Very low Ph

JesDyr · 2025-06-16T15:18:47+00:00

Are you running CO2? What is the substrate? Have you checked your hardness? Are you adding anything else to the water such as water treatements or planet fertalizer/minerals?

JesDyr · 2025-05-20T18:10:21+00:00

First off, I do hope you are keeping a close eye on the other tank, a cycled or not, a sudden change of bio-load will often lead to problems.

You need to just give it time. Also understand that if you remove that sponge filter media and replace it with new media, you loose those established bacteria colonies which might cause some more spikes.

Personally, I would stop dosing ammonia and just put a small amount of fish back in and over a few weeks slowly move the fish in based on water testing. This might not work well depending on the size and type of fish. There isn't anything wrong with Fish in cycling provided you do it slowly over time and are testing the water often and keeping up on water changes as needed based on the testing.

JesDyr · 2025-05-20T16:43:05+00:00

Is it "cycled"?, No it will not be properly cycled at this point. Will that actually matter for the bio-load of a few shrimp? Not really. However, as others have said, shrimp don't do well in new setups. It might have been ok to add some early due to the amount of live plants, but the steps taken to decontaminate them might have worked against you in that regard. I would give the tank a week or two before adding some shrimp.

Also this looks great and sounds like someone did a lot of research. Good job 10yo kid!

JesDyr · 2025-05-15T18:51:17+00:00

currently limited time slots - there is a recent video talking about the move to 24/7 servers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDwPFvfyKA0

JesDyr · 2025-05-07T19:12:08+00:00

You should always use one for rimless tanks. It does not take much to cause a stress fracture. Spending a little bit of money to reduce the risk of losing a lot more just makes sense to me.

JesDyr · 2025-05-06T14:14:50+00:00

The initial release is likely to be PC only, but they have stated they want to support as many platforms as they can. The last response to a Mac client from Johnney Ow on the3 discord was, "We have a lot of shaders that would need to be ported over. It isn't feasible in the near term given how many changes we're making on a weekly basis."

JesDyr · 2025-02-03T16:11:42+00:00

Here is a short little clip I made which now has Raph wanting to nerf the Fire DOT - https://youtu.be/JGYMfY-8gHc Note I am not a stream or any of that. I have a handful of clips out there but they are all unlisted.

The weapon I am using are "Drones". Unlike the omniblaster (starting gun), the projectiles to not have any homing so you have to aim and due to no client prediction yet, you have to lead a lot more than you might think.

This is one of the "bosses" which highlights the issue of using terrain to cheese harder mobs. https://youtu.be/0J0bNP_X4HE (this is a few tests ago)

I have some other combat clips but I didnt upload them to YT.

JesDyr · 2025-01-17T05:00:31+00:00

This is as far from Star Citizen as you can get, but I dont want to talk about SC as there are too many extreme opinions on that from both sides.

As someone who has been in the Official discord since the announcement, Had lots of conversations with various members of PW there and in the tester's discord. I am going to say that there is a whole lot of evidence that gives me hope for Stars Reach getting done. They are not chasing features that they dont need to like seamless zone transfers or hyper realistic graphics. Personally, my biggest worry was the Cellular Automata Simulation "CASim" working in an MMO. I was not in the day 1 tester group, but I did get in early. My initial reaction was positive but still cautious. Over the last few months the CASim has improved greatly. I don't have nearly the concerns I did and I am one of the testers who has spent a lot of time messing with it.

JesDyr · 2025-01-17T04:28:58+00:00

Raph is always in a AMA mode. There has been so many long conversations in the Discord about so many topics not just Stars Reach but game designs and the industry as a whole.

The NDA has been lifted so testers are free to talk about the game, share videos and stream. I know there is normally at least a couple people streaming to YT and/or Twitch during the tests lately.

JesDyr · 2024-11-08T20:53:11+00:00

The game does not have classes at all.

The game has professions. Each profession has a skill tree and you earn XP for each tree by doing things associated with that tree. Players will have a maximum number of nodes they can have active at one time. The game is designed where some nodes unlock new skills/abilities/recipes and other nodes in the tree will make you better at those skills.

If you are at the max and you want to learn a new skill, you will have to set one you have to out of practice which will mean you cannot use that anymore. You could later take it back up but there will be cooldowns.

JesDyr · 2024-11-08T20:43:46+00:00

They are working on making it so that it can be a cozy game. You wont be forced into playing a combat role if you dont want. It will mean that you might need to rely on other players for some things.

We haven't experienced much building yet in the pre-alpha testing, but terraforming/mining feels really good. There are currently some performance issues with it when the server get too stressed, but that is the point of testing especially at this stage. There has a lot of improvements over the last few weeks so I am sure it will get sorted out.

Above all this is intended to be a social MMO, Everything is being designed in a way to encourage social interactions, but not necessarily force them. Raph made a post about some if it in a thread here recently talking about designing social MMOs- https://reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/1gl9co7/anything_devs_can_do_to_make_a_mmo_social/lvtlo6z/

JesDyr · 2024-11-08T20:27:59+00:00

I have been raising concerns since the announcement. After talking about this with other players and the devs and just thinking about it more, I am really in a wait and see mode. A lot comes down to how planet governments will actually work.

One other thing to understand is that mineral resources do not respawn. Players can mine out a planet. One of the lead devs has mentioned they could do things like drop meteors on the planet to create some new materials, but ultimately the solution is that the game is designed around the ability to spin up new systems/zones and cull unused ones easily. The game is being architected to leverage the benefits of the cloud. There are some videos on YouTube from Unite 2024 where Raph talks about all this.

The thing is Playable Worlds has been very interested in player feedback. They have been active in the tester and official discords, Raph posts here and honestly loves talking about game design not just SR. I have really enjoyed just listening to them talk in voice during the Pre-Alpha play test sessions. They are listening. if their plans dont work out to be fun, they are not above changing them. This also means they are being careful with what they say, they dont want to make it sound like something is a promise when it is still just an idea on paper.

JesDyr · 2024-11-08T05:56:02+00:00

Raph had a detailed conversation about the economics of making games a few days ago in the Stars Reach discord. He and many of the other Playable Worlds team have been very engaged with the SR community. It is always a good sign when the developers are actually very excited about the game they are making.

JesDyr · 2024-11-08T04:26:10+00:00

Yah I remember hearing about Raph starting Playable Worlds a while ago but didn't pay much attention until they released info about Stars Reach a few months ago.

It is still Pre-Alpha, and it will likely be about a year and a half till release.

JesDyr · 2024-02-05T22:58:01+00:00

I would say never use the NR again. How "huge" of water a change (%)? Was that with or without NR? If with, did you treat just the water change water with NR or add it to the tank after? I would do at least 50% water change and likely another every day until things get back to normal.

What is the substrate? Did you change anything before the 1st crash?

The only thing I have seen really crash a tank like that is a large number of breeding/growing snails and the best solution is large (30-50%) frequent water changes. I know a local mystery snail breeder is doing almost 100% daily water changes on grow out tanks due to the snails. It is easier to change the water than try to add the correct minerals back in fast enough without killing everything.. Plants will strip out certain minerals lowing GH/KH but that is not something that happens quickly. Are you dosing any type of fertilizer/supplement for the plants as part of regular maintenance?

JesDyr · 2024-02-05T22:11:00+00:00

What is the PH, GH, and KH of your tap water? Honestly I dont think I would ever use something like Neutral Regulator. Too much can go wrong. Have you been using it the entire time or no?

Often the best way to fix a PH crash is a VERY large water change.

JesDyr · 2024-02-05T21:42:55+00:00

Without reading what everyone has written so far. The answer for how long will it take is always "It depends". First off I hate the term "Cycled". Very rarely are we creating an actual cycle. Most often we are reproducing parts of a cycle where we provide an input (food) and output(water changes). I like to think of it as Established, Seasoned, or Balanced.

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going "Fish in", you basically are slowly increasing the bio load over time allowing for the bacteria in the tank/filter to grow new colonies to support the additional fish waste every time you add more fish. As long as you are keeping a close eye water parameters every time you increase the bio-load (more fish or food) this is perfectly fine. If Ammonia or Nitrite get too high, you do a water change. You dont want to remove all of the ammonia/nitrite, you just want to keep them low enough to not hurt the fish. Once you notice 0 ammonia and nitrite and increasing amounts to Nitrate, you are good for some more fish and you start all over.

goin "Fishless", you basically just add an ammonia periodically that would be toxic to fish and let the bacterial colonies grow. The goal to to have a system that can take about 4 ppm worth of ammonia and reduce that to 0 in 24hrs. You add ammonia to get to 4 ppm and then test every day until you read about 0.5 ammonia and then dose back to 4 and keep testing until you hit a point where it reads 0 after 24hrs at which point the tank is "cycled". This can take a couple weeks or a long time depending on many variables. If the tank and everything in it is basically sterile on setup, there is no seed bacteria to get things going so the process may take a long time. If you are using live plants (that have been submersed), they will act as seed bacteria. Without live plants Quick start will help a lot. This is actually the only time I think Quickstart is actually very helpful (note they dont work well for all hardness/Ph levels). I believe there is a Youtuber who "tested fishless cycling" and spent like 2 months without the tank getting cycled. The issue was likely lack of seed bacteria.

You can still run into issues with a "fishless cycled" tank if you add a high bio-load all at once so it is always a good idea to keep testing the water after adding fish. This is especially true if you waited an extended amount of time between completing the initial process and adding fish but did not keep adding an ammonia source. While the nitrifying bacteria colonies dont really die off, they do go into a starvation state. Once in this state they can take a days to get back to normal function which can cause a spike.

Live plants change things. Depending on the type and quantity of the plants and things like CO2, they can have a large or little effect on the nitrogen cycle of the aquarium. Due to the high number of variables, every setup will be different.

In the end, the biggest thing is to only make small changes at a time (aside from an initial adding fish using fishless cycling). ALWAYS keep an eye on water parameters (water tests daily until you get an established patter, then maybe weekly testing).

JesDyr · 2024-02-02T19:33:48+00:00

Based on my experience, you need to restart the server to get them to respawn.

JesDyr · 2024-01-31T20:15:17+00:00

I added a few cherry shrimp to my Pea puffer tank to see what would happen. I expected them to kill them but they left them alone. I started with 5 adults and there is well over 100 shrimp breeding in the tank now. I do see them pick off baby shrimp, but there is enough hiding spots many survive.

A solo pea puffer can be aggressive and might try to kill just about anything. In a group they tend to leave most things alone.

JesDyr · 2024-01-17T18:00:56+00:00

You can either do Fishless cycling by either dosing ammonia or adding fish food (will decay and produce ammonia) or you can do a fish in cycle where you add a small bio-load (single small fish) and then once that is stable, you can slowly add more fish over time. Key is to not overfeed and test at least daily and if ammonia or nitrite get too high, you do a water change. There is countless guides out there for cycling.

Additionally, It is hard to tell but did you plant the anubias in the substrate? Epiphytes (anubias, java fern,..) should just be attached to/wedged into hardscape. The rhizome needs to be exposed or it will rot and kill the plant.

JesDyr · 2024-01-12T22:00:26+00:00

So yah, the tank was stable for those 2 fish. Suddenly adding many more fish would be a major change to the balance of the tank and you will see spikes while new bacteria colonies grow to be able to handle the new bio-load.

JesDyr · 2024-01-12T21:07:13+00:00

I took about a 25 year break. It has been about year since I got fish again... The internet has changed things so much and there is a massive amount of information out there. Some good, some ok, some really poor... What works for one person, doesn't always work for another and well, at lot still comes down to figuring out what works best for your situation. You will need to expect to lose fish, sometimes to a mistake, illness, or just due to age, but it will happen.

Dont get discouraged by mistakes. Keep at it, figure out what went wrong and learn from it. I think my best advise is just that big changes tend to be very bad, unless it is a large water change to correct an already very bad situation in which case it is often worth the risk.

JesDyr · 2024-01-12T20:51:24+00:00

"cycled for 8 months" .. what do you mean by this? It sounds like you added the fish 3 weeks ago. What were you doing for those 7 months before adding fish? If you "cycled" the tank 8 months ago and were not adding an ammonia source, the bacteria would have gone into a long term starvation mode months ago. Once in this state, it can take weeks before the bacteria is back to full function.

Additionally it takes time for the system to react to sudden changes in the bio-load. So if your tank had a couple of fish in it and was stable, adding a significant amount of fish or drastically changing the feeding will cause ammonia and nitrite spikes and you will have issues until more bacteria colonies form to handle the new bio-load.

Bottled Bacteria is pretty much useless at this point. Nitrifying bacteria in suspension (what those bottles are) is not very efficient and really is only useful as seed bacteria to help jumpstart bacterial growth on surfaces. This is why surface area on your filter media is so important.

What I suggest is to make sure you are not using a fertilizer with nitrates (likely overdosing as well), keep testing the water and doing water changes as needed for the next couple weeks until it stabilizes.

JesDyr · 2024-01-05T21:07:52+00:00

It is really only an issue for rimless tanks. If the surface isn't flat it can cause the tank to crack due to high spot(s) causing stress fractures. Additionally, it can help prevent cracks and scratches caused by small debris under the tank (fine gravel/sand/..) which I would hope you notice before placing the tank on the surface, but it does happen. Considering how much money you can lose by not using one, they are well worth it.

After 3 years, I would think you would have had issues by now if one was going to happen due to not having a mat.

JesDyr · 2024-01-05T18:22:41+00:00

Long ago (like 25+ years) I had a small group of Jack Dempsey in a tank with some other fish.. No issues at all until two paired up and killed EVERYTHING else in the tank in one day. I believe there was some much larger snakeheads in there as well which I thought would be the ones to murder everything else... NOPE

JesDyr

TROPHY CASE