Jobes sticks/leaching.

Re: Jobes sticks/leaching.

Let's just say that I had a similar "experiment" that went awry that resulted in six inch round "crop circles" of algae on my substrate (no algae anywhere else in the tank) ...

Nothing would get rid of the algae crop circles on the "contaminated substrate" ... I finally removed the fish inhabitants, "planted" water lettuce (a nice obnoxious weed) in my little crop circles and cranked the CO2 for a couple long weeks (so high that there was this "sweet" smell in the room) ... dosed heavy potassium and micro nutrients ... they seemed to suck the contaminants out of the substrate quite effectively ... most of the other plants in the tank survived, some even grew quite nicely ...

Lots of crypt wenditii plants seemed to take care of the rest of it over the course of the next year ...

I don't know whether there is a better answer ... that was just my approach ...

 

Re: Jobes sticks/leaching.

I didn't ... in your case, I would assume that the primary contaminant problem is the amonia nitrate, so I would dose potassium, phosphate and micro nutrients in the water column ...

And if this is done long term, I probably would even consider a little Nitrate in the water column as well ...

Like I posted earlier, I don't know if this is the best answer ... just an approach I tried when I created a similar problem ...

Greg

 

Re: Jobes sticks/leaching.

Routine:

Vacuum the dickins out of the substrate.

Work in 1/4 sections vacuuming and thoroughly clean, pick, preen each plant well, then replant.

Refill tank from the vacuumed water loss, then do another water change(50-70%).

Add dechloro, nutrients back.

Clean filter/equipment.

It does not need a complete tear down, I find that these don't do any better and require a few more hours of time.

The main time spent should be on preening plants and makign sure yoyu work the tank in sections and get everything picked over good.

Then take a net and fluff the tank to get any loose bits.

Regards,
Tom Barr