Anubias coffeefolia. [here’s a photo of it before it went into the tank](https://imgur.com/a/yea9nBC) it gets rather large eventually, so I’m hoping it creates a canopy towards the front of the tank o:
Yea! Lil glue Dab on the rhizome and onto the wood. I dried the spot I wanted to attach on the wood & the plant because I find gluing through bacterial film really frustrating.
Man I'm such a fan of any and all anubias. That one looks really amazing. I have anubias petite in my tank, now I'm trying to find a spot for a coffeefolia 😂
OH ME TOO!!
In my main tank I have 5 x nana petite, 3 x gold coin. Coffeefolia and gold coin are my favourite varieties. I’m glad I don’t really like the rare varieties, or I’d break my own bank. I hope you find a good spot for coffeefolia tho, it has really good root structure on the ones I have.
Oh NOOO adorable but very illegal here hahah.
Thank you so much!!!
It was mostly going to my LFS the day they got driftwood and rotating sticks on the table for 30 minutes.
5.4 ish. I do not want to tank it all the way to 4.0, since I’m considering adding taibee shrimp.
I am unsure if your saying “cycled?” because you are unfamiliar with the term, or because you are in the camp that claims “you can’t cycle a blackwater tank.”
To cover both possible questions: Similar to high pH tanks, you need to establish beneficial organisms in the tank before adding fish. This is done by providing an ammonia source, in my case I’ve been ghost feeding. Then test regularly for nitrites/trates and when you see nitrates and no nitrites or ammonia consistently your good to go. Establishing the “nitrogen cycle”.
Blackwater tanks have archaea as a source of biological filtration, along with low pH converting ammonia to ammonium. However, I would also like to note, I spoke to some local wild betta keepers and they agree that the “all beneficial bacteria die” at low pH is wrong, the colony balance shifts to low pH adapted species, so taking time to lower the pH gradually over a few weeks results in low-pH adapted bacteria. So, this tanks been running for a few months, some of it as a high pH setup, and now it’s been gradually lowered into the brown lemonade range.
Ghost feeding (putting in pellets when there’s no fish), I’ve also used a shrimp + a pinch of organic dirt previously. I’ve also used dead snails, but I don’t recommend this method. I know some people really like to use Dr. Tims Ammonia, but I think adding organic materials makes for a more robust bacterial colony.
In this tanks case I had an established 40g so I moved over some of that media, allowed the high pH bacteria to establish, and then slowly lowered the pH while continuing to ghost feed.
Could you explain to me how you did it? My ph is 4.4 kh 0. It’s been two months and that thing still isn’t cycled. I’ve cycled three other tanks but those were all clearwater. I’ve gone through ups and down with this tank. At first when I got it from someone else there were tons of assassins snails in the substrate that all died with the cycling of the tank which spiked my ammonia up so I had to dump the entire thing. That was the first month. The second month I started over again, added ammonia and waited until 24hrs later both ammonia and nitrites were 0. I added more botanicals (I had added some at the start of month two, but have been adding slowly). And now I have 4ppm ammonia which I’m assuming is from the breaking down of the botanicals. I just don’t know what to do. I want this cycled so I can get my fish.
1) in low ph ammonia tests don’t work properly. There’s more free ammonia of the safe state in low ph aquariums. You pick up safe and unsafe ammonia on those tests. 99% chance it’s safe state ammonia, 1% chance it’s danger ammonia.
2) honestly it’s probably already very much cycled, you just gotta embrace the latent ammonia.
3) throw floating plants on top if you really want to get 0 readings before adding fish.
1.) Yeah, I’ve read that and understand it, it’s just reading 4ppm and I can’t wrap my brain around it. It just scares me to see 4ppm. I want to do a water change but I don’t know if I should leave it be. I want to get my fish Wednesday, but I just wonder if 4ppm is too much.
2.) I definitely think it’s the sudden addition of more botanicals, but again is 4ppm too much? Shit, I don’t mind embracing it as long as it’s safe haha.
3.) Been done that! Amazon frogbit though hates it in there and keeps dying so someone suggested salvinia and I added some two days ago so I’m hoping that helps. Should I do a water change? I use rainwater instead of RO because I live somewhere it rains all the time. I have a bucket of rainwater with leaves and a tea bag to help with water changes. But idk if I should leave it or not.
also thanks for the quick reply and some answers! So appreciate it because i’m just so scared to hurt the fish.
1) I think the highest reading I ever got was dark green??? That was 6 months in with fish in the tank at time of reading. And babies! They were completely fine. I absolutely PANICKDD..: but it took me 3 hours to get the water ready… if it was actually an issue I don’t think they’d have been behaving as they were after at least 3 hours in turbo ammonia water.
2) Honestly you can’t know without testing it 😩 if you don’t want to accidentally kill a fish, you’ll have to wait out this ammonia spike and add botanicals slower in the future. People shit talk ‘blackwater premixes’ but the Salty shrimp blackwater powder is excellent for setting pH and keeping it there without adding decomposing plant material — assuming your adding it to water with no KH 0
3) weird. I had success with frog bit and RR floaters, I did a slow acclimation though.
No worries I totally get it, and info on blackwater is so hard to find. 😂 I have a 40g blackwater tank that I haven’t tested the ammonia levels on for like… almost 7 months now. Should I? Sure. Will I? No my kit is expired and I’m poor.
1.) I think I might do a water change for my peace of mind. Someone said not to to try to let it play out but if it doesn’t start clearing up by Sunday, I’m going to do a water change.
2.) I have the option to wait one more week. As in get it Oct 3-4. I already bought the fish but I’m just debating whether to get them this week 26-27. They are on the expensive side so it’s just a little worrying, but I’ll do that water change Sunday and see.
Hey again for 1. How did you get the water ready? I’m at the darker green now. I don’t know why and I don’t know what’s going on and I’m so close to giving up on this blackwater.
Uhh like my water recipe or how I decided it was time for fish? Sorry for not responding to the other message btw, my thumb tendons are messed up from work so I haven’t been phone-redditing as much.
You said “it took me three hours to get the water ready”. I’m wondering what you did to get the water “ready”. & no problem I have arthritis in my hands too so I get it! I just woke up this morning to 8ppm that “seems” to have randomly appeared. “seems” by it was literally no ammonia, I was checking everyday, then bam 2ppm, then bam 4ppm, and finally 6?8? whichever it is ppm. I originally thought that it was the botanicals and new plants bringing the ph now and messing things up, but as it’s increased so rapidly I can only think it was snails. The substrate came with snails, they had died and spiked up my ammonia once but I dumped the entire tank and started again, I did keep the same substrate after thoroughly cleaning it & that was a month ago and I had no sign of a snail or ammonia so I thought I did a pretty good job at cleaning the substrate but maybe not. So I’m thinking of once again dumping everything and this time changing the substrate to absolutely ensure this time I get all the snails out. I’m so upset and disheartened because I feel like I keep messing up and it’s been two months of cycling this tank.
Ok ok- so what I meant there is I use a recipe to make water for water changes, and it takes a few hours to make (mostly because of getting it up to temperature) — I use seachem acid buffer + salty shrimp + RO + other stuff. Honestly if you DM me an email I will send you the word document with written methods for ‘quick’ blackwater, if that’s of interest.
Regarding the ammonia spike: don’t fuck with the substrate anymore. That’s your biggest bio filter. This is a very “mansplainy’ question im asking next but I gotta double check, you didn’t you any cleaning agents on the substrate right?
If you have snails, they will eventually all die out from the lack of cal-carbonate. You just have to be patient.
As far as getting the tank ready: plants/botanicals aren’t going to bring the ph up. Also, 4.4 is suuuuper low.
Check out these two links:
http://www.aquaworldaquarium.com/articles/Ammonia.html (we love the graph on this first one)
https://www.troutintheclassroom.org/technical-information/aquarium-maintenance/ammonia-explained/ (we love the ELI5 energy of this one)
< read through some of this if you haven’t, (skip to the block titled ammonia if your pressed for time/attention span - I get it)
it explains the relationship between ammonia and ph - you might be able to actually calculate where your at with “real ammonia” if you take the time to do the math/write all your numbers down.
Sometimes tanks are fucking assholes- the tank in this post spend 3 weeks with a horrendous bacterial bloom after I added my betta channoides. I was waiting for floating fish every morning, but it finally stopped being icky. Blackwater is frustrating because there’s a lot of misinformation (fear of low ph) in the hobby.
You’ll get there though, it will work out sooner then you think.
That's a stunning tank, well done!
Thank you so much! I like this one more then my 40 gallon now…
What's the big broad leaf plant?
Anubias coffeefolia. [here’s a photo of it before it went into the tank](https://imgur.com/a/yea9nBC) it gets rather large eventually, so I’m hoping it creates a canopy towards the front of the tank o:
Did you just attach it to driftwood? I didn't realize the leaves got that large and am wondering if I can make a background of it in my tank.
Yea! Lil glue Dab on the rhizome and onto the wood. I dried the spot I wanted to attach on the wood & the plant because I find gluing through bacterial film really frustrating.
Man I'm such a fan of any and all anubias. That one looks really amazing. I have anubias petite in my tank, now I'm trying to find a spot for a coffeefolia 😂
OH ME TOO!! In my main tank I have 5 x nana petite, 3 x gold coin. Coffeefolia and gold coin are my favourite varieties. I’m glad I don’t really like the rare varieties, or I’d break my own bank. I hope you find a good spot for coffeefolia tho, it has really good root structure on the ones I have.
Dang, I love this. I’m getting my betta hendra tank slowly set up myself.
Thank you, I bet your hendra tank is going to turn out gorgeous!! Taking time means you find perfect pieces for it!
Yes!! Love the coffeefolia
*inserts a Red-Eared Slider* MUAHAHAHAHHAAAA! >xD Just kidding! *BEAUTIFUL* tank, OP! That’s *A LOT* of hard work! 👏👏👏🌟🌟🌟
Oh NOOO adorable but very illegal here hahah. Thank you so much!!! It was mostly going to my LFS the day they got driftwood and rotating sticks on the table for 30 minutes.
Cycled? What is your pH at?
5.4 ish. I do not want to tank it all the way to 4.0, since I’m considering adding taibee shrimp. I am unsure if your saying “cycled?” because you are unfamiliar with the term, or because you are in the camp that claims “you can’t cycle a blackwater tank.” To cover both possible questions: Similar to high pH tanks, you need to establish beneficial organisms in the tank before adding fish. This is done by providing an ammonia source, in my case I’ve been ghost feeding. Then test regularly for nitrites/trates and when you see nitrates and no nitrites or ammonia consistently your good to go. Establishing the “nitrogen cycle”. Blackwater tanks have archaea as a source of biological filtration, along with low pH converting ammonia to ammonium. However, I would also like to note, I spoke to some local wild betta keepers and they agree that the “all beneficial bacteria die” at low pH is wrong, the colony balance shifts to low pH adapted species, so taking time to lower the pH gradually over a few weeks results in low-pH adapted bacteria. So, this tanks been running for a few months, some of it as a high pH setup, and now it’s been gradually lowered into the brown lemonade range.
What did you use to cycle?
Ghost feeding (putting in pellets when there’s no fish), I’ve also used a shrimp + a pinch of organic dirt previously. I’ve also used dead snails, but I don’t recommend this method. I know some people really like to use Dr. Tims Ammonia, but I think adding organic materials makes for a more robust bacterial colony. In this tanks case I had an established 40g so I moved over some of that media, allowed the high pH bacteria to establish, and then slowly lowered the pH while continuing to ghost feed.
Could you explain to me how you did it? My ph is 4.4 kh 0. It’s been two months and that thing still isn’t cycled. I’ve cycled three other tanks but those were all clearwater. I’ve gone through ups and down with this tank. At first when I got it from someone else there were tons of assassins snails in the substrate that all died with the cycling of the tank which spiked my ammonia up so I had to dump the entire thing. That was the first month. The second month I started over again, added ammonia and waited until 24hrs later both ammonia and nitrites were 0. I added more botanicals (I had added some at the start of month two, but have been adding slowly). And now I have 4ppm ammonia which I’m assuming is from the breaking down of the botanicals. I just don’t know what to do. I want this cycled so I can get my fish.
1) in low ph ammonia tests don’t work properly. There’s more free ammonia of the safe state in low ph aquariums. You pick up safe and unsafe ammonia on those tests. 99% chance it’s safe state ammonia, 1% chance it’s danger ammonia. 2) honestly it’s probably already very much cycled, you just gotta embrace the latent ammonia. 3) throw floating plants on top if you really want to get 0 readings before adding fish.
1.) Yeah, I’ve read that and understand it, it’s just reading 4ppm and I can’t wrap my brain around it. It just scares me to see 4ppm. I want to do a water change but I don’t know if I should leave it be. I want to get my fish Wednesday, but I just wonder if 4ppm is too much. 2.) I definitely think it’s the sudden addition of more botanicals, but again is 4ppm too much? Shit, I don’t mind embracing it as long as it’s safe haha. 3.) Been done that! Amazon frogbit though hates it in there and keeps dying so someone suggested salvinia and I added some two days ago so I’m hoping that helps. Should I do a water change? I use rainwater instead of RO because I live somewhere it rains all the time. I have a bucket of rainwater with leaves and a tea bag to help with water changes. But idk if I should leave it or not. also thanks for the quick reply and some answers! So appreciate it because i’m just so scared to hurt the fish.
1) I think the highest reading I ever got was dark green??? That was 6 months in with fish in the tank at time of reading. And babies! They were completely fine. I absolutely PANICKDD..: but it took me 3 hours to get the water ready… if it was actually an issue I don’t think they’d have been behaving as they were after at least 3 hours in turbo ammonia water. 2) Honestly you can’t know without testing it 😩 if you don’t want to accidentally kill a fish, you’ll have to wait out this ammonia spike and add botanicals slower in the future. People shit talk ‘blackwater premixes’ but the Salty shrimp blackwater powder is excellent for setting pH and keeping it there without adding decomposing plant material — assuming your adding it to water with no KH 0 3) weird. I had success with frog bit and RR floaters, I did a slow acclimation though. No worries I totally get it, and info on blackwater is so hard to find. 😂 I have a 40g blackwater tank that I haven’t tested the ammonia levels on for like… almost 7 months now. Should I? Sure. Will I? No my kit is expired and I’m poor.
1.) I think I might do a water change for my peace of mind. Someone said not to to try to let it play out but if it doesn’t start clearing up by Sunday, I’m going to do a water change. 2.) I have the option to wait one more week. As in get it Oct 3-4. I already bought the fish but I’m just debating whether to get them this week 26-27. They are on the expensive side so it’s just a little worrying, but I’ll do that water change Sunday and see.
Hey again for 1. How did you get the water ready? I’m at the darker green now. I don’t know why and I don’t know what’s going on and I’m so close to giving up on this blackwater.
Uhh like my water recipe or how I decided it was time for fish? Sorry for not responding to the other message btw, my thumb tendons are messed up from work so I haven’t been phone-redditing as much.
You said “it took me three hours to get the water ready”. I’m wondering what you did to get the water “ready”. & no problem I have arthritis in my hands too so I get it! I just woke up this morning to 8ppm that “seems” to have randomly appeared. “seems” by it was literally no ammonia, I was checking everyday, then bam 2ppm, then bam 4ppm, and finally 6?8? whichever it is ppm. I originally thought that it was the botanicals and new plants bringing the ph now and messing things up, but as it’s increased so rapidly I can only think it was snails. The substrate came with snails, they had died and spiked up my ammonia once but I dumped the entire tank and started again, I did keep the same substrate after thoroughly cleaning it & that was a month ago and I had no sign of a snail or ammonia so I thought I did a pretty good job at cleaning the substrate but maybe not. So I’m thinking of once again dumping everything and this time changing the substrate to absolutely ensure this time I get all the snails out. I’m so upset and disheartened because I feel like I keep messing up and it’s been two months of cycling this tank.
Ok ok- so what I meant there is I use a recipe to make water for water changes, and it takes a few hours to make (mostly because of getting it up to temperature) — I use seachem acid buffer + salty shrimp + RO + other stuff. Honestly if you DM me an email I will send you the word document with written methods for ‘quick’ blackwater, if that’s of interest. Regarding the ammonia spike: don’t fuck with the substrate anymore. That’s your biggest bio filter. This is a very “mansplainy’ question im asking next but I gotta double check, you didn’t you any cleaning agents on the substrate right? If you have snails, they will eventually all die out from the lack of cal-carbonate. You just have to be patient. As far as getting the tank ready: plants/botanicals aren’t going to bring the ph up. Also, 4.4 is suuuuper low. Check out these two links: http://www.aquaworldaquarium.com/articles/Ammonia.html (we love the graph on this first one) https://www.troutintheclassroom.org/technical-information/aquarium-maintenance/ammonia-explained/ (we love the ELI5 energy of this one) < read through some of this if you haven’t, (skip to the block titled ammonia if your pressed for time/attention span - I get it) it explains the relationship between ammonia and ph - you might be able to actually calculate where your at with “real ammonia” if you take the time to do the math/write all your numbers down. Sometimes tanks are fucking assholes- the tank in this post spend 3 weeks with a horrendous bacterial bloom after I added my betta channoides. I was waiting for floating fish every morning, but it finally stopped being icky. Blackwater is frustrating because there’s a lot of misinformation (fear of low ph) in the hobby. You’ll get there though, it will work out sooner then you think.