benibachi fulvic grains

[revolutionhope]

hm ive just had a brainwave.. is it possible i am preventing the fulvix grains from working because i packed them together in a double stocking the same as one does with purigen/macropore? i dont understand why pH is rising its about 7 by now. there are no stones in the tank only leaves moss and bee balls....

-edit- this is inside the canister... im just thinkinf maybe it's too dense so water iflowing around it and not through it perhaps???

[jayc]

Fulvic grains are meant to be spread on the substrate. But I don't see why it would not work in a stocking. 

[revolutionhope]

the pack does say substrate or canister.. i am gonna try spreading rhem on substrate now though anyway... worth a try i think

[Disciple]

56 minutes ago, jayc said:

We will make Disciple a convert to BEP one day.

Lol I was thinking about trying it if I ever did get a new set up but I have had so much success with ADA I would keep it going in my current tanks.

[revolutionhope]

56 minutes ago, jayc said: We will make Disciple a convert to BEP one day.

Lol I was thinking about trying it if I ever did get a new set up but I have had so much success with ADA I would keep it going in my current tanks.

"if i ever did get a new setup" LOL you're too funny

[jayc]

17 minutes ago, Disciple said:

I have had so much success with ADA I would keep it going in my current tanks.

Can't argue with that. ADA is a proven substrate. Both are really good. 

[revolutionhope]

Thanks all for your input and advice, especially jayc you have been most helpful with this matter.

Today I plonked a 9 litre bag of cal aqua labs black earth premium substrate (normal size) into one half/side of the aquarium (distracted the shrimp across to one side with treats first of course and shooed away one or two stubborn ones)

The packet mentioned nothing about rinsing, in fact the instructions said little more than words to the effect of  "put substrate in tank and add rocks and plants"

In all honesty it did make the water cloudy but it was not significant and it cleared up within half an hour I'd say - the shrimp didn't seem bothered by it in any way. There was a negligible amount of miscellaneous organic material in the bag

Needless to say I am very pleased with the minimal disruption to the tank and if all is well over coming days andweeks then I would highly ecommend the product to others..

My pH hadn't risen any higher 6.8  from several days ago, I'll watch how it progresses over the following days. I can't imagine there would be any dramatic change with just one bag but hopefully it will prevent any risk of further pH increases. If ammonia and nitrite are still at zero after a fortnight i will hopefully be able to afford to grab another bag to cover the other half of the tank, plus I will still need one more later to have the recommended amount for my tank size.

I must share some happy news -  while pouring in the substrate I disturbed a moult and i thought could there be love in the air?

Lo and behold this evening I discovered I am nowthe proud keeper of a berried bee shrimp! I'm very pleased, it's only been 8 days since receiving them from heavyD and already there is joy. :-)

love n peace

will

[Disciple]

Hopefully they will be ok but I really believe you should have taken all the shrimp out of the tank before putting the soil in. Once the tank cleared up then acclimatized them back in  but seems like every went well. Good luck.

[jayc]

Hmm, a whole 9L bag at once ... I did say add it slowly. 

Monitor ammonia closely over the next couple of days.

[revolutionhope]

2 hours ago, jayc said:

Hmm, a whole 9L bag at once ... I did say add it slowly. 

Monitor ammonia closely over the next couple of days.

i DID pour it in slowly.. it took at least 5 minutes if not more!! :-)

well so far so good, shrimp are behaving normally. just tested ammonia and nitrites are zero, and the pH has actually drifted down by 2 or 3 points to between 6.4 -6.6 woohoo:-) i may not need to get more of the substrate for a while.

cheers again and keep your fingers crossed for me lol

love n peace

will

[jayc]

36 minutes ago, revolutionhope said:

i DID pour it in slowly.. it took at least 5 minutes if not more!! :-)

well so far so good, shrimp are behaving normally. just tested ammonia and nitrites are zero, and the pH has actually drifted down by 2 or 3 points to between 6.4 -6.6 woohoo:-) i may not need to get more of the substrate for a while.

LOL.

5 minutes must have seemed like ages.

 

Only BEP could do that, pour a whole bag into a tank with a mature filter, and still not show any ammonia.

You couldn't do that with ADA amazonia.

And pH is already dropping !! Woohoo.

 

13 hours ago, revolutionhope said:

Thanks all for your input and advice, especially jayc you have been most helpful with this matter.

Aren't I always 

Keep flattering me with compliments. I love it.

[revolutionhope]

1 hour ago, jayc said:

LOL.

5 minutes must have seemed like ages.

it did man

1 hour ago, jayc said:

LOL.

5 minutes must have seemed like ages.

it did man

[revolutionhope]

crap i just realised TDS has gone up from 103 - 130ppm ... time for a WC woops

[revolutionhope]

crap i just realised TDS has gone up from 103 - 130ppm ... time for a WC woops

what would these dissolved solids be?

[jayc]

It's from the Substrate. Without doing tests, it would just be a guess.

But I'm pretty sure that ammonia (nitrogen) would be one of them.

Even if your test kits are not picking it up, Ammonia is still being released. All plant substrates do. It just means the bacteria is doing it's job. But it's conversion to Nitrites and Nitrates will be picked up by a TDS pen. 

 

[revolutionhope]

It's from the Substrate. Without doing tests, it would just be a guess.

But I'm pretty sure that ammonia (nitrogen) would be one of them.

Even if your test kits are not picking it up, Ammonia is still being released. All plant substrates do. It just means the bacteria is doing it's job. But it's conversion to Nitrites and Nitrates will be picked up by a TDS pen. 

 

im not sure be 30ppm worth? I'll test for nitrates tomorrow but i don't expect it would account for more than a few ppm.. i mean there's no way the biofilter could process so much suddenly. i think purigen will be absorbing a lot of it (and that will no longer be TDS)..

[revolutionhope]

another crs is berried today. i guess bep didn't hurt too much then! :-D

[al4n]

There was zero ammonia when i put in a bag of bep into already cycled tank. If there was ammonia it would have been very minimal because my test kit didnt pick it up. All the stock in the tank stayed alive. +1 for bep, good product imo

[revolutionhope]

On 11/9/2015, 4:07:48, al4n said:

 

 

 

 

 

There was zero ammonia when i put in a bag of bep into already cycled tank. If there was ammonia it would have been very minimal because my test kit didnt pick it up. All the stock in the tank stayed alive. +1 for bep, good product imo

 

 

 

 

 

 

yeh im stoked with this gear, pH is rock solid at 6.4 now :-) i should have gone with it in the first place, never going to bother with fulvic grains again that's for sure!

my 2 berried ladies are hanging on. i got rid of that fake seachm matrix rubbish i had in the filter (FUN JOB when it's all mixed in with those little eheim balls arghghh!!)

currently i'm doing a 50% waterchange today (ongoing since this morning, will be finished 20-24 hours after i started lol, fingers crossed that doesn't disturb them at all :-)

falling in love with CRS... woooops bad move i feel a case of MTS coming on...

as for BEP i hope it buffers forever after men.

love n peace

will

Edited November 10, 2015 by revolutionhope

[jayc]

On 10/11/2015, 21:21:18, revolutionhope said:

as for BEP i hope it buffers forever after men.

Another BEP convert. It's a good substrate isn't it. 

Did you only end up using one bag? 

pH 6.4 from one bag is pretty good. At least you didn't need to spend for 3 bags.

 

This post can go as evidence proof for future shrimpkeepers trying to change out their old, exhausted substrate that no longer buffers with Cal Labs BEP. It can be done with minimal impact to the shrimp even without removing them. Although, I'd still suggest being more cautious and adding BEP slowly. Maybe half a bag/day for every 250L tank.

[revolutionhope]

sorry if i'm sounding like a broken record now but i've found my third berried shrimp in there now woohoo!

i can hardly believe my luck i'm so happy with how little impact the BEP has. dumping the bag in like i did had the effect of bumping up TDS from 100 up to 130 as i mentioned but i did a 50% WC with ~85ppm water a couple days after and another 10-15% water change today at 80ppm and TDS is now down to approx 115ppm.

pH steady at 6.5 and no sign of ammonia or nitrites (despite removing 1/3 of my canister filter media which i had thought was seachem matrix but instead crumbles up very easily and raises TDS constantly. :-)

love n peace

will

[[email protected]]

Hi guys, So my substrate in my crystal red tank got exhausted and i switched to regular substrate because i got tired of changing the active substrate. I use ro water with salty shrimp gh. My ph dropped down to 5 ph because of no kh or substrate to buffer the water. I ended up mixing salty shrimp gh kh with salty shrimp gh to achieve a kh of 1 and gh of 5 with a tds of 120 which seems to be the perfect amount to keep my ph at 6.2 without an active substrate. Corner tank guy from youtube recommended fulvic grain to me.  Can i use fulvic grain instead of active substrate ? If i go back to using just bee shrimp mineral gh with ro water and use fulvic grain, will it buffer my water to crystal red parameters? Its a 10 gallon tank. Usually when peoples active substrate gets exhausted , there ph rises, but for me , when i removed my active substrate, my ph lowerd to 5 from 6.2 . What do you guys think? If it does the job, i would much rather change fulvic grain twice a year vs changing active substrate once a year. 

[jayc]

Fulvic grain is not a substitute for active soil. You normally use fulvic grains as a supplement to active soil.

It also doesn't buffer the water, in fact, it would probably lower pH if anything. 

You would also need to use a lot of fulvic grain, which is very expensive compared to a 25L bag of active substrate.

Fulvic grains also don't last very long. They will get exhausted within a couple of months. Which means adding more, and costing more.

And ... you said with exhausted substrate, your pH is dropping. So adding more fulvic grains will only help in reducing pH even more.

What you need is a small handful of crushed corals to keep pH balanced.

 

1 hour ago, [email protected] said:

My ph dropped down to 5 ph because of no kh or substrate to buffer the water.

When was the last time you cleaned your filter media? 

pH dropping that dramatically can only mean that your filter is very old. When beneficial bacteria convert ammonia to nitrite & nitrate, they increase Hydrogen in the water (a byproduct of ammonia conversion), which results in low pH.

Cleaning your filter in a bucket of old tank water will reduce the beneficial bacteria count just a little. Thereby reducing the drastic drop in pH.

 

How old is your substrate? Maybe it is not exhausted, and it's just the filter being uncleaned for a long time.

 

[[email protected]]

Hi Jay, thanks for the reply. I use sponge filters and clean them once a month. My ph was fine when i had active substrate. It was when i removed my active substrate that my ph started to drop. I have regular gravel now and my ph is stable a 6.2 because i keep 1kh in my tank. Do you think i should add crushed coral as well as kh? I dont want to increase my ph. Will the coral atleast keep it more stable? 

What i get confused about is that my ph dropped to 5 when i removed the fluval stratum. This means that the active substrate was increasing my ph from 5 to 6.2. Does this make sense? I thought active substrate lowers ph. I am using ro water with bee shrimp gh. What i understand is, active substrate will lower tap water or water with kh and it will increase and stabilize ro water or water with no kh. Does this seem accurate ?

Edited November 27, 2020 by [email protected]

[sdlTBfanUK]

I think the old saying 'if its not broken don't try to fix it' applies here. If you have a neutral substrate (like gravel etc) and you have managed to get the ideal parameters using GH/KH+ and GH+ mixed, that is clearely the best all round for you and you won't have to change the substrate again at any point in theory so stick with that!

When I filter my water to RO the PH of the water drops to 5-5.5 from 7-7.5 (from the tap). That may be why you got such a low PH reading with the neutral substrate. I don't think active substrate will increase the PH as it buffers by 'absorbing' but to increase it would have to 'release', but I may be wrong........... Try testing the PH of the RO water before and after adding GH/KH+ and GH+ mixed.

I know you are aiming for PH6.2 but don't get too fixated on that as you may do more harm than good with keep altering the PH. My taiwan bees did ridiculously well in PH5-5.5 anyway?

I am a little confused why you want to change anything when  you already have it perfect/worked out? Am I missing something? Are you getting deaths or sick shrimp?

Simon