2 weeks after converting my tank

Hi its been two weeks since i changed my substraight to 2inch organic compost and an inch of horticultural sand. I planted it up with about 20 speices.

the tank is 180 litres 40 uk gal, with 2 x 25w t8 one pink one daylight. i have 6 cherry barbs and 4 platies an a pair of mollies.

there was some pearling at first but not so much now, even after a water change any ideas?

the water coulour is very yellow with from the soil and drift wood how long / water changes before clears up?

should i remove my carbon sponge, from my other filter sponges?

thanks sean

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Permalink Reply by Sean Roche on July 29, 2011 at 9:59am

ok thanks very much, i did a nice big water change there and its helped alot more than the smaller changes i had been doing. i might remove the carbon. the other thing i would love to know is when will i start to see oxygen come from my plants? they did it for the first few days but nothing for a week and a half even after water changes.

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Permalink Reply by Sean Roche on July 29, 2011 at 12:46pm

thanks, so i dont have to worry if my plants dont pearl?

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Permalink Reply by 2apes2gp667wr on July 29, 2011 at 2:50pm

No don't worry. Pearling usually only takes place in high light setups with CO2 cranking. As a matter of fact if you try it without a ph controller you will probably drop your ph so far that you run a real chance of killing your fish. Remember each number each way is magnified by 10. So a ph of 6 is ten times more acidic than 7, 5 is ten times more acidic than 6 and so on. Same is true for the other side. Eight is ten times more basic than 7 etc.

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Permalink Reply by Hmoobthor on July 30, 2011 at 11:37am

it takes a couple months to years depending on how big the driftwood is...wc will help b ut tanning do no harm

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Permalink Reply by Claudia on August 2, 2011 at 3:45pm

Hi, Im new to the forum, and I was just about to open a discussio about the color of my water. I convert my 55g tank to dirt exacly two weeks ago and the water is very yellow too, I did got a small pice of drift wood, I have 7 neon tetras 3 mollie ballons, 3 baby guppies and 8 baby mollies, 7 cherry shrimp and I was scare that this might been harmful for them, so Im not going to worry anymore. :)