grrrrrrrrr

Yah, that's how I feel. So frustrated with my aquarium. Just when things seem a bit better, disease strikes again which I am sure is due to some mistake on my part. I keep trying to think what I have done to get things in the right direction again, which this little blog record helps with, but not completely. Lately I changed the light bulb, lowered the hours back down to six, brushed algae coating off with toothbrush, quit vaccuming with the new trumpet snails, and started dosing half the recommended amount of plant ferts once a week- after the water change. Half the amount, because my plant growth isn't that thick yet.

Good news is, the plants seem to be responding to that. The leaves are no longer yellowing, but they do have pinholes- I think the snails are eating them. I have baby trumpet snails! I've seen at least seven, sure there are plenty more. The java fern and crypt wendtii are sending up new leaves- java fern growing fast. The watersprite might be doing better- the leaves actually look wider, not so thin and spindly now. And today I saw to my delight that three of my aponogeton have new shoots coming up- and once they emerge, they do grow fast- although the largest plant has two older leaves decaying now, before they had reached full growth I hoped for. None have ever yet grown as large as the leaves the plant had on it when first arrived. But I'm thinking that was the algae smothering... So.

I think I need to keep dosing the ferts- and maybe add some that provides liquid CO2. I've read of low-tech tanks having good results with that, plus it kills off the algae. Must read more first... Also perhaps I should add a few root tabs again, at the base of the smaller aponogeton and the smaller crypt- one has taken off, the other is not doing as well. I bet some of the deficiency came about because I did so much gravel vac when the tank had ich- it pulled out black clouds of the root tab material.

But now I'm due to go through that again. There's definitely a new ich outbreak in the tank. I can't really see the dots on the new fish- for some reason they don't seem to show up on the paler, blue flanks- or maybe they aren't as badly infested yet. But I saw one platy flashing over and over against the airline tube today. Several female barb have visible spots on them, one of the males- Buster- was flashing a lot too, against driftwood and plant leaves. I'm still raising the temp- it's 82° now- and doing daily water changes- will start gravel vac tomorrow. Don't know what else to do at this point.

I have kept the air running through sponge filter for now, because of the raised temperature, but think that when this is done (ich battle) I should turn that off. Turns out that in a low-tech system air stones actually remove CO2 from the tank faster than the plants can use it- so it does more harm than good. I think I am understanding this right. But think back- perhaps the plant decline began when I added the airline and sponge filters? I could easily just set the sponge filter in there to gather good bacteria in case it is needed in a quarantine tank... without running the air...

Still trying to solve so many problems.