is my idea of no-chemicals good?

trojannemo

well after realizing i had the new-tank syndrome and seeing I was putting a bunch of different things to deal with different things (exactly!) I decided to just cut everything out and simplify it to doing water changes 1 a week and adding only aquasafe and leafzone after the water changes. no more cycle, bacteria, water clarifier, nothing...
tank has looked great but in the back of my mind i thought parameters wouldn't be fine. decided to test the water for ammonia (only test kit i got left) and for the first time since I started in this hobby (january 5, '08) I get a YELLOW color in the test tube
following advice from a friend, I put two filter pads in both filters, also added a DIY bag with filter media to each filter as well as putting fiber cotton on both filters.
i have 3 apple snails, 2 algae eaters and a clown loach (my cleanup crew)
I feed twice a day, little bit at a time, most of my fish eat off my hands so the food never touches the ground.

is the fact that the ammonia [seems] to be at 0 related to the overall way in which i'm treating the tank and not because of cutting back on chemicals? any comments on the way i'm running the tank? i'm still very much a newbie and want to succeed at this but a month ago I got tired of doing 3 water changes a week in a 38G tank!

andysutt

Glad your tank is starting to do better.

I personally don't add anything to my tank other than this:

Aquarium salt,
Stress coat when adding/moving things
Dechlorinator when adding water

When I first set my tank up I used a powder that got your PH to 7.0 whether it was high or low. Since setting it up I havent added it since as it has been fine. Im sure I could have done without that also.

My theory is the less things you add to your water, the better.

I have chemicals for PH up and down and ick and all sorts of things (came with my tank) but I dont use them.

tropical1

to me you are doign the right thing. i had the same problem as you when i strated out about 3 months ago. now all i do is water changes every 3 weeks and put stress coat and dechlorinator in. no m,ore freaking chemicals, bout killed my whole crew with that crap. i have the master kit and test twice a month and everything is wonderful. i learned if you try too hard you just mess everything up with aquariums, lol. just sit back, watch, and enjoy the show. i watch my aquarium more then the tv now, lol.

orb4me

I agree. trying to change what is natural never works. w/c's seem to work magic!!!!

I still want to tx Tommy Gunn for reminding me so very nicly about w/c's when my little tank started getting out of wack.

tony

I think everybody has gone through the phase where you want to get all kinds of chemicals to make sure you have everything you need in case of a problem. I know I did it, I had Ph up, Ph down, stress-coat, stress-zyme, Algae decreasing chemicals, copper-safe, aquarium salt, water-conditioner. Now I only use aqua-safe and salt. Every one of the other chemicals I had only caused problems.

andysutt

Agreed!

Salt and Stress coat when I add/move things around is all I use.

Jay

I could not agree more

BUT...IMO and IME I would rethink the Salt (<- if you mean NaCl)

Regards,
Jay

timl00

salt and conditioner. Less has always been better.

trojannemo

i'll do ya one better....aquasafe only!
it's working so far. it's been a couple of weeks of the water being clear, all parameters perfect and no dead fish or plants! even my snails are coming out much more now, they spend the whole day going over the tank, which i'm very ecstatic about as they had always restricted themselves to going out at night when necessary.

tony

Well some fish do better with aquarium salt, like my mollies and African cichlids.