause of the issue.

Even if the fish is eating everything, and the meals were spread out to a daily pattern, that's 3% dry weight to body weight per day. That's more than it needs. Of course, this assumes a WC every 7 days. If they are really more along the line of every 10 days or 14 days, then the WC are not frequent enough.

You could reduce the feeding and reduce the amount of protein in the food.

And pothos shouldn't need special lights. Ambient light would work fine or if it's in an unlit room, a single 60 watt bulb would work.
 

nzafi

Goliath Tigerfish
MFK Member
Mar 14, 2008
2,177
1,236
179
USA
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Couple things
1) I vacuum the gravel pretty much every other time I do a water change. I clean all the gravel but does not seem like much comes out of it.
2) I have been cleaning out the FX5 every other month. This is not the cause because I have been monitoring my nitrates every week for the last 8 months and the increase of nitrates from water change to water changes is the same.
3) From posting on this board and other it seems like feeding him every 3-4 days is standard and people see their nitrates do this also. I feed him one jump shrimp or piece of smelt of similar size
4) When I first added the pothos it refused to grow, I only got it to grow b added the lights I bought. I will now see how the plants do without the lights once again, and if I need to, I will add one light for a limited time again.

We will see how it goes :)
 

Drstrangelove

Potamotrygon
MFK Member
Oct 21, 2012
2,693
1,227
164
San Francisco
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Couple things
3) From posting on this board and other it seems like feeding him every 3-4 days is standard and people see their nitrates do this also. I feed him one jump shrimp or piece of smelt of similar size
Yea, that sounds about right. A single jumbo shrimp is roughly equivalent to 3.5-4 ppm of nitrate in 65 gallons of water. A smelt might be more, since smelt can be much larger, although it sounds like you are using the 1 ounce size, so closer to adding 5 ppm. These portions work out to 6% or more dry to body weight. They also of course have extremely high protein amounts (77-83%.) So, indeed, that would indicate large water changes as well.

If the pothos are on top of the tank and the area underneath is blocked from the light above, you should be able to have both the extra light and the reduced light in the tank. Not sure exactly how it's set up, but active growing pothos would certainly help reduce the nitrates. One thing is how large are the plants: larger plants consume and expel more than smaller plants.
 
zoomed.com
hikariusa.com
aqaimports.com
Store