35
I tore down my planted tank and dirted it today, what's the over/under on adding the fish back?
(mander.xyz)
It's a 20 long. I have 10 white cloud minnows, a few celestial danios and three pygmy cories currently at summer camp in a bucket with a sponge filter. I am trying to decide if I should leave them there and replace a gallon a day or chuck them back in the tank and watch ammonia like a hawk. I have a RO filter so water changes are no problem but I just can't decide which approach is best.
And yes, I know this could have all been prevented with better planning. Let's just stipulate that that ship has sailed.
That's the energy I need! I reused all the fluval substrate for the cap and also about five gallons of original tank water, I did everything I could to drag over a lot of bugs. I'm hopeful that this balances my carbon economy, I've been fighting hair algae and I eliminated everything but low carbon and I don't wanna go to CO2 injection because I'm so so lazy.
I would personally recommend picking up some amanos if you haven't already.
I spent loads of effort balancing my aquarium and it did eventually help some, but then adding amanos really reduced new growth of hair algae. I think they eat it when it is just starting so that it can't grow mature enough to become resistant/unpalatable to algae eaters.