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Journal My juwel RIO 300 tank

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hi!

This is my juwel rio 300 tank. I don't know if anyone here is familiar with juwel, but it's some starter aquarium kit from Germany. It has a cover, internal filter and weak lighting. It is 120x55x60cm. 92gal.

I had the more or less same setup for like 4 years. 20 days ago, finally I decided to get new soil. The old one was full of mulm and osmocote diy ferts, snail shells etc. It was on sale so I decided to go for it.

Daily dosing, macro diy solution NPK 5-4-27 per week, magnesium 2ppm/week (I saw somewhere to add Mg in mix, but I don't know why I'm doing it since I add it with remineralization). RO 100%, remineralisation with mgso4 and calcium sulphate WC every week 50%.
Micro easylife profito 45ml/week, additionally iron in form of easylife ferro 20ml/week (0,57 ppm/week).

For filtration I have 3 filters, eheim 4+ 600, oase 850 and had sitting around old tetra ex 800 so I added that one also. Filled with fine sponge and cotton.
For additional flow I have stream pump sicce voyager nano. I opt for 1,3ph drop before lights. KH should be 0, and GH around 5-6. Ca:MG is around 3:1.

Lighting aquagrow uniq fs 900 (cca 138w) + jbl solar natur 57w 105cm. 8h per day.

This photo is from yesterday. Plants are growing but are covered with brown algae. I heard it comes from tap and is related to silicates but since I only use RO water I'm not sure about that. On second photo you can see that stuff next to snail doing their stuff. It looks like some small tubes. Ant they are all around the tank. I couldn't identify them but i suppose this is some sort of brown algae. I suppose it will go away with time.

With new soil I didn't change my dosing rutine, nor did I dim my lights. Maybe I should have? I do waterchanges every 4 days 50% for three weeks now.

In tank there are still no fish. I plan to return them today. And maybe to reduce their number. I have like 30 neons, 25 rummy nose tetras, 2 or 3 emperor tetras, 7 cory sterbai, 15 congo tetras, one pleco L129, 2 SAE and like dozen ottos. And one dark blue shrimp I never know when or how got in my tank. I plan to reduce that to lower the poop and feeding. Cause in such tank is difficult to not overfeed some and starve other fish, so probably I put to much food into tank to feed that one cory or tetra in the corner. What's your take on this matter? Should I ditch some of the species or let it be as is. I plan to give away the L129 pleco for sure.

Any suggestions? Do you notice any problems and how to fix them. Stunted amania nasea gold I try to bring back, which was good until I moved her a bit. Or was in shadow for some time. I had cryptocoryne pink flamingo, and it grew great until it got shaded and from then it went bad and died. AR mini was most of the time stunted. Especially if I replanted it. Limnophila aromatica, which i love, just crawls and bends on the bottom and wont grow up (to much light?!).

Sorry for the grammar in advance. xD

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Here are some pic of the tank before the soil change.

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With my phone. Google Pixel 6. I take pictures when near the end of the photoperiod (down ramp), or I adjust brightness/shade on my phone when taking a photo.
Yeah, my phone isn't so bad. I always feel I don't get as rich a color as in your pics, but I keep forgetting my light is an older model with lots of yellow. Also my plants are newer and light green/yellow. So it doesn't look as good.
 
Yeah, my phone isn't so bad. I always feel I don't get as rich a color as in your pics, but I keep forgetting my light is an older model with lots of yellow. Also my plants are newer and light green/yellow. So it doesn't look as good.
Yes. That's most important. 😉

It took me also a while to get that. That lights are not only for PAR but also for fancy looks.
 
when it goes downhill and fast ... :D

21.5. it was like that ... all peaceful and quiet

aaa.webp

Then one day ... 22.6. the auto doser (some from aliexpress :rolleyes:) went berserk and spilled like 500ml micro in the tank ... at first when i noticed the color of the water was a bit off ... like red ... then I heard some noise from the cabinet ...

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I didn't have much time to make 340 L (92 gal) of RODI water, so I changed it with water from pipe ... like 90% ... like 24h after that I produced like 70% of rodi water and did another water change ... and then went on 11 day holiday with my family ... it was the worst time ... on holiday I bought a new lamp (used chihiros 2 pro 120cm to replace two out of three lamps i had back then - wrgb2 slim (92w) + jbl solar natur (57w) 10cm and uniq fs 900 (130w) which had third of the blue died off) ... Now i have 2 chihiros lights (wrgb 2 slim on 90% in the back and wrgb 2 pro on 60%).

From then on everything went downhill ... wanted to save the plants; lots of them melted because of to strong/weak lights, adaptation ... more algae, melting ... it was a spiral ... I tried 3 times from then on with peroxide, algexit, co2 was on max ... tried to dim the light, increase the light ... cyanobacteria ... big water changes ... Had lots of work, so that didn't help either.

even the weediest of plants started to be covered in algae and melt, which I believed to be impossible ... Some fish had died. Dosed bacteria with water changes ...

Maybe I should throw out all the struggling plants and get new healthy ones instead of trying to bring back from the dead the old ones.

I feel like I don't know anything about plants and aquarium ...

I replanted stargrass and ceratopteris to be the "fast growers" in my tank. Co2 increased, ferts like normal, peroxide treatment (210ml/340l) on cyanobacteria ... which resulted in killing bacteria but the also soil (tropica) broke apart on that spots (?) ... that was strange ...

I'm at work now so I'll post some current photo of the tank.

I think I'm getting there, but it's very slow ... There wouldn't be fun if everything was ok.

Sorry for the grammar or chaotic journal ...


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week or two after the holiday

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So frustrating! If you go through some of the recent tank journals here, you'll see there's a lot of fighting the good fight against algae going on right now 😕😕
throw out all the struggling plants and get new healthy ones instead of trying to bring back from the dead the old ones.

It will be a combination of both, wiping as much of the algae as possible from leaves gently with your fingers, especially of your slow growing plants


then as you get clean new growth, trimming away the old damaged leaves 👍👍 some plants you probably want to just pull out and replace as well 😞
 
Also to add salt to a wound three days ago my oase biomaster 850 leaked. :LOL::ROFLMAO: In last 3 day I literally have spent like 8 hours total fiddling with the filter. Is it a gasket, a hose adapter, dismantled everything several times. Found some crack in head cover near bolt. Fixed it with fishing braid. Tried to get a new head (like 140eur/$ for the head?! ... can get whole new filter for that, cause some plastic cracked a bit) but wasn't available in short notice, so yesterday evening again checked everything, put some teflon tape around hose adapter O rings, cleaned main gasket, relubed ... and the leaking stopped. FML ...

Also when came from work the fish gasped cause no water movement and to much co2 in the watter.

Now I'm back on track. :D

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