No water changes? Plants do the job...

Are you running a pre-filter on your canister? On the intake I have open cell sponges, this greatly reduces canister maintenance.

On a side note ... bacteria/enzymes are not magic - they just add to the system. To get them to be helpful, good aeration. In the end the real key is a well planted tank, with a mix of slow growers and others that need regularly removal / trimming. One needs to export some of the mass at some point, be is cleaning your filtration or trimming plants. A WC has the ability to be a bit of a reset to a baseline - all depends on volume. A big change in TDS from what I have seen is more of a problem than one would expect, especially on older eco-systems. Plants are easier to recover than dead fish, so always think about your fish etc first.

Later Ferdie

 

Good morning,

Yip, running a diy pre-filter as of about 3 weeks ago. Dropped a ball inbetween two sponges. Where it simply disappeared.

Thank you, giving it about a week and will then see how things are progressing.

 

i've been thinking about this lately.i've got a low/no tech system.5 foot tank with x4 angels.vallis,anubias and some java fern and moss.the anubias are growing at a snails pace but they are still outgrowing my vallis which i find strange.they spread with runners but get no higher than a couple centimetres.could it be my weekly 25% water changes.thinking i should try just top ups for a while and see how it goes.sorry to hijack