Take that Nitrate ;-) (6 week test)

[knifegill]

Oh, yeah. Rotting muck is a huge nitrate contributor. Good catch. Hope is comes down now.

 

[BigO6687]

On the side, when I added pothos to my filter box, my Oscar got HITH. There weren't many other factors involved. Just saying.

wikipedia states pothos is poisonous to cats and dogs

it should be the same for fish

if i go this route ill stick to lucky bamboo

 

[Danger_Chicken]

While removing a bubble bar, I caused a cave in. So I went to fix it and notice a metric ton of organic waste trapped under the rocks. So I tore down all the rocks and busted out the vacuum, I removed about 1 cup of gunk. Lord only knows how much is in the sump, I just recently started using filter socks so I still have gunk in the sump.

I hope this gives me an advantage on the nitrate war.

I'm in the nitrate war myself. I replaced my store bought sump with a DIY because of the difficulty in cleaning the sump and the gunk build up. I put powerheads at the bottom of the tanks to help keep that stuff from settling but depending on the aquascape that doesn't always work. I built a settling tank before the sump. It has a drain valve so all the gunk can be dumped once a day via a timer and solinoid valve. I read once the dirtiest part of the tank is the filter, made sense to me so that has been my focus in the battle.

I'm buying a new test kit today. Mine's 3years old and I don't trust the results I was getting when testing last night.

wikipedia states pothos is poisonous to cats and dogs

it should be the same for fish

if i go this route ill stick to lucky bamboo

Check out this link for pothos in the aquarium, lots of pic's.
http://gtaaquaria.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7619

 

[nfored]

My kit is also 3 years old and I am also in question on it. I am so stoked you mentioned a settling, I was thinking of putting one on the back. however I was not going to use it as a settling tank, and the thought of that never crossed my mind. I am going to go Jet lee on the setup and shake out all my bio media in tank water of course and suck all the junk out and then put on the settling tank. Awesome idea.

 

[nfored]

I think this might be a bust. I didn't get a new nitrate kit but I did once again get a reading of 40ppm. I guess both of the previous weeks test where not shaken enough when I tested. I did make discovery though, I went to pull the dead leafs off the yucca plant that was not sprouting root, only to find the plant was dead.

It was all green up top but the large root had died and was only shell when I pulled it out the root came off and feel to the ground; when I picked it up it squished in my hand. So instead of helping it was only adding waste to the water.

 

[epond83]

Yucca plants like to dry out so this would be a bad plant to stick straight in water.

 

[Danger_Chicken]

I think this might be a bust. I didn't get a new nitrate kit but I did once again get a reading of 40ppm. I guess both of the previous weeks test where not shaken enough when I tested. I did make discovery though, I went to pull the dead leafs off the yucca plant that was not sprouting root, only to find the plant was dead.

It was all green up top but the large root had died and was only shell when I pulled it out the root came off and feel to the ground; when I picked it up it squished in my hand. So instead of helping it was only adding waste to the water.

Keep going without the yucca. Make sure your filters are clean so the build-up isn't in there being processed into nitrate. I wouldn't hold myself to the 6 week dead line if I were you. Keep experimenting until you find the right balance.

 

[nfored]

So after seeing the one yucca dead I deiced to check the second yucca that only had 4 roots, and it was just as dead. I can't figure out why the first yucca thrived It had 6 roots all six of those sprouted out like Christmas trees and its thriving. The first one that died had no roots so I under stand why it died, but the second dead one with 4 roots I am puzzled why it didn't sprout more and live.

The only thing I can think of is that for the first 2 weeks I had the first yucca in the tank I was adding dry fertilizer every day. I am thinking that this gave the plant enough of a boost to start growing a new root system, where as the other one had nothing to boost it up. So basically I have had 2 dead and rotting plants and a bunch of muck. I think your right I just need to find away to keep the tank and filter as clean as possible and put more water plants in the mix.

Thanks for your continued feed back. BTW I tried the settling tank but my first attempt is not fairing too well, I will be retrying it again. I just had a great idea how to get my sump to work with zero head, I am just working out how to do the mechanical filtration. Will be posting it in the diy in the next couple weeks.