Some general questions from a newbie

Hi,

Just joined these forums as I have some questions about my 100L tank, It's only about 7 months and I'm happy with how it's going. It's a planted tank with a school of Cardinals and Harlequins, one lonely show guppy(his mates all jumped out), three Brislenose pleco's (I'm not happy with this number, I'd love to relocate two of them elsewhere), a hoard of red cherry shrimp and some unwanted snails. Filtration is an external canister and lighting is two 39w T5's. I currently do about a 30% water change every week.

My first question would be about snails, I've read a few forums and pages and all have varying degrees of help in getting rid of them, my question is what to do in the smaller tank field, I don't have enough space to get an of the loach's or puffers as they all require bigger tanks. I'm not so keen on adding chemicals as when I tried to combat hair algae awhile ago with chemicals, it wiped out a fairly large portion of my shrimps. booo. Would using snail traps/lettuce be my best bet?

Black beard algae, again, not so amped on using chemicals to get rid of this. A few sites have mentioned using Excel but I've also read this isn't so good for the rest of my community. I seem to have slowed down the spread by reducing my lights to 6 hours a day and halving the daily fish food. Are there any peaceful fish out there that eat this, preferably something that would be fine alone as I know my bioload is probably too high already? The other option I've read is to take everything out and bleach it, whilst this is an option, it would be a major exercise as it would mean uprooting most of my plants, my decorations also have plans attached to them.

Moss. I have a nice cave decoration that has christmas and flame moss growing all over it, so much so that it's tripled in size, I know pruning is the way to go, but every time I do this, I just end up with moss all over the tank, is there a trick to pruning moss and getting all the little bits out?

Last question, I promise, and it's a simple plant ID. I've attached the pics and know the moss and Amazon Swords, what I have no idea about are the little plants I've attached to the decoration and the ground cover, I'd love to know their names just so I know.



Thanks in advance and my apologies if you've answered similar questions(I did do a cursory search).

 

Very good looking tank you have there!

 

Ok.. Firstly enter TOTM !
Secondly welcome !
At most you have a stunner of a tank!!! @Hush

 

Thanks, It's my first attempt at this whole keeping fishies thing. Just wish I could sort out the snails and algae, stupid snails with their living life!

 

I think I Need some advice from you in how to run such a tank! 7 Months and it looks like that !
Tjuffed!

 

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing right or wrong, I can tell you that I started with that ADA soil, a cannister filter and the T5 lights, from there I just put the plants in and fertilized with flourish every third day, 10 hours of light and CO2. As above, I also just do a 30% water change every week and then also add stabilizer and de-chlorinator. That's about it, I tried to make it as simple as possible, feed the fish once a day and peg down some cucumber every other day for the bristlenose pleco's. The only thing I've ever tested for was PH, after the water change, and just add ph up or down to get it to 7. If you'd like to know anything else, pop me a question and I'll try my best to answer it.

 

Love your tank

 

Great tank! Do you know what snails they are?
Snails do apparently add quite a bit to your bio load (might be an algae factor). I struggle with mts in my one tank. NOTHING I do gets rid of them completely. So I thought I would change my attitude towards them. There are some benefits to having snails (depending on type and quantity). One, they love algae, two they love left over food. And if they are Malaysian trumpets they will turn your substrate for you preventing gas pockets. So I now just try to manage their numbers by giving less food, water changes and hand picking them out.
Otherwise you will have to start again, using copper based chemicals, but be prepared to use it more than once, and to remove your fish and plants and cycle your tank again. Good luck!!

 

Malaysian Trumpet Snail .:. Melanoides tuberculata .:. Freshwater Aquarium Snail Species Information Page

 

looks great!

the foreground plant is Glosso.

 

@Hush well well well, i must say that for a person with 7 month's experience you beat some old hands at a planted tank... You have the basis there of a great scape I think but it needs some hardscape in the form of a few rocks or more prominent wood? Looking great, well done!!!

Once they are established you are very unlikely to ever get rid of most snails. They are not all bad. They do help with algae but produce a tremendous amount of waste as well. Try the lettuce/cucumber thing, it works. Cu based chemicals will kill the unmentionables....

Now my best tip: Try and hide your heaters and filter pipes and see what a difference it makes... Try and vreat as natural environment when you look at the tank , it makes a big difference.

Most of all - enjoy the journey!!!!!:blink1:

EDIT: Dropping your water level might help with the guppies jumping....

 

Get about 3 Zebra loaches.....they sorted my snails in about a week. I feed them freeze dried snails (Nature's Grub) now.

 

Skyecloud

Which snails did you have?

 

I had pest snails introduced from the plants. Not sure exactly what species but the real pests that multiply in the hundreds. I also had a few Malaysian substrate burrowers as well....all hitch hikers with the plants. I had tried 2 types of snail killer fluid with absolutely no result at all, then a snail trap also no effect. The loaches sorted it really quickly.