# 8g Ebi - "Jungle Fever" (New FTS and pics Oct 1 2012)



## FisheriesOmen (Jan 14, 2012)

wow I LOVE the way that tank looks,
look forward to updates


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

FisheriesOmen said:


> wow I LOVE the way that tank looks,
> look forward to updates


Thank you kindly.


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## sunyang730 (Jan 30, 2012)

I saw you on reedit


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

sunyang730 said:


> I saw you on reedit


I don't know what you're talking about... >_> hehe


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

So I'm pretty certain that all the weeping moss at the top of the branch is going to end up dead at this point. It's almost entirely turned a "nice" shade of very pale yellow with a bare hint of green. I'm thinking it might have been the transition from a few days in the dark while I was waiting to set up the tank, coupled with high-ish light that close to the surface of the tank and a lack of CO2. Not very happy with losing it considering all the effort I went through to find some locally, but I'll chalk it up to my inexperience and call it a learning experience.

Still gonna give it a chance for another week or 2 and hope that some of it might be able to turn around, but if there's no sign of life by then, I'll probably drain the tank down mid-way, pull it all off and start looking for alternatives.

Do you folks think fissidens fontanus would make a decent tree effect and be able to survive that close to the light?


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

OK, so, been more than a little bit, but the tank has been up in its new scape and location for about a month now and I'm no longer embarrassed by how badly I messed up.

FTS – 04/09/2012









Suffice to say that any and all moss that had been in it originally died because it dried out before being submersed, due to my noobishness. Good news is that I learnt my lesson on that front and the new moss I ordered from one fellow Canadian and some fine chaps in the UK is doing great. The weeping moss is really starting to come into its own and is growing like mad. The flame moss is growing well, but very thin. And I had some coral moss in there as well for a time, but I’ve come to loathe it; it’s brittle and doesn’t stick to anything and just falls apart constantly no matter what I do. It’s been moved to my little 5.5g snail and moss farm (+ Betta Ray Bob), but that’s a thread for another time.

I'm no longer dosing Flourish Excel because I'm pretty sure it was killing all my vals and dwarf sag. I dose macros sporadically, because everything seems to be doing well enough on that front and at only 13w I don’t see a need for heavy fertilizing. I do think I need to start dosing micros though, because I’ve noticed some pale new growth and the dwarf sag and val seem to be developing hole in the middle of the leaves; micros start tomorrow.

As far as flora, pretty much all the same as last time: a weeping and flame moss tree (actually alive this time!); african water fern; narrow java fern; val nana; dwarf sag; green gecko, mi oya and tropica crypts; fissidens fontanus on the glass; a chunk of lace rock covered in leftover weeping moss; a marimo ball and random floaters.









And as for fauna, I’ve got 7 chili rasboras (I think and hope, though they’re still awfully pale), 5 RCS (not regular, but certainly not PFR), Turbo the apple snail, Jekyll and Hekyll the otos, Tooth the horned nerite and a fistful of MTS.









































I also finally set up the Fluval 105 and it’s doing quite good so far, though I’ll be honest, next time I’ll probably go Eheim just for the ease of swapping out the hosing and what not. Although, I did come to a blissful realization: the stock hosing from a Fluval 105 fits perfectly snug over a ½” hose connector with only minor wiggling and cursing involved. So that (and the fact the smallest PVC piping I could find anywhere nearby was ½”) is why I’ve got that huge white spray bar at the back. I’ll eventually invest in some lily pipes, but for now it does a great job of breaking down the flow enough so my chilis aren’t spending all their time fighting the current. My first little piece of DIY and I'm glad it actually went well! roud:









Closing shot, BOOM!


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## fishboy199413 (Jan 20, 2010)

Nice tank, very good job. The chili rasboras look great but one of them appears to be a maculata rasbora. It is the one with the spot instead of the horizontal stripe.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

Yeah, I'm still not convinced whether they're chilis or maculatas... I've had them for about 3 weeks now and they're still all pretty pale (not nearly as bright as some of the pictures make them out to be). They all came out of the same tank from the LFS which supposedly housed only chilis (since I can't find any in clubs or online in Canada) and it was the owner I spoke to when buying them and he assured me they were all chilis, but the colouration and the spotting on some of them still has me uncertain. At least they're all active and healthy, schooling very nicely. I'll probably be picking up another half dozen over the weekend (whether they're chilis or not), just because it's been impossible to find any nano fish that size.

Also, sidebar from my other (as yet unposted) tank, but is my Amano pregnant or just working on a whole lotta poop after eating a giant piece of zucchini? 0_o


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## Drift Monkey (Mar 26, 2012)

Cool tank, good to see another person still rockin the ebi!


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

Drift Monkey said:


> Cool tank, good to see another person still rockin the ebi!


Thanks! I think it's a great little form factor. Doesn't take up too much room, but at the same time still allows a good amount of space for plants and critters.

Also, as a sidebar, after carefully examining the fish by keeping them at the front of the tank with a feeder ring up, it appears that I might have 6 b brigittae and 1 b maculatus. They're all schooling together, seemingly without noticing it, so I'm happy about that at least.

And now that the DIY spray bar on the 105 has broken down the flow a bit and I've started feeding them cyclops, they're starting to colour up pretty nicely. One of the smallest ones actually seems to be developing dominant male colouring. Should be picking up another half dozen this weekend if I get lucky, so more pics to come at that time!


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

No new pics yet because I couldn't find any more boraras brigittae, so the school is still at 7 of them. Colours also haven't changed much since the other day. I also lost 3 shrimp over the past week, so I've only got 3 left. I checked all the parameters, and the only thing off that I could find was nitrates (almost 20ppm) so I threw in another handful of duckweed to hopefully suck a bunch of it up. Hopefully I'll be able to find new ones soon, if not there's a group buy being organized locally that I might order some PFRs from.

In potentially good and/or interesting news, I think one of my otocinclus is pregnant. Either that or it's gotten massively fat in the 3 weeks since I bought it, while it's "partner" has remained nice and slim. If she ever comes out from the back of the tank, hiding in the narrow leaf java fern, I'll be sure to snap a pic.


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## Drift Monkey (Mar 26, 2012)

How many Otos you got in there?


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

2 otos. One of them is clearly smaller than the other, but that could also just be an age difference. Hopefully it won't be something like dropsy, but the clearly fatter of the two seems to be healthy in all regards other than just being fat (not just chubby from eating well).


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## Drift Monkey (Mar 26, 2012)

You could probably stand to add a couple more...they love to be in groups! I plan on 6 in my Ebi.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

I don't want to overload the bioload with Otos though. Plus, the owner of my LFS recommended only 1 Oto per 5g. They're really only here to keep any algae under control until I get a healthy population of shrimp going, at which point I'll move them over to my other tank probably.


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## Drift Monkey (Mar 26, 2012)

SomeCanuck said:


> I don't want to overload the bioload with Otos though. Plus, the owner of my LFS recommended only 1 Oto per 5g. They're really only here to keep any algae under control until I get a healthy population of shrimp going, at which point I'll move them over to my other tank probably.


If I remember right, somewhatshocked had 6 in his Ebi and it was perfectly fine. Oto's bioloads are quite small actually.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

Drift Monkey said:


> If I remember right, somewhatshocked had 6 in his Ebi and it was perfectly fine. Oto's bioloads are quite small actually.


Ah, well that's pretty cool, although I'd still prefer to keep it lighter on the Oto side. The shrimp will do most of the cleanup once the colony grows enough.

Speaking of shrimp, I found an LFS that sells b brigittae regularly and even has an online stock to make it easier. Lo and behold, their site said they had some in, so I called up and the guy says sure, come by whenever you want. So I spent 45 minutes in traffic fighting my way across the island to the shop. Got there, went through all their tanks, couldn't find any, and when I finally asked, the guy that was there told me that someone came in a few hours back and bought about 30 of them and then someone bought the last 5 an hour before I showed up. :C He said it'll probably be a few weeks before they get some more, but at least I've got some hope now! haha.

That said, I really didn't want to have driven all the way there for nothing, so I picked up a half-dozen RCS; they're almost all Sakura-ish colours, so they'll go good with the few remaining from the initial group I bought and hopefully add a bit to the biodiversity if/when they start breeding. Pics to come later tonight.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

As promised, here are the new pics.

Some of the new ladies (and hopefully boys)









Extreme closeup on one of the prettiest ones:









Turbo's learnt this trick where he builds himself a duckweed raft and floats around the tank. And then after a while he gets bored and dive bombs off. Weirdest thing I've ever seen haha









The weeping moss on the tree is coming in really nicely. Good progress in the past 2 weeks. (I'll be smarter and move the thermometer next time, but had to put it in that corner so it's not right beside the heater)









And lastly, I've unfortunately ended up with ramshorns somehow. And they're donig a damn good job of taking over the tank. Gonna have to start trapping them because I really don't want to go the assassin snail route with all the shrimps. I've heard they sometimes will kill shrimp...


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## Drift Monkey (Mar 26, 2012)

Nice pics! Your new shrimp look like my young PFRs.

Some snails in my Edge like to climb towards the HOB outlet and dive bomb...weird indeed.

I ended up with ramshorns in my Ebi too...randomly. They're aren't too many, but I actually like them.


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## SaltyNC (Jun 26, 2012)

Same here on the ramshorns. At first, I was removing them, but finally I just gave up. They seem to literally be on every leaf and every blade of grass. I decided to just let the population explode and then die off naturally. Let 'em spit polish my tank in the meantime.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

Drift Monkey said:


> Nice pics! Your new shrimp look like my young PFRs.


Thanks! The shrimp definitely aren't all that colour, but they're still pretty nice. There's a few clearer ones but I'm hoping they'll just be the boys. Really want to start breeding the little buggers! haha



SaltyNC said:


> Same here on the ramshorns. At first, I was removing them, but finally I just gave up. They seem to literally be on every leaf and every blade of grass. I decided to just let the population explode and then die off naturally. Let 'em spit polish my tank in the meantime.


Not a bad plan, but I've already got a good cleanup crew.  Hopefully the population will level itself out soon enough, but for the moment it looks like there's a few dozen baby ramshorms at 1 or 2mm in size.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

Feeding time! Nom nom nom.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

Tada!









I'm very happy with how everything's growing. I'm adding some modified EI-based macro solution sporadically during the week (about 10 ml), 1ml Flourish Excel once a week and the same with Flourish Comprehensive for micros. Still no CO2, but it doesn't look like I need it.

I added a black background just to try and make the plants and critters pop a bit more. Not sure whether I prefer it like this or how I had it before, though not seeing the light's power cord is nice hehe.

The Dwarf Sag has come in pretty dense. And that narrow leaf java fern in the distance is still my favourite. You can also see the 2 shy boraras in the corner, one of the brigittae and the lone merah.










I also took apart the spray bar and added another half dozen holes to it to lessen the water flow so that the fish and shrimp weren't always fighting the current and to spread out the flow better throughout the tank. And I added a hole to the top to try and force some surface movement to combat the heavy biofilm problem I've been having, which has been working great so far.









Which means that the b brigittae will actually hang out near the front of the tank...










And the shrimp get to enjoy their fancy little petri dish food bowl without all the food flying away!










I took a top shot to show just how HUGE the crypt mi oya has gotten. It's gorgeous and has definitely taken over the space I had originally thought the African water fern would occupy (which is still there, just growing so slow it's barely visible in the back corner).










Turbo and Tooth enjoying hanging out around the chunk of rock growing weeping moss at the front.


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## SomeCanuck (Mar 25, 2012)

FINALLY managed to find some more b brigittae! I was out shopping for curtains and rods and stuff like that yesterday afternoon about 45 minutes from home and couldn't resist the siren call of an LFS out there. Walked in expecting nothing and found a little display 10g with a massive school of them. I probably squealed out loud haha problem was that I wasn't going to be home for a bit (was out thataways to see a friend off on a trip) so I found one of the employees, explained my conundrum and my quest and they were kind enough to package the boraras in an extra large bag (discus-sized) and pump it full of oxygen. I then spent the rest of the evening carrying around a grocery bag with fish everywhere I went just to make sure they didn't catch cold. Everyone got home and was added to the tank safe and sound.

Pics to come later today or tomorow!


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