Strange, potentially dangerous problem with my tank

[nj2tou]

Hey Guys,

I set up a tank a couple of weeks ago, wanting to make it really nice for the cories that I've fallen in love with. It's a 15 gallon that I've set up with sand substrate, driftwood and live plants. I have two 6 gallon Eclipse tanks, one with eco complete substrate, the other with smooth gravel, driftwood and live plants. I've never really had any problems with these two tanks, but my new tank has something worrisome going on with it.

One of the pieces of wood has developed a very strange coating on it - it looks like maybe fungus. I don't know what it is, but I can't imagine it's something good! The wood in my smaller tanks had been boiled to remove the tannins, but since moving, all my pots are packed away ... somewhere... and instead I put the wood in a big bucket and used scalding hot water from my tap to soak it. The water really is scalding hot out of the tap - I've burned myself a couple of times. I'd change it twice a day for a week and then once a day for another week or so, until the water wasn't very brown anymore.

The other pieces of wood are fine, although one of the other small pieces, the same grapewood as the really bad one, has some on it, but not as bad. I have two much bigger pieces of mopani wood that are unaffected. Could it be that my filtration is not strong enough? I have a power filter rated for a 5-20 gallon tank. Probably should have gotten the 10-30 gallon one, but since I also plan on putting my betta in there, didn't want an overabundance of action going on. I don't know.

My anacharis is also doing terribly. I'm sure the lighting isn't strong enough, but it's doing great in my little tanks that only have an 8 watt bulb in them, although that probably works out to 1.5 watts per gallon, with all the decorations etc, taking up some water space. I really want to upgrade the wattage on the 15 gallon anyway, as it's only 15 watts right now.

So if anyone can give me some advice I'd greatly appreciate it! Here are some pix of what it looks like.

[Richard B]

Ooooooo - that doesn't look very nice!

However i think that 'looks' is the only issue here - the fungus on the wood is not likely to be problematic to your fish. This is probably due to the wood not being an aquatic wood - bogwood, redmoor wood & mopani wood don't really suffer with aquatic moulds or fungus - whereas pieces of driftwood & grapevine are not intended for aquatic use & can suffer in this way.

You could take it out & scrub it if you wished but there is the chance of regrowth as spoers will be evident in the tankwater

[wrasse]

Its certainly very unattractive, it looks like decay on the wood. And the plant appears to be doing something similar. I'd remove them and all traces of it from the tank. Be careful if you use a syphon!!!
Soak the wood for longer. A lot longer. Scrub it clean and use an aquarium fungiside in the soaking water. After that soak it again in aquarium water. If it come back like before, put it down to experience... and chuck it!

[Farid]

hi ,
as far as i know grapewood looks really nice but is not a good idea to put into the tank!!! why? i dont really know ...but no one in the swisforum who hd the idea ever left it in the tank!

best is to get a tropical wood!

farid

[hydrophyte]

A small amount of that kind of growth is normal on "mopani" and other hard tropical woods used in tanks, but you have a great deal more growing on that piece. It is generally not a good idea to use grapewood in water. It just starts to rot right away and foul the tank.

[apistomaster]

I collect much of my aquarium wood from local streams where I can usually find it already water logged. It isn't unusual for new pieces to become covered with fungus if it isn't properly prepared prior to using it in my tanks. Once it has come in from the cold waters to the warmth of the aquarium water, the mold will often take off like it did on your wood.
I find the best thing to do is to pressure wash the wood and scrub it down with a wire brush. Then I scrub it down again but this time I use straight household bleach but don't use the scent varieties. Allow the wood to dry then rinse and scrub it well again. Repeat the bleach scrub down again and allow it to dry a few hours then rinse it thoroughly. This method has worked well for me and it is easier than trying to boil it. The bleach will penetrate deeper into the wood thus killing the fungus hyphae better.

Not all wood is suitable for aquarium use. Some of the softer wood, especially when collecting your own, will have a spongy consistency. This wood isn't ever suitable for aquarium use. The best wood will be non-coniferous hard woods from trees and large shrubs. In my area most of the wood I collect has been cut down by the Beavers. They prefer fairly hard woods and they eat all the bark off the wood. You do not want to use any wood with the bark still on it. The Beavers also gnaw all the tender branches off it until only the hard and inedible wood remains. The gnawed ends look much more natural than if you were to saw off the branches. It just takes some time time to collect suitable sized water logged pieces but can be done at any time of the year so it is something to do on a nice winter weekend. I find most of the wood in small bays or side ponds connected to the reservoirs by culverts. I let nature take it's time to water log all my wood before I collect it. The best pieces will be very heavy and dense.

[nj2tou]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to say thanks for all your help. I removed the "offending" piece and will give it a good boil or bleach when I get the chance. Do you think soaking it with fish fungus treatment would do any good? I know this type of wood isn't really meant for tanks now, but it's been in my other two tanks for some time now, after having been boiled for several days, and is fine. I may not bother putting it back though, as eventually it may rot or something. I'll look for another piece of mopani that I like. It's a shame, because grapewood is so cool looking, with all the gnarls and different colors. More important to keep my tank safe and problem free though!

thanks again!

[MatsP]

You could always add a bristlenose pleco to keep the fungus at bay - they seem to relish it.

--
Mats

[wrasse]

I have used small branches of beech wood which I found lying on the ground, the bark already had pealed off it. Despite soaking and cleaning, it developed fungus so I treated the tank with a part dose of aquarium fungus medication and it worked. But then beech is one of those woods that's safe to use.

I wouldn't normally advocate using any medication in a populated tank, if the fish are healthy. But after I'd attached java fern to the wood and aquascaped the tank, I didn't want to dismantle it all and start again.

The fungus on your wood looks particularly ugly. If you really like this particular piece, it might be worth leaving it outside for a year - subjecting it to the weather - then try it again.

[nj2tou]

Well, I'm pretty upset right now. Something is really wrong with the tank and I don't know if it's just the fungus. The tank appears to be cycled, as ammonia and nitrites are 0. Haven't checked nitrates lately. It's a 15 gallon, sand substrate, with a ton of plants, most attached to wood. Don't have a KH/GH test kit, so don't know what they are. PH is around 7.4-7.6.

It always seems to be a bit cloudy, even after a water change - is that the fungus in the water column? and one by one my precious little pandas are dying. :( I don't see anything physically wrong with them, I just go to count them (I started with 8) and one by one, one is "missing". I'm down to 3. One died yesterday while I was doing my water change. He was acting funny when I got him out of the tank - I take them all out and put them in a critter keeper while I work on the tank, something I've always done with my betta tanks. By the time I was ready to put them back, I watched him give up the ghost.

I don't know what's wrong. I don't know if I should treat the tank with a fungus med, or what. I pulled all the wood out, as even the mopani wood started getting some fungus and decided to soak it all in a bucket with Jungle fungus clear and giving them a good brushing with a steel brush before and after. Was that a good idea? I'll probably boil it next. What should I do with the tank? I'm tempted to dump it all and start all over. I'd rather not, of course.

HELP!

[Mod edit: "Disable Smilies on" --Mats]

[MatsP]

If the pH is 7.4 then you do not need a KH/GH test kit, because you are "fine" on the KH/GH (of course, you may want have a test-kit to find out what the values are, but not to find a problem - it's just a waste of money and effort to measure KH if the pH is above 7).

I _never_ take fish out of the tank to work on the tank, unless I'm draining ALL the water of the tank, which is something I do very rarely - aside from moving tanks, I can't actually remember when I took fish out of a tank to put them back in the same tank again - probably a photo session or some such. [Obviously not counting catching the "wrong" fish and putting it back again when trying to catch other fishes]. Being caught is stressful for the fish, and should really be avoided as much as possible.

What temperature is your tank? Panda corys are pretty well known to dislike warmer tanks - anything above 75'F is probably a bit on the high side.

And finally, none of the above may be the actual reason your fish are dying - these are just good maintenance/husbandry tips for aquaria in general and panda corys in particular - you may well have a disease or something else wrong in your tank.

--
Mats

[RickE]

Reading back through your posts, it looks like your tank is only 3-4 weeks or so old? If so, there is no way it's fully cycled by now. Chuck in some 'rotting' wood to overload the sytem and ... I think in this case your water test results may well be lying to you.

[nj2tou]

I forgot about the temp - I keep it around 74 degrees. I know cories like it cooler than tropical fish.

As far as taking out the cories before cleaning, yeah, I know most people don't even think of doing that. I started doing it with my betta tanks, as I found it less stressful than pulling out stuff from the tank, unintentionally chasing him around with the syphon, having him slosh around when I put the fresh water and whatever I removed back in, and then having to live through whatever I kicked up into the water before it all settles. I also like to get the temp stable again. I heat the water to as closely as it was in the tank, but still... I would cup him out, not net him and gently put him (them actually - separate tanks) in the container. I'd cover him up and he'd rest quietly until I was ready to return him to the tank. Then I'd syphon some water out with a turkey baster, put some fresh tank water in, let it sit and do this a few times and then gently slide him back into the tank. I did this for several years. As for the cories, I don't chase them around the tank, I just slowly put the net up to them and let them swim in. Then I let them rest covered up while I work.

As far as my new tank is concerned, I don't know if I should dose it with something or what. I know that will screw up my cycling, but I bought a bottle of Dr Tim's One and Only yesterday (the stuff I had cycled the tank with) in case it was deemed necessary to medicate. I'm not sure WHAT to medicate though! I don't know if I should just start over again or what! Would the fungus on the wood cause them to die? I never saw any fungus on them, but if they ingested it or something, maybe they had an internal problem I couldn't see.

Did I do the right thing by soaking the wood in Fungus Clear? I'm probably going to boil it today as well. The two Mopani pieces are beautiful and I really want to use them.

So - dose the tank or start over??

[MatsP]

Well, if you are going to dose the fish with something, you first need to figure out what is wrong with the fish - there is no point in putting medication in against internal bacterial infection if the fish are ill with gill-flukes. Neither will gill-fluke medication work on a internal infection. And of course, there are probably another dozen or so different illnesses/cures that do not do any good (and possibly bad) on some other disease.

Starting over should never be the right thing (unless you are 100% sure that there is something wrong in the tank itself).

As to whether your fungal medication has anything to do with it... I got the impression the problems started before you added fungal medications? If so, I'm not aware of any medication that works (whether as intended or side-effects, e.g. killing sensitive fish) before you've added it. If it all started when you added the anti-fungal stuff, then I'd say "Pull the wood out" and do large water change

Actually, "do large water change" is nearly always a good idea when it comes to ill-health fish - 50% or so. I wouldn't worry too much about matching temps either - as long as it's not FAR off. When it rains, the water IS cooler.

--
Mats

[wrasse]

RickE is most likely right - your tank is not cycled. Cloudy water usually means a 'bacterial bloom'. All the organic stuff thats now in the tank... fish, plants, wood, etc, its too much for your filtration to handle at this point. Remove the fungused wood and any sick looking plants, but leave the fish. Do large water changes twice a day if you can and keep doing that until the water stays clear.
The fish are stressed enough, sounds like you might lose more of them, but moving them the way you do is even worse. Whenever you do maintenance on a tank the fish will keep out of the way without any assistance.
Apart from dechlorinating your water, try not to reach for the medicine bottles and be patient. Your fish just want fresh clean water conditions, not chemicals.
By all means treat the wood separately, but don't rush it. Let your tank recover.

[nj2tou]

I didn't medicate the tank. I did water changes. It was just the wood I pulled out. I gave it a good brushing, soaked it both with and without the fungus clear and now I'm boiling it.

The cloudiness is just a slight haze. Some of it seemed to be from stuff on the glass, which I wiped away during the water change. Right now their is just the faintest cloudiness. Not sure if it's also stuff on the glass. I'll do a water change in a little while and give the glass a wipe.

As far as medicating, I know, you need to know what's wrong before you medicate the fish. I wanted to know if the fungus on the wood would be the culprit. I'm not showing any signs of illness before I find one dead. The only one that I saw in distress was the one that died yesterday. He was lying on his side, but still breathing.

They all seem fine, swimming around, eating, etc. I feed them a concoction of frozen foods - bloodworms, glassworms, mysis shrimp and spirulina brine shrimp in the morning and Hikari sinking wafers at night. They gobble it all up.

I have an API master test kit, which I've always used, so I don't think my readings are wrong as far as ammonia and nitrite. I did have some ammonia and nitrite when I first put the fish in, but I used two bottles of the Dr Tim's stuff - the first when I first put them in and the second after a big water change the following week(with daily smaller ones in between) and had none after that. I guess I'll just have to do daily water changes until I get this cleared out, unless there are some other ideas. sigh... I'm just mad at myself that I didn't take the wood out at the first signs of the fungus (wasn't sure what it was) and then pow! it got like that! I took pictures of it to show you guys and then got it out of there. I hope I can get this figured out - fast!

[apistomaster]

I so agree with MatsP about never removing your fish when working in their tank. That is so unnecessary and so stressful to subject them to capture than just temporary alarm while you carry out your work.
Everything points to your tank not yet being fully cycled. The amount of time it take to cycle a tank is dependent on many variables and some of us use tricks which allow is to essentially start off with nearly fully functional systems right away while some variables delay the time it takes for a tank to become cycled much longer than average.

I would also forget about medicating your way out of this problem. if you have another tank which has been running smoothly for a long time you may want to use the water you remove from it during routine water changes as replacement water in the Panda Corydoras tank.
Another thing I would do is add a fast growing species of plant in quantity. Ceratophyllum submersum, the Tropical Hornwort, would be my choice. This plant does not grow roots and does best left free floating where it grows just under the surface. Leave your lights on long. It need a lot of light to grow fast. The idea is to have a plant that soaks up the excess nitrates and other wastes which are fertilizers. This adds ecological complexity which in turn tends to change conditions away from those favorable to the growth of bacteria clouding your water and discomfiting your fish. The plant added in quantity will also introduce more bacteria that promote tank health as opposed to those presently continuing to aggravate it.

If you can't find this species of Hornwort then you should be able to find Egeria densa being sold as "Anacharis" at nearly every fish shop. It will do well in water less than 78*F so 75*F for the Panda Corys is good. Same idea, add plenty, 3 or 4 bunches and supply a lot of light. The Egeria densa does produce roots but may be grown both rooted and free floating. Rooted plants will probably take off faster in your situation. This means planting fresh cut ends without roots into the substrate. New roots develop rapidly. Do not plant it as a bunch. It is often bundled into a bunch with a lead wrap weight. Plant stems separately and do cut them fresh ended above where the weight wrap was placed. Look for very green healthy looking bunches not loosing a lot of leaves or any having pale appearance. Buying some as soon as it comes in is the best way to avoid bad quality specimens. Both of these are normally cheap plants and will help accomplish the completion of the tank cycling faster.

Good luck.

[2wheelsx2]

I would elaborate on Larry's post by describing the lighting as below:

By long, I don't think you should leave your lights on for more than 10 hours a day. Extending the photo period does not make up for lighting inadequacy. In a standard 15 gallon, you'll probably need about 25+ watts of T5 or PC lighting for 8 hours to get good plant growth.

Two other plant species which are hardy and grow fast are watersprite (Ceratopteris thalictroides) and Water Wisteria (Hygrophila difformis). The added bonus is that watersprite can be floated, which can provide shade for your catfish and yet still absorb lots of nutrient from the water column.

[apistomaster]

I think 10 to 12 hours is a good range for these plants but as much as I like water sprite and wisteria they are not my first choices for this person. The latter plants can take a little longer to take off. Fast is best initially. If you add some of all 4 plants initially that would also be a good plan. Some plants will do better than others for each of us so a little more diversity is not a bad idea. You can't predict which plant will adapt the best and fastest in a given tank so it doesn't hurt to cover your bets. These are all inexpensive hardy species which are well suited as "pioneer" plants for an evolving ecosystem which is essentially what every newly set up aquarium is.

[2wheelsx2]

I agree on the plants with you Larry, I guess it's just that I don't like Anacharis or Hornwort very much (asthetically speaking) But by all means, the more plants the better, in the setup stage, if the desire is to bypass the cycle (or minimize it).

I also should probably divulge that my tanks are high tech with the exception of one, and I'm running 65W of PC lighting on a 20 gallon (CO2 injection), and 28W of T5 in a 15 gallon breeder (24" long dosing Flourish Excel) so I'm not the average catfish person when it comes to lighting intensity. I manage the light by having overhanging plants (Jungle Vals, Java Fern and Anubias) and wood, to give the fishes shade.

[apistomaster]

I assumed our friend is a neophyte not running high tech lighting and O2 systems so I recommended widely available basic and easy plants and primarily to move beyond the immediate problem so things become enjoyable and are no longer a stressful problem asap.
I don't have any high tech tanks as far as lighting and CO2 systems. I am too lazy and cheap. I am secondarily an aquatic gardener.
When I want to, I am pretty good at growing plants but my tanks are mostly set up in very utilitarian fashions to minimize the work load and accommodate my laziness and still produce a lot of fish.
I adopted T-5 NO lighted as my standard because they are very efficient with low operating costs. I did buy 2, dual HO T-5, 36" for my 125 gal wild discus tank but only one lamp per fixture is good so I run it at 50% of it's potential and only used Anubias attached to the wood for my plants. Wild Discus don't really care for strong lighting all that much.

[2wheelsx2]

Yep, it's good advice Larry, and a good approach. My 125 is CO2 injected only because I want the growth to help with nitrate management initially. After it grew in, I liked it so much I kept it up. It's lit only with 3 NO 36" Coralife fixtures, so is probably comparable to your setup. The 4 rig set up gives me more flexibility in that I can get the banks of light to come on and off at different times, simulating twilight and dusk. I run all 4 banks only 5 hours a day, and am only using minimal CO2 (about twice the amount in my 20 gallon).

Anyway, back to the original topic, I do think that some plants will definitely help, as it seems the consensus is a cycling problem.

[nj2tou]

hey guys,

Thanks for all the input. I have a TON of plants in there - anacharis, anubias, java fern and java moss. I don't like water sprite. I had it in my other tanks and the big plants died off and all I was left with are all these litle plantlets that multiply like crazy and cover the water surface. I'm contstantly netting them out and dumping them. I know my lighting is low right now - thus the low light plants, but I just ordered a better hood and I'm waiting for it to come. The only plant not doing well is the anacharis, which I know needs better lighting that what I have right now, although it grows like the weeds it is in my other low light tanks. I had a container of it on my windowsill doing great, but it got funky in the the tank. It's starting to come back now though.

I'll not move the cories while doing water changes anymore, even though I did it for years with my other tanks and had no problems with it. The tanks were much smaller, and to me it really stressed them out far more than moving them did. I have peppered cories, metae and otos in with my bettas.

I just did a partial water change and tested the water I drained and again, 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites. I meant to check the nitrates and remembered as I dumped the last bit out. grrrrr... Maybe my nitrates are too high? But with all the plants I have in there, I didn't think that would be a problem.

I never had this problem with my other tanks. I made sure I researched BEFORE getting into it. I think my problem was with not boiling the wood as I had done to the wood in my other tanks. Now that I think of it, the grapewood that is in those tanks had some bark like material on them that I scraped off after boiling them, leaving the very hard wood underneath. I didn't really do that with these pieces. I got most of it off before I boiled these pieces today and will get the rest off when they cool. I might not put those back in the tank, but will put the mopani wood back in for sure - gotta anchor my poor plants to something again!

[2wheelsx2]

Sounds like you did everything right except the wood and netting the fish out (which may have excessively stressed them out after the wood incident). I guess the only thing to do is a wait and see. You can still test your nitrate and use the percentage water changed to back-calculate what it was before the change, assuming your local water source doesn't use chloramines.

[apistomaster]

If it makes you feel any better, I have one of my six 40 gal breeder tanks growing out a bunch of L134's set up just like all the rest of my 16 tanks which has had a persisting problem with cloudy water, bacterial bloom, problem I can't seem to resolve. And I have a fish keeping brain and ego the size of a planet.(Apologies to Douglas Adam's, Hichhiker Guide to the Galaxy).
I have had this tank set up for almost 2 years but the cloudy water has been stubbornly resisting every thing I know how to do for the past 4 months. Every aquarium is different and seems to have a different "personality". It doesn't seem to matter that all the equipment and water is the same. All my tanks are self contained, not on a centralized filter system. I have just as many L134 in the tank above it and their water is crystal clear. I have run out of ideas and the only thing left for me to try is to tear it down and start over. Sometimes a cloudy tank actually will stay cloudy longer when it gets frequent large water changes as though the fresh water is feeding the bacterial bloom.
I suspect my experience is not unique and many of us have run into this sort of problem before.
Most of the suggestions we have made are normally valid and effective but "Stuff happens", when experience is not enough.
If I owned an Ultraviolet Sterilizer I would have tried using it but I don't. I tried dosing with potassium permanganate as a last resort but that didn't work and it's been a few decades since I have ever used any for this purpose. My fish seem to be fine so it is bothering me more than it is bothering the fish. I tried massive water changes with barely feeding the fish, changed filter sponges.
I have 2 sponge filters in every tank so there is always at least one fully cycled filter at any given moment and normally, the replacement sponge cycles fast in well established tanks. One last thing I might try is to stop using tap water and begin using RO replacement water and allow the water chemistry to favor becoming acidic. Let the water pH drop slowly from 7.4 down to about 6.0. This could be outside the comfort zone of whatever bacteria is blooming in that tank. Then, if that works, I could gradually allow the conditions to return to my normal and hopefully leave this problem behind me.

[nj2tou]

Hey guys, you'll all probably groan and go "oh noooooooo..." but I decided to tear down my tank and start all over. The fungus just kept coming back and the cloudiness persisted. It looked BEAUTIFUL right after my last water change (I did a very large one) - but by the end of the week there was fungus on one of the mopani pieces, the cloudiness was bad AND I hadn't boiled the newest piece of mopani long enough and the tannin deposits were horrible.

Since the tank was relatively new and not a fully mature one, I thought oh screw it, let me just start all over again. I took all the wood and plants out, gave them a good scrub (the wood, that is!) and put them all in a big bucket of Jungle Fungus Clear. I'll boil the hell out of it next. I then moved the 3 remaining babies to my other tank that has pandas and added JFC to the tank and let it run. I did that mostly so that any spores that might be in the filter and in the tank would get a good dose. Then I drained it and had a fun time getting all the sand out. NOT. I didn't want to take a chance with spores in the sand either. I thoroughly cleaned the filter, soaking what I could in JFC, as well as the heater. I was about to start setting it up again - water, sand and plants, wood after done cooking it - but then I realized maybe I should use a different substrate. I had read here that Carib Sea's Torpedo Beach live substrate is really good. The right size and smoothness for all my cories and less chance of an anaerobic bacteria build up. It also comes packed with good bacteria, so cycling will take less time. What do you guys think? I'd have to order it and wait for it to come, but I have to boil the wood anyway and that will take several days to complete.

I really like the look of the sand I had used, but if this other stuff will be better for my fish and my tank, I'll go with it.

Opinions? (be gentle! LOL!) thanks!

[apistomaster]

I have never heard of Torpedo Beach Sand being wet packed with starter bacteria but you do realize that this idea of pre-cured, for lack of a better term, gravel is only marketing BS and it does not make the cycling of a tank proceed any better than bare sand and not as well as using starter material from a used filter or some some seed substrate from a well established tank. They already charge too much for it without paying more for a dubious added feature.

To kill fungus on wood a scrub with a stiff brush with straight plain household bleach that is left on a few hours before rinsing is more effective than boiling and a lot easier on larger pieces. I have pieces of wood almost 5 feet long and used my bleaching method. It would have been impossible to boil it. The bleach left on a few hours both penetrate deeply killing the mycelium but it also lightens the color of the would and makes it more attractive. It is useless to try to eliminate all the mold spoors. Impossible actually. It is necessary to do the bleaching on large pieces or boil small pieces of wood but the wood must be allowed to under go the natural ecological succession in which fungi are the pioneering organisms which are then followed by more desirable algae.
The mold is unsightly but it will not harm the fish. The molds that colonize wood are not the same as those that infect fish.

[nj2tou]

Thanks Larry! The main reason I'm boiling the wood is to get the tannins out. It's getting on everything and the water's too murky brown (besides the cloudiness). I will bleach it as well, as I like the idea of lightening some of it. I already scrubbed the hell out of it with a wire brush.

As far as Torpedo Beach being wet packed, it's a new product from what I can tell. More than for the good bacteria that's supposed to be in it, I want to know if it's better for my fish and tank health than the sand I had used previously. I worry about anaerobic bacteria building up, although I only intend on it having a depth of less than an inch. This is more like gravel, so I know it doesn't compact the way sand does.

I thought I had done it right the first time, but this time I want to make sure I don't make any mistakes.

It's so weird. I never had fungus in my other tanks. And I used grapewood! I did boil it for days on end before using it though, something I didn't do with these pieces. I did boil it for a day after the fungus appeared, but I think that was too little, too late. I'm not putting the grapewood back in - I have 3 beautiful Mopani pieces that are quite enough for my tank. I'm also hoping the cloudy water won't be an issue this time either - my other tanks are crystal clear.

thanks again!

[apistomaster]

I have personal peeve about the high price of CaribSea sells #8 quartz sand let alone the useless "preconditioning" packaging gimmick. That info is news to me. I used to buy the same stuff for $6.00 per 100# bag. It is no longer easy to buy it that way because one of the closest primary quarries, located only about 180 miles from me, closed down. It doesn't come from any beach i can promise you that. I had to buy some of the plain Torpedo Beach Sand for one of my wild Discus tanks but you are quite right about it being just the right particle size. Fine enough but coarse enough that oxygenated water does circulate through it. I have it in a glass planter box covering the rear half of my 75 gal tank and the planter wall is 3" tall. It has been set up about 5 years and I only do the hydrovac thing a few times a year. Plants grow well in it if you insert substrate fertilizer in the right places. I happen to like NutraFin PlantGro Spikes which are hollow, pointed, perforated plastic spikes filled with timed release fertilizer that lasts almost one year. They are easy to move if needed and easily found buy running fingers or a net handle through the sand.
Their Tahatian Black Moon sand is nothing more than ground slag and is very cheap at any sand blasting supply company. No need to pay the high CaribSea prices for the stuff. It is basically glass.

I collect all my wood from local rivers so it is already water logged but it always has a lot of dirt and organic crud embedded in it's crevices and on it's surface. Once it hits the warm temperatures of tropical fish aquariums a whole slew of molds take off so I have had plenty of practice with cleaning it and making it aquarium safe. I like finding my own wood and almost all of what i collect is the left overs of the local Beaver population. They do a great job of eating all the bark off and leave chiseled branch ends which look natural compared to sawed ends. It is a side activity of my fishing outings to collect wood for my tanks.

[wrasse]

Im glad for you, that you have other tanks to enjoy in the meantime.
With this particular tank, you are probably right to have stripped it down and start again, but I just get the feeling you're almost trying too hard. There's no fun boiling wood, scrubbing everything, etc etc. And I agree with Larry re - the sand. Ordinary cheap silver sand is what the fish like and it looks nice, its nothing complicated.
To be fare, I haven't used the sand you mention, but if it goes wrong again will you be wondering 'was it the sand that did it???'
Keep it simple. put in the sand, the plants, mature the tank, gradually add the fish. And perhaps in this case, gradually add the wood?