How To Diagnose Problems in Your Aquarium - Pro Tips from a Master Aquatic Horticulturist

[@Elquinjena]

Bentley helped me a ton by helping me think about what was going on in my tank. By having me do water tests from tap and after 24hrs and seeing all the numbers there being good it really got me thinking about why my tank water was so off. I broke out my master test kit ( everyone who owns a fish tank NEEDS to have one of these for just this reason) and my master test kit showed that my nitrates were low compared to the test strip. I never thought that the test strip might be faulty, but hey it was a test batch of strips. I had my AH HA moment just as Bentley was writing me back. Sometimes you just NEED to be able to talk to another passionate fish keeper to get your mind working on the problem. My family is not into fish so If I tell them i am having problems they just shake their heads and say they are sorry. This does not lead to sleuth thinking, looking over all the clues and going that extra step of checking. Bentley helped me break out of the frustrating thinking cycle i was stuck in.

[@laurabustos6560]

Hey Bentley, hope you and the wife are having a good week! 🙏 I'm just going back through your archives and watching older videos and leaving likes and comments as offerings to the yt algorithm Dieties. ✌️

[@psychedelichippocampus6226]

I just love your channel you are one of the few creators that actually give answers instead of just saying, do your research. Imagine if you, Father Fish and Alex and a few more just answered with that. None of us would be able to enjoy our Fish world adventures. Most of us would only stick with Fish and plants that worked well before and not try anything new.

[@madhatterjones4781]

Yeshe does right another reason why I live Bentley. He responds to comments and wants to help.

[@kerrypitt9789]

Bentley you are so right. You have to start at the beginning, to troubleshoot. Starting in the middle is awful and confusing!

[@kevindigit]

You are so right because you have helped me tremendously, I was experiencing brown algae with my Fluval 3.0 light in my 60 gallon planted tank and after watching your video and learning how to run my light I now have very minimal algae, I was running the 3.0 light @ 💯% and clearly it way too powerful causing lots of algae but after adjusting it like you showed I’m now happy with the results thanks Bentley!👍

[@BentleyPascoe]

Glad I could help Kev!

[@madhatterjones4781]

Yewww thanks for the shout out and awesome video!!

[@jascarty3503]

These videos are a blessing Bentley, myself and others should be learning from this, info info info, keep them coming pal, great content. 👍👌💚

[@lcroszell90]

Definitely one of the most overlooked aspects especially for newer fish keepers, what is new or what have you changed in your tank prior to the beginning of the problem? Awesome video

[@madhatterjones4781]

Yes thank you Bentley thus is great and much needed

[@davefromiowa3843]

Good idea

[@SlickNick3]

Great tips love when you talk unscripted straight from the soul!!

[@Aquadiction]

Great video as usual Bentley, your videos are very helpful since owning a fish room, well done :)

[@asier2001]

Knowledge is a long path for everyone... share, study, test...

[@vampgaia]

Excellent video

[@dirtyoldfarmhand3]

Bravo!

[@jasonvesagie]

Hi Bentley , hope you well . this is my second one , I promise im normal , but its another odd ball one . Can you add bread mold into a food web in an aquarium , particularly for fry , but i suppose to any tank . Will it die under water? ,will fish eat it?, and can it be harmful to fish? . Looking forward to your answer . Thank you

[@BentleyPascoe]

I would be concerned about mold being harmful to fish. Microfauna like paramecium, rotifers, and the like are great fry food. As is green water.

[@Brisanity22]

Hi Bentley...question so I have a 75 gallon moderately planted tank. I use easy green for fertz and I'm at the end of cycling my new tank. As of now I have high nitrates so I've been doing 30 to 50 % water changes every day until they start going down. My question is if I'm doing water changes every day for now do I dose with easy green every time I do a water change or just once or twice weekly like the instructions say? I dont really have algae as of yet. Thanks for your time.

[@BentleyPascoe]

So if you're dealing with really high nitrates what I would try doing is do a big water change save 35 to 50% somewhere in that range. Then don't fertilize for like 2 days and run a test on your water to see what the nitrates read then. If we're seeing like really low 10 PPM or less zero PPM for example then we know like okay dose it a little bit and maybe only do it once a week and figure out that water change schedule it helps bring you back down as close to zero as possible. The tank will eventually settle in and a lot of times when we put fresh substrate in especially if it's a nutrient-rich substrate we try to avoid too much dosing of the water column for the first few weeks while some of those nutrients in the substrate make their way out as we cycle the aquarium and get the plant settled in.

[@Brisanity22]

@@BentleyPascoe thanks a lot. I appreciate your time 🙂

[@zekky1000]

This advice is awesome! But even with this, I have no answer to a thing that is happening to me.. I will propose you a problem I have with one of my fish since I don’t understand what is going on, maybe you can help me! 18 gal tank, heavily planted, 7 neon tetras and 3 Cory catfish for now. Fish entered about 2 months ago. Haven’t changed anything in what I do. One day a neon tetra lost part of the red color on the tip of the tail, 2 weeks have past and he’s still doing good, eating and acting normal, but he lost even more color from that red tail.. it’s almost pink/white now. No other fish have any problem and plants are all great. He also doesn’t act weird nor seem to be bothered from this, but the whitening is clearly spreading even tho very very slowly! Tank parameters: Ph: 6.9, KH: 3, GH: 5, NH4: 0, NO2: 0, NO3: 10p.p.m., Temp 25 (77). I do about 10% water changes every week. Feed varied diet between frozen and dry food.

[@zekky1000]

Anybody got a clue to what is going on? Should I worry? Someone told me it’s an infection and he will die, someone else told me it’s genetics… I have no idea honestly…

[@BentleyPascoe]

This does sound like some sort of bacterial issue

[@zekky1000]

@@BentleyPascoe what is the best thing to do? He’s been living with his mates all this time and I don’t have a quarantine tank.. He alo hasn’t spread the disease yet! I’m hoping he just fights it off on his own honestly!

[@BentleyPascoe]

@@zekky1000 I would look at using a gram negative bacteria killing antibiotic. You'd want to QT though to protect your beneficial bacteria in filters

[@mattphillips6714]

I’m a little horrified that the best form of action here from a so called Master is to use an antibiotic medication.. in the UK you can’t buy antibiotics for anything unless a prescription is granted by a Vet. My first question is you have a heavily planted tank, how much surface agitation do you have. Loss of colour is usually a stress condition brought on by... water condition, tank mates and sometimes a lack of oxygen in the tank, plants at night stop producing oxygen and instead absorb oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. It could be that this little tetra is getting more stressed than the other tetras in the group.

[@stevescarsfish2175]

Smells also. A good health tank smells like just turned over dirt in a garden to me. Rotten eggs smell is bad, usually means ammonia spike

[@BentleyPascoe]

A very good point I missed!

[@jennifermcanany7857]

hi Bentley! is there anyway you can do a video regarding excessive phosphates? I'm new in the planted tank scene and everything seems to be going fine but no matter what I do, I cannot get phosphate levels to budge from 10.0ppm. which I believe has me battling algea/cyanobacteria like teenage acne. I've increased water changes, ran phosphate removing filter media. nothing touches it. (tap = 0.5ppm phosphates) 😢 heavily planted heavily stocked 32.5g.

[@BentleyPascoe]

Can do!

[@kanishkawijewardhana3684]

Is one Ziss bubble biological filter enough 4×2×2 tank.

[@BentleyPascoe]

No, it's not meant to handle that large of a tank

[@patriciapowers3751]

So what is the solution for a systematic issue regarding all of my plants despite very good water parameters ?

[@BentleyPascoe]

Is this happening only when you add new plants? Are established plants having issues? Dying bottom up or top down? These are the questions I'd start with to investigate what our problem is. Shoot me an email: [e-mail]

[@vanschermerhorn7167]

Activ _ Flora Planted Substrate or any other planted substrates , ( Are they supposed to be gravel cleaned ? )

[@BentleyPascoe]

You can yes, if you have a lot of mulm I would at least surface level skim like you would sand

[@errol4bz]

You ya saved me hours and helped me immensely, thanks dude. My plants are turning yellow😳? I’m reaching out😁

[@BentleyPascoe]

Usually all plants going yellow is not enough nitrates available. Are you testing and seeing 0 nitrate? If so, might need to add fertilizer.

[@errol4bz]

@@BentleyPascoe thank Ive up my ferts

[@shadeaquaticbreeder2914]

Do you know why I would have groups of bubbles in the tank without ammonia and there's never been any chemicals in the room other than Prime. I have a powerhead with an air line but bubbles are also on a side that the powerhead doesn't reach at all. Could fish dying cause bubbles without having ammonia or nitrogen actively in the tank? There's almost zero nitrates and the water is very green so I cannot tell if the catfish have died but I've never had dead fish cause bubbles to my knowledge. It's a breeding tub (8'×3') so it just has hornwort, duckweed and dwarf lilies and no glass sides.

[@BentleyPascoe]

there's a lot of reasons why bubbles can happen, an example after dosing many medicines, you will tend to see bubbles almost like a small foam on portions of the water surface. This can also be an area of little/limited churn where some bubbles created for various reasons can persist rather than be burst by water movement.

[@shadeaquaticbreeder2914]

@@BentleyPascoe okay thank you

[@victorb145]

Here's an idea watch videos with a critical I see if you can find something wrong with the video. For example I was once watching a professional video about animals the narrator all of a sudden says. " Beavers are not real mammals they do not hibernate." If something like that pops up you might want to fact-check anything you thought you might have learned before it. I had to find an example from another video because without a finer tooth comb I didn't find anything wrong with this one. It's an odd way to practice critical thinking when it comes to fish tanks but it's also a good way to find a tip or a trick you might not have thought about.

[@simonpidgeon949]

💯👍👍

[@dusk1947]

Excellent Video