# Here goes nothing



## Tadpole (Oct 10, 2010)

I should start with a narrative. You may want to skip ahead. I'm long winded, but it may prove worth reading. I know _I_ cried.

*The Narrative*

I went camping with the girlfriend and her family a little over a year ago to a place that had a river. The water levels were high because it had rained abundantly recently, so we floated the river. By floated, I mean we sat for small stretches in inner tubes while hiking down the river bed. At any rate, it was enjoyable and the rain filled up several ephemeral pools along the limestone banks with about 3 feet of water, where frogs congregated to lay eggs. I wasn't prepared to catch anything or transport it home, but thanks to the abundance of careless people, I found an old plastic water bottle and a red cup laying around and proceeded to catch 3 tadpoles and 2 fairy shrimp. I arrived home with 2 tadpoles and 1 shrimp still alive, and by the following day, I had one tadpole left. I did water changes with water I had collected from the site. Prior to this, I had zero equipment to use for this endeavor.

I decided to embark on this mission to raise a tadpole because I remember catching several dozen in a ditch near our house as a kid, and subsequently releasing them after we put them in a large bowl and about half of them died over night. I felt really bad about it. I decided, now that I have a job (sort of), and I'm an adult (sort of), how hard could it really be to raise a tadpole? This was what I was thinking at the pool when I was squeezing the water bottle to suck them up. Since I lost half my stock by the end of 24 hours, I wasn't really keen on throwing a ton of money at a set up. That, and I didn't really have a ton of money to put something together, especially something of dubious outcome.

At any rate, I picked up some water conditioner and diluted it appropriately in a small jar so I wouldn't have to measure fractions of a gallon's worth of purifier from a very imprecise lid at 5 mL for 10 gal, and used that to condition the salsa jar he started out in. At this point, I fully expected him to die at any time. Since he had been in a limestone pool, his environmental detail consisted of a chunk of limestone I ever so delicately put in there so he could swim around it and feel like maybe he wasn't stuck on death row in an Arriba salsa jar with a chunk of limestone.

I didn't name him. At first. When it became apparent he was a fighter, because he didn't die after three or four days, my girlfriend asked what I was going to name him. In my mind I was sort of set against it, because I still didn't want to get attached, so I spouted out the first generic name that popped into my head, "Jimmy." There was no reason. I've actually never met a Jimmy I particularly cared for, but that's what he became. Not Jim or James, either. Come on, a tadpole named James? I had considered changing his name later, but how do you change the name of something once you come up with it? He was Jimmy. As he grew, he graduated from salsa jar to large orzo jar, and the more I researched, the more it became apparent that he would have to graduate to something more suitable. I have a habit of reading and reading and reading about things and then, BAM! I make a purchase all at once and don’t buy things on the internet where I can get real deals, but pay PetSmart prices for PetSmart crap because, well, it’s time to act. I’m actually being proactive with this post now; I’ve learned. So. We went to PetSmart (I know, there are _so_ many better places to get things, especially here) and I picked up the gallon or gallon and a half acrylic aquarium starter kit and some epoxy coated gravel and headed home, feeling like I had gotten a good deal on some cheap junk. I rinsed it out, set it up, and waited a night to put him in there, chunk of limestone and all. I couldn’t leave it, even though it does lead to harder water – it was his favorite piece of furniture. How would you like it if someone moved you into a bigger house and but took your bed?

At this point I was screwed. I’d wake up in the morning, get my breakfast and come into the room he was in with a piece of frozen spinach and plop it in there, and the cat and I would watch him with fascination, albeit for two totally different reasons. When I finished my cereal, I’d get ready for work and then pull out what was left of the spinach before heading out the door much later. My girlfriend joked that I loved Jimmy more than her. Half joked.

I kept reading up on tadpoles. I didn’t know what kind of tadpole he was, but I was hoping he was a Rio Grande Leopard Frog, since they’re smaller than the other option, which was a bullfrog. I had and still have no interest in keeping a bullfrog. They’re cool when you’re 8, but the idea of keeping one in the house just doesn’t interest me, not to mention I would feel like I was obligated to provide him with a bigger habitat as he grew, and they get huge. My mother actually put up a pool in her backyard which she used for a month and then abandoned to the mosquito larvae and algae. It became the personal kingdom for a huge bullfrog that she saw eat a bird. I feel obligated to mention I had long since left the nest at the time. Either way, I had at least 3 months of tadpoledom before the inevitable riparium construction I would have to undertake, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. It’s not that I don’t want a riparium, I did and do. It’s that I hate certain things and it drives me crazy when I’m forced to do something subpar, or something that _I_ deem as subpar. I hate looking at an aquarium with plastic plants in it and knowing that I put them there. As far as I’m concerned (and I’ve never kept an aquarium although I did keep a ton of animals as a kid) aquaria should be as naturalistic as possible. I’m pretty sure planted aquariums require a bit more attention to details than the standard plasticplantsglasssubstrateskeletonbubblechestdivertackyashellwithgeneticallymodifiedpartjellyfishpartcoralpartfish aquaria, but they should be naturalistic, even if they involve elements from five continents. In separate species, not all combined into one. Niagara Falls is a perfect example of a large scale planted tank. When it became apparent that this natural wonder was being destroyed, the government moved a bunch of people who were destroying it through unchecked development and had someone come in and redesign the area. Sure, the falls themselves were there, but the banks were cleaned up and replanted with an eye to the future to appear as though no one ever built a mill or tannery on the waterfront.

At any rate, there should be things in the water that fish would expect to find, if they were capable of expecting to find things, in their natural habitat. I.e. plants (including woody plants) and rocks (not processed rock). I didn’t want to make a riparium because I want one that looks like someone carved a slice of river bank out and put it in a glass case, and that would be a lot of work. I ended up buying a 10 gallon aquarium (again, the cheap kit) and put him in there when started to grow legs, while I started planning his habitat.

I figured I wanted a submersible filter with an adjustable flow rate, and decided to actually plant a container (I cut down a cat litter bucket) with local flora, weigh it down with rocks which would keep the soil drained anyway and hide it from the front with gravel. I built a ramp out of stone, as well as cut a piece of stone to cover the ‘front’ of the container which faced the water half of the riparium, and set it up so that the ramp wasn’t too steep. I initially wanted to have the filter draw water through the gravel hiding the yellow litter bucket and run a tube to a different area to ensure good water mixture, but it proved to be too large to fit, so I crammed it in the water area. Mistake 2. Mistake 1 was that in my research, I decided that I would get a pump that was a size larger than recommended for the amount of water I _thought_ I would have. The bucket proved larger than expected, decreasing the water portion, and then the pump took up more room. When I hooked everything up, I discovered there wasn’t as much adjustability to the pump as I had hoped for (I used a Fluval 2 Plus). I don’t know how much water I had in there, but the swimming area turned out to be probably a gallon and a half, which is consistent with losing more space than expected of a quarter of a 10 gallon aquarium. I should never have put in the size pump I had even for a 2.5 gallon quantity of water (a small concern had been the extra space in the gravel. I had successfully made a whirlpool. I had used my last filter on the 1.5 gal and the airline hose for it had already cracked at the end from the lube in the air pump and been long since thrown away, so I could neither put him in the small aquarium again, nor use the pump in the large one.

At the time I was realizing all of this, it was about 11-12 at night, and I should have been in bed. Jimmy had started to grow his front legs though, and my big concern was his lung development. I didn’t want to have spent all the time and effort, not to mention kept him alive for 6 months (I don’t know what happened there, maybe water temp – he was definitely a Rio Grande though) for him to drown because I didn’t have land for him. I suppose I could have postponed the setup by floating a piece of styrofoam for the time being, but he really was going to need land, and I thought I had it solved. Between my girlfriend being upset with me for keeping her up (her birthday was the following day) and me being at a loss of what to do, I even tried setting up a separate bucket outside of the aquarium to house the pump with hoses run into the tank in an effort to reduce the pressure on the small water space. That didn’t work; I couldn’t reach equilibrium - it just pumped into the aquarium faster than the siphon could keep up and I had to turn it off before it flooded the land space.
I ended up just putting the pump in the tank in such a way that I felt created an acceptable amount of current in the middle, as my ramp deflected the flow and formed a slow backwater I thought Jimmy could swim ok in. It was late and I was exhausted after a full day of work and messing with the aquarium for another 4-5 hours (my girlfriend was _not_ happy), so I put him in and called it a night. I woke up the next morning to find him swirling in the middle, not side floating, but head up. I saw him move a couple of times, but he never recovered.

The point of all of this is that caring for Jimmy sparked my interest in planted tanks. Prior to this I figured if you had an aquarium you could toss some gravel in, put some plants in there and as long as you had a filter, you were good to go. I figured plants would simply balance the aquarium out more and mean I had to do less maintenance. While I had him, I read countless threads on keeping planted tanks, creating biotopes, layering media in riparia, etc... Well, I read countless threads on people’s individual setups, mostly learning that it’s more complicated than one would think, and that the sky is the limit on what you can do as far as time and effort go. That is to say, I looked at a lot of pretty pictures.

My only option as me is to keep a planted tank. I can’t have one and not have it planted, because an empty tank is a boring tank and a fake tank is an ugly tank. After the 10 gallon sat unused for 5 months, we went camping again and I vowed no tadpoles yet. I became interested in the fish though, and again used trash (two cups) to collect samples. I wanted to get visually interesting minnows so I chose some with what I thought were unique coloration. It turns out I got 5 mosquitofish, the less shiny version of the guppy, and the neat dots on 2 or 3 of them are parasites. I was going to wait until I was ready to move on making it a planted tank to start posting, but I just can’t do that. I have to prepare better, so I’m starting this thread. I don’t know when I’m going to redo it, it depends on my job and cash flow. 


*What I Have*

When I set the aquarium up I put in the base of a juniper that I had collected about a year ago. I know that junipers release volatile compounds as well as tannins, so when I collected it, I soaked it in a tub of water, fully submerged, for a couple of months with 3 water changes. The first time the water was just nasty with all sorts of likely fungal gunk on top as well as a polychromatic film characteristic of juniper oils. The second time, there were less of both, and the third, the only concern was that the water was still fairly brown (no trace of the oils or misc fungal type gunk). After two months in that tub, I let it season on the back porch in the weather until putting it in the garage a few months ago. It still has some bark on it. In the first picture you can see it just after set up with a fresh tank of water all sparkly clear. 

After a week I was concerned by the amount of tannins in the water and it appeared as though I had some fungus or algae going on, so I moved the fish into the 1.5 gallon overnight and put them back in the 10 the next day with just the gravel substrate and a water change. Bleh. I have two females and three males and one of my females got pregnant around the time I put them in the tank. Since they, like their cousins, bear live young and will eat them if able to, I broke down and bought some plastic plants for cover. I hated them (the plants), so I modded them to at least look realistic (I avoided the garishly colored and outlandishly shaped ones). I had cut off what was left of the taproot on the stump, so I drilled a hole horizontally in the bottom and ziptied it to some eggcrate with plasticized fiberglass screen then ziptied to the bottom of that (I have several rolls left over from screening in the porch on an apartment and removing them to move.) I then removed the branches of one of the types of plastiplant from its communal base and decided how I wanted them arranged around the driftwood. I took more zipties and cut them down to about 1-1.5 inches (I varied it because plants don’t grow exactly the same length) and made little barbs on them by cutting notches in the side. I passed these through the screen with the large part under the screen, in what was, to me, a pleasing arrangement so far as I could tell with them lying down. When I put it in I put gravel over the eggcrate and put in two round rocks I picked up from a local stone sales place to help hold it down and in place. As far as I can tell, the fish seem to like it. They actually chase each other around the wood, zipping through the plants, and the plants don’t distract me from enjoying it. I still hate them, but not as much, and that comes with the understanding that they are temporary. All in all, it’s ok for right now, but I will be changing it. I have already, foolishly I might add, added some live amazon sword. At least that's what the package said. So I am doing this to prepare for more of that. I don’t anticipate doing it right away, and I won’t be able to check my post all the time, but I’ll be around.


*Concerns:*

In a planted tank, since I will have layered substrate, I don’t vacuum the gravel (or other substrate) when I do a weekly water change as that would disturb the substrate, thereby increasing the availability of nutrients to other parts of the tank as the substrate settles on horizontal surfaces and/or dissolves more readily in lower concentrated areas, and give algae problems in addition to making the bottom less attractive. I would assume I need more biological agents as aquarium trashmen, but what organisms would these be? Surely I still need to attempt to clean up some of the funky fish food that doesn’t get eaten. Do I just rely on what I can reasonably scoop out (I don’t plan on overfeeding if I can, but the mosquitofish have a habit of pulling down flakes from the surface and then ignoring them since they are no longer floating ) and let the rest just break down and cycle? It turns out this is my only concern for now, since it’s really late and I’m tired. I’ll read up on it more later, but that should do it for now. I don't intend this as an explicit helpthenoob question. Yet...


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## Nue (Dec 27, 2009)

Wow yes your are long winded. LOL. But Im board at work and read the whole thing. Interesting read. Since you only have one question with that wall of text. Get a mystery snail, they will clean up uneaten food. And you can do a light vacuum over the top of the substrate to get the gunk on water-change day.


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## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

Welcome to TPT!

I strongly suspect the biggest aspect you're missing in regards to both the health of your prior tadpole and now with your current fish is getting the nitrogen cycle going on the tank.

I recommend you read through this article I wrote for TFH on how to set up and cycle a new tank: http://forums.tfhmagazine.com/viewtopic.php?f=132&t=26634

I also recommend you go out and get a master freshwater test kit so you can keep a close eye on your ammonia and nitrite levels, and so you know how often you need to do water changes while your tank cycles. You want to keep the ammonia and nitrites under about 0.25ppm for the safety of the critters.

Now, as far as live plants go, what type of light fixture do you have over this tank?


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## Tadpole (Oct 10, 2010)

Nue said:


> ...Interesting read. Since you only have one question with that wall of text. Get a mystery snail, they will clean up uneaten food. And you can do a light vacuum over the top of the substrate to get the gunk on water-change day.


I had more questions, but I spent 4+ hours reading articles I hadn't seen before and typing that wall up, so the further I got, the less specific questions I had. I've advanced to nebulous scheme. Thanks for the tips, I almost came home with some snails yesterday.



lauraleellbp said:


> Welcome to TPT!
> 
> I strongly suspect the biggest aspect you're missing in regards to both the health of your prior tadpole and now with your current fish is getting the nitrogen cycle going on the tank.
> 
> ...


Thanks! I know nutrient levels are important in any ecosystem, which is what a planted tank is, so I'll have to give that article a read. I was looking at a master freshwater test kit yesterday and was considering waiting until I redo the whole thing. I actually have a sort of inner struggle going on because my female dropped her fry. Which means that I _could_ offload my full grown fish into my girlfriend's parent's little backyard pond (they're native fish, so no worries there). This would enable me to keep the fry in my 1.5 without crowding issues for a little while, while I set up the 10 with plants, etc _and let it cycle first_. I'd also be essentially starting with disease free fish too, so I could put in snails without allowing the parasites to reproduce (I read they had a 2 host life cycle, one of which was snails). Anyhow, here's what's going on currently.

Size: 10 gal
Substrate: pea gravel from Lowe's 
Lighting: Partial sun. It sits just under a window sill facing East. 

I'm sure the pea gravel makes the water a little hard, but I also know the fish are more used to a little hard water since everything in the area is limestone. When I get the test kit I'll start looking at that too. I figure I'll need lighting when I put in plants, but I've got a mini greenhouse in the same room involving a 1'x3' area on my desk with two compact fluorescent lights in spun aluminum clamp on fixtures run to a timer. They work great for that and cost maybe 12 per unit, tops. I did make a hanging 2' light strip that plugs in and uses standard T8 or T12 bulbs and got some plant lights from Lowe's, but I think the CFLs are more appropriate (it was for growing seedling tomatoes without cooking them outside over the summer - I was horribly under impressed with the light's performance). Right now, the aquarium gets a decent amount of light as is without heating up. I think I could get going with what I have plus maybe under a hundred bucks worth of plants, soil, lights, test kit, snails... agony.


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## Tadpole (Oct 10, 2010)

*Soooo.....*

I started over. I've been soaking that big piece of lumber for a while and I figured it was time to redo it right. (I put it in a cooler in the garage and put water straight from the water heater to the cooler. It did an excellent job of leaching a lot of tannins out of the wood.) 

So. I moved the fish into a well built plastic tub I wasn't using, as a temporary solution, and dumped all of my top notch Lowe's pea gravel in the back yard. I scrubbed out the aquarium (I had sort of been putting off _really_ cleaning it in anticipation of an overhaul) and ran to the LFS, where I picked up a 20# sack of Eco-Complete (black), and about $25 worth of plants that I figured I can stand to lose. Only the one front center was more than a couple bucks. I realized when I got home that I really didn't end up with a diverse assortment, but that doesn't matter at the moment.

I was going to type some more, but I figure my pictures sort of speak for themselves. The wood is a miscellaneous undesirable aromatic juniper from the area. I actually went to the woods, found a tree I liked that was already dying/dead, rocked it, ripped it out of the ground, and cut it to a more manageable size with a portable sawzall. The rocks are granite I got from a local supplier - they let me have them free since they usually sell them in large quantities and I only wanted three.

I'm filtering at the moment with the crappy PetCo otb filter that came with the tank, but I will be running a Paintball CO2 injection (thanks Jaggedfury, for the thread about that). I have the adapter ordered, just waiting on delivery. I figure the filter will need to be replaced at that point to decrease surface turbidity. I have a currently unused Fluval 2plus with a venturi adapter, but it's another big thing in a small aquarium. I have ideas though. My lighting is the standard hood that came with the tank. One of my bulbs ends up right over the stump so I'll have to work something out, but that's for later. The lights are a couple of CFLs. I had in the "60 W" (13W) lamps, but they didn't like the space constraints and didn't come back on after the first time I ran them (they smelled burn-ey after maybe 30 min). I took them straight back and swapped them for a couple of candelabra CFLs with socket adapters. They are "40 W" lamps even though they only pull 7 and their spectrum is 6500 K. I have them plugged into a timer from the outlet which puts them on for 14 hrs per day. I suspect this is waaaay too much.

Any thoughts, ideas, or considerations are very welcome. I will be checking out the swap shop for some better plants, but I'm excited to have a green aquarium. I'm not dosing anything yet, and don't quite know what I'll need to do there. Ultimately, I'm thinking of putting the Fluval in the back right with some more interesting looking plants growing tall in front of it. I like the large rock on the left in the one picture, and might put it back later, but for now, I prefer the smaller one. I'd like to grow a low carpet on the area to the left and I'm only content with my substrate slopes. Thanks for the resources to do this. It's not much, but I'm super stoked.









Top view of the general layout.










Murky water, before adding plants










Some plants added, some floating. with the big rock... too much?










Original cfl's: Sylvania Micro-mini 6500K spectrum; "replaces 60W" but runs on 13W. These lit nicely, but were probably more than I needed. Their components inside also fried after 30 minutes in my hood.










Ka-Pow! Light!










Bright Effects (mediocre Lowe's house brand) replacement bulbs: candelabra cfl's with adapters replacing 40W incandescent bulbs, using 7W (no problems so far)










Clear water on following day. No big rock. Clean plants.


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## Lil' Swimz$ (Jul 24, 2010)

I like it! I love how pieces of bark are coming off the trunk.


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## Herbicidal (Aug 3, 2010)

Good story! Took me back to my tadpole/bullfrog/tree frog/Garter snake playing-in-the-creek-on-those-hot-summer-days, days <sigh>, oh to be a kid again. Well, I'd like to think I still have a lot of that kid still inside. :icon_wink

I like the way it's coming together. Since you're doing this on the cheap, perhaps you can paint the back of the tank black. That would give a nice contrast for the plants and your stump. It would also compliment your black substrate. Plus that filter hanging back there would pretty much become invisible. My .02. Keep up with the water tests and don't let the ammonia and nitrites get the best of you. I'm looking forward to future pics! roud:


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## Tadpole (Oct 10, 2010)

*Algae*

I got my CO2 tank and universal fill adapter in. Aaaand it turns out they sell the damned tanks empty with absolutely no indication on either the packaging or in the store that they are unpressurized, so I had to go back to fill the gas cylinder. 

I hooked up the needle valve and tubing when I got home and tried to fine adjust the CO2. I’d get a decent stream of bubbles at the desired rate, but it would only last a few seconds before slowing down to a crawl and then stopping. I was hoping I could reach equilibrium but it wasn’t happening. I ended up going with a temporary diffuser style CO2 system involving a small jelly jar and a rubber band. You can see it in the pictures. I’m holding off on the end of the system until I get the front straightened out. I just fill up the jar to a certain point and then cut off the main valve. This is where I was around Tuesday...

I’m now growing algae. I was concerned about the window light, but I can’t move it right now, so I’ll be keeping the blinds closed, cats be damned. My Amazon Sword and whatever I put in the front have a patina of algae on their leaves. So do the rocks and to a lesser extent, the stump. In fact, one of my rocks actually has O2 bubbles forming from the algae. I know it’s called pearling, but I don’t feel comfortable tossing around lingo yet, and it’s from algae. At any rate, I’ll be keeping out the sunlight , and I may cut back my lighting period from around 14 hrs to maybe 12. I’ll also need to clean up the existing grossness. And my CO2 adapter is faulty and leaks out of the adjustment knob, so I’m sending that back Monday. Yay.

*The Questions (had to come sooner or later, sorry)*

Is the type of algae indicative of the problem/solution?
With the Watts per gallon rule, if my cfls use 7W, even though they replace a 40W bulb, do I count it as 7 or 40?
The difference between a CO2 reactor and diffuser is that one holds a bubble of CO2 trapped and the other breaks it up into tiny bubbles to dissolve in the water column. Essentially, it's like the difference between active and passive transport in cellular processes. Is it worth running a reactor for a 10G? I think I'm pretty content with a diffuser for now, especially since I'm not dosing ferts or anything yet. I'd rather waste $4 per 4-6 mo on CO2 than more on chemicals.
I hooked up my Fluval 2plus, and it's big and questionable. I can hook my CO2 line to the output, but it ended up taking up a lot of room, and it's unhidden at the moment. With the CO2 injected into the outflow it seems like it won't really do anything to break up the bubbles, just push them across the tank on their way to the surface. Not only that, but they'll be near the top on entry which means under less pressure, which means less likely to even absorb. I think it's going to stay out indefinitely. Does the hob cause significant disturbance to merit replacement for the sake of dissolving CO2?
Should just buy the planted tank book so I can answer all of my own questions in one place?

Thanks for the previous feedback guys. I considered something behind the tank in lieu of painting it, but I want some plants to grow up most of the back. I was thinking maybe some red cabomba on the right instead of that sword, and water sprite of or something on the left. After that's done, then I'll look at the back of the tank. 

The adapter with needle valve on the side










The goods










It ain’t pretty...










Algae – left side of aquarium










Algae – front center










Algae – it’s worse on the right side because it’s winter and the sun is south of us...


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## Tadpole (Oct 10, 2010)

*Quick Update*


I couldn't send my adapter back so I threw it away. Better $12 than $40.
I had a bunch of tiny snails or snail eggs stow away on the plants but they formed a small army.
Somewhere between my snail militia and and the reduced lighting period, my algae woes disappeared.
I put the fish back in the tank after cycling the water, and they're loving it. My Corys are like real catfish now and, while favoring the bottom and dwelling in the hollow area on the left side of the log, they utilize more of the water column more often too. I even saw one shimmying a day after I put them in, but I don't think it really means much.
Since I did not lose my job this year, I think I'm going to drop some dough and spend some money on a beverage supply CO2 setup with a _regulator_, at least that's the plan for mid march no-work week. That and get some more plants and start dosing ferts.










Side note: I think my large snails are unintentionally bulldozing some of my plants before they can really take root; I planted several that had been floating before I put the big snails and the fish back in. Has any one else encountered that?


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