[Silock]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Yeah, the downside is that you'll soon be wishing they WEREN'T growing like crazy. That's the one drawback of live plants - you can never just leave them like plastic ones. They'll eventually need to be pruned so that you can start the growth process all over again.

Yeah, I'm going to be moving them all to my 30g soon, so I'm happy they're growing like crazy right now.

Keep in mind the nitrites are also poisonous to your fish. Prime detoxifies nitrite just like ammonia so you may want to consider continuing to use it until both ammonia and nitrite reaches 0ppm.

That's what I had been doing, but I did a lot of water changes with it, too (20% daily) to keep the Prime from building up in the water too much.

Another 90% water change? That's too much but I think we've said that before.

Well, I wanted to get rid of as much of the meds as I could before I put the invert back in. Also, since I got the seeded sponge and was changing filter media anyway, I wasn't too concerned about losing my bacteria.

I'm not familiar with the Mag Sponge - is it "seeded" with nitrifying bacteria then? Most of these products have limited use unless they're refrigerated. Seachem Stability is one of the notable exceptions but Stability is also not true nitrifying bacteria. It's more of a bandaid than a "cure".

http://www.angelsplus.com/FiltersSponge.htm

Active Filters: These are taken from our disease-free tanks and contain a large, healthy colony of nitrifying bacteria and other beneficial micro organisms. A healthy tank contains a lot more than just some nitrifying bacteria and our active filters have the other essential mico-organisms. These filters provide an instant-cycle. Read about a test done on them by a hobbyist here. We put them in our fully-cycled tanks for 4-6 weeks prior to selling them, with the sole purpose of providing them to customers. This is a far superior way of "starting" a new tank, when compared to other bacteria starters. We are certain that our active filters work many times faster and better than the next best cycling product on the market. Our tanks do contain red ramshorn snails and they are a possible passenger on these filters. Don't order these if you don't want the possibility of small snails hitching a ride on them.

Came double sealed in water-tight bags, with just a bit of water that it said to add to the tank with the sponge because it also carried tons of beneficial bacteria.

After 16 hours, water params are as follows:

Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10, pH 7.2

So far so good. If this product works, I'll definitely be getting a couple for my 30g, because they're so cheap for a seeded product. I did keep my other filter running (with fresh filter media) for mechanical filtration.

That being said, I cannot say enough good about sponge filters in general. Sponge filters, in general, hold 10-20 TIMES the amount of nitrifying bacteria as traditional floss filters. In fact, you can run a 10-20G tank completely off of a single sponge filter as long as you don't mind that they're not great mechanical filters. I STRONGLY recommend sponge filters, they're awesome.

Is there a way to tell if I've got the lift tube set up correctly or incorrectly? I followed the instructions exactly, and there are bubbles coming out of the top of the lift tube, but I want to make sure that water is actually filtering in through the sponge.

Good luck with the hairgrass. I never could keep it planted using Seachem Flourite. I think you really need to use finer substrate or even sand to keep it from just floating away.

Seachem has a new Black Sand fluorite substrate. That's what I was planning on using.

Have any of the eggs hatched? Mystery snails are not hermaphroditic so they can't just reproduce like other snails. It's much more likely that your brought in common pond snails on your plants. Yes, the Ich meds should have have killed them but I have seen pond snails survive a dip in 25% bleach solution. I've found they're nearly impossible to get rid of so I just thin them out occasionally using a trap I fashioned from a clear plastic salt shaker. Honestly, a few snails are a good thing - they really keep the algae down. You just don't want too many because they are poop machines.

I thought I went over the plants with a fine-toothed comb to prevent them from getting in. I apparently missed one. None hatched yet. The whole reason I got the Mystery snail was because it wouldn't reproduce like crazy. There goes that plan. Do you recommend a loach? I want a clown loach, anyway, and this seems like a good enough excuse to go ahead and get one.