Long white stringy stuff, what is it ?

4768 Views 9 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Hilde, Jan 23, 2017

Rickie Briana

Discussion Starter · Jan 22, 2017 (Edited by Moderator)

I have a 75 gallon tank that I recently re did completely, I'm about 4 days into cycling it and I have been adding a couple of fish flakes everyday to start building up ammonia, then I am using safe start plus, I run pressurized CO2 at about 3 BBs with EI dosing and 2 t5HO bulbs, I have no algae in my tank at all but I don't know what this stuff is, it's like a white version of bba , it doesn't gross on my very fast growing plants

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dukydaf

· #2 · Jan 22, 2017

Rickie Briana said:
I have a 75 gallon tank ... I'm about 4 days into cycling ... adding fish flakes everyday ... pressurized CO2 at about 3 BBs with EI dosing... I have no algae in my tank at all

Congrats on the restart of the tank... somehow staghorn is growing at a rapid pace. It is known to bloom when there are high organics in the water (such as a new tank with added fish food). It seems to also favor old / damaged leaves, rotting wood … pretty much anything that leaks nutrients.
Best thing is to remove the whole leaf, where impossible treat with Excel or H2O2 solution. In most cases after manually removing it and reducing the organic load it does not persist.

Not that this is the reason why you have algae, but 3 bubbles per second (BPS, is this what you meant ?) for a 75g is too little even with a good reactor. Do you have a drop checker ?

Regards,
duky

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Rickie Briana

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jan 22, 2017

Thanks for the help, the rotting leaves sounds like the reason and fish food since my plants probably went into shock in the process of redoing my tank, I got my pressurized CO2 system very recently, 2 paintball tank I have (20 oz) and got a diffuser drop checker regulator etc.

It's funny that you brought this up because I put in another post I was asking why my drop
checker would never change from blue, I got a batch of some 4dkh and re set up my drop checker, put it directly on my diffuser and it didn't take long to go yellow( this was all today) so I know it's working, then I moved it to the other side of my tank and in a couple hours went back to blue, I thought I had my CO2 to high at 3 bubbles per second, maybe that has been my problem this whole time !!!!!!

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Nlewis

· #4 · Jan 22, 2017

Rickie Briana said:
Thanks for the help, the rotting leaves sounds like the reason and fish food since my plants probably went into shock in the process of redoing my tank, I got my pressurized CO2 system very recently, 2 paintball tank I have (20 oz) and got a diffuser drop checker regulator etc.

It's funny that you brought this up because I put in another post I was asking why my drop
checker would never change from blue, I got a batch of some 4dkh and re set up my drop checker, put it directly on my diffuser and it didn't take long to go yellow( this was all today) so I know it's working, then I moved it to the other side of my tank and in a couple hours went back to blue, I thought I had my CO2 to high at 3 bubbles per second, maybe that has been my problem this whole time !!!!!!

Yeah you definitely need a higher bubble rate. When my 40b was a high light set up my bubble rate was like a stream of bubbles. Do you have something like a power head pushing the co2 around?

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Hilde

· #5 · Jan 22, 2017

dukydaf said:
Congrats on the restart of the tank... somehow staghorn is growing at a rapid pace. It is known to bloom when there are high organics in the water (such as a new tank with added fish food).

So then cycling with pure ammonia would probably be better? I got it at Dollar Tree for $1.

I have noticed BBA decreasing greatly since I switched from flake food to pellet food.

So since you are cycling the tank with Co2 injected is you ph around 7 and kh around 3? If not what is it?

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dukydaf

· #6 · Jan 22, 2017

I would venture to say most new aquariums experience some sort of algae until things settle. Nothing to worry about, focus on growing the plants. Ceramic diffusers and 75g is a tough sell for me. Maybe you can get that drop checker to turn green. Now is the time to experiment, before you add the fish.

Since we are interested in building up the bacterial population for the the aerobic part of the N cycle, I would say ammonia is indeed less messy than fish food. This is not to say that ammonia alone could not create problems. Some algae spores are actually triggered at certain ppm of ammonia. Plus when overdosed and not mixed well it can melt plants.

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Rickie Briana

Discussion Starter · #7 · Jan 23, 2017 (Edited by Moderator)

I have it directly under my spray bar, I have 2 canister filters on my tank and I have pretty good flow, I definitely will switch to pellets from flakes or get some ammonia

So you said ceramic diffusers and a 75 gallon are a tough sell, do u mean u need some sort of inline diffuser or atomic diffuser instead?

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dukydaf

· #8 · Jan 23, 2017

In my opinion the best way to inject CO2 for a large aquarium is using an inline CO2 reactor. If it is the right size for your pump/aquarium you will get 100% efficiency. Since you already have 2 canister filters maybe this is a viable item for your 2-buy list. An inline diffuser is the next best thing but I find them less reliable and there is still some CO2 waste.

Now do you need it ? not necessarily , if you can get the CO2 high enough in your aquarium and not waste 2kg of CO2 in a week then good. Use the method that works for you.

I am the guy who had a reactor on a 7.5g so take what I say with that in mind

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Rickie Briana

Discussion Starter · #9 · Jan 23, 2017

I totally understand what you mean, I'm super knew to pressurized CO2 injection, I got sick of diy and running out every week. Since I'm using paintball tanks an inline CO2 reactor might be the way to go, to get every ounce worth of CO2. I just got this paintball setup recently though, so I would hate to waste this diffuser, paintball tank and adapter. I'll probably end up trying to get a few more months out of the paintball tank and I'll buy a 10 lb tank with a reactor, in aiming for a high tech tank, I already have EI dosing, t5HO lights, plants etc , so I'm not gonna stop until I got it perfect if you know what I mean

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Hilde

· #10 · Jan 23, 2017

There is a knock off inline diffuser on Ebay. Think it was around $15. Ceramic diffuser is a good backup for when you clean the inline diffuser.

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Long white stringy stuff, what is it ?

Rickie Briana

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