# 5g High-tech Nano Cubes



## geraldk (12 mo ago)

*13/1/2022*










The day after I took this picture to show off how much my desk was sagging, I needed 2 Australian $.20 pieces (about same thickness as US quarter) under the left legs to level the tank. It's a cheap IKEA particleboard tabletop that's served me well for a decade so I can't complain too much but I need to keep an eye on that.
The Lindernia rotundifolia keeps floating away and I keep trying to plant them again. I've trimmed some of them in an attempt to make them easier to handle. The nice slope in the aqua soil has gotten flattened at the back from repeated attempts to push those stems in them argh. The CO2 system still has leaks so checker is firmly blue.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

*16/1/2022*

A few days later










Finally got the DIY CO2 working! I had followed the guide and recipe in this video but the part I was missing was the hole needed to be smaller than the airline tubing I was using. That way the too-small hole would 'pinch' the airline tube, helping to alleviate some pressure off the silicon sealant I was using in the bottle caps. Anyways, the bubble rate is 1 bubble per 3 seconds, which has made the drop checker a nice green. Bubbles!

*Water stats*:
GH- 120 ppm
KH - 60 ppm
pH - 7.2
NO2 - 0.3 ppm
NO3 - 20 ppm

The relatively low NO2 and NO3 has me hopeful I can stock shrimp soon.
The Lindernia rotundifolia are all straightening and growing, which is a good sign. The Bacopa monnieri is half and half. Half of it is thriving, half of it is melting away into nothingness. I think the ones that are dying are the ones whose stems I mauled when planting
All the foreground and midground plants seem the same. Just some leaves melting in the 'Monte Carlo'. I'm hoping there's roots under those clumps but I'm too scared to lift them up to check


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

*19-1-2022*










Skipping ahead a few days. First, the water params
GH- 180 ppm
KH - 200 ppm
pH - 7.2
NO2 - 0.7
NO3 - 30

Wow, those stem plants are really growing. The foreground/midground... not so much. I've read Stauro can be slow-ish at first but the carpet should have been taking off in a high-tech environment.
Also, 1 bubble per 3 seconds is way too much for this tiny tank. That drop checker is screaming yellow. I need to figure out an adjustment before I can get shrimp.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

*21/1/2022*










So today, Green Aqua comes out with a video explaining planting technique. Why couldn't they have come out with this 2 weeks earlier?! As soon as I finished watching the video, I went back and replanted EVERYTHING. It looks so much better. I also cut and replanted some of the Lindernia rotundifolia, I hope it wasn't too early.
I'm noticing some diatoms/brown algae on my Stauro leaves, but diatoms are normal for this age of tank... I think.


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## minorhero (Mar 28, 2019)

Welcome back to the hobby! Good start to your tank back. You haven't mentioned testing for it yet but you will want to check for ammonia before adding livestock to the tank. Ammonia and nitrite are the two things to look at to determine if your tank has finished its cycle.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

*24/1/2022*










I haven't mentioned it in previous posts but I've ramped up the lighting to be a 7-hour cycle, 1-hour ramp, 60% power. Now that the foreground is planted properly, I really want to give the carpet maximum light. But I also don't want to blast it too much because I don't have an algae crew yet. The brown algae or melt or whatever is really eating into all my Stauro now. But at least my foreground finally seems to be thriving. I'm seeing lots of bright green new growth and pearling everywhere.
I've remade the DIY CO2 to try and slow down the bubble count. Instead of 250g sugar, 250ml of water, and 3 gelatine leaves, I'm adding an extra 1/2 gelatin leaf to try and slow down the rate the yeast is eating the sugar. My CO2 system sprung another leak though, so I ended up switching from silicone bathroom sealant to hot glue gun for that instant setting time. Seems to have worked! My bubble rate is now down to 1 bubble every 10 seconds. I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days, want to get the shrimp soon
I think I need more plants, specifically a Ludwigia Super Red or Alternanthera reneckii as the hero plant and some moss on that big rock. Maybe even some Anubias or Buce


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

minorhero said:


> Welcome back to the hobby! Good start to your tank back. You haven't mentioned testing for it yet but you will want to check for ammonia before adding livestock to the tank. Ammonia and nitrite are the two things to look at to determine if your tank has finished its cycle.


Thanks! I forgot to mention I got one of those Seachem Ammonia Alert cards. It was reading 'Alert' (0.05 ppm) in the first week but it's now settled into 'Safe' (< 0.02 ppm) and the tank has recently come down from a minor nitrite spike, so it seems like it's pretty well cycled?


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## minorhero (Mar 28, 2019)

geraldk said:


> Thanks! I forgot to mention I got one of those Seachem Ammonia Alert cards. It was reading 'Alert' (0.05 ppm) in the first week but it's now settled into 'Safe' (< 0.02 ppm) and the tank has recently come down from a minor nitrite spike, so it seems like it's pretty well cycled?


Definitely get a liquid ammonia test. Those cards are frankly not perfect. It will save you a lot of time and frustration in the future if all your livestock dies and you are trying to figure out why.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

*25/1/2022








*

So this was a bit concerning. That bright green growth on my Monte Carlo turned out to have an unexpected twist. I'm expecting small round leaves like how I got the plant (original growth circled in blue) and the new growth is longer and narrow (circled in red). Looking on other threads in this forum, it looks like I actually got pearlweed, which apparently looks like Monte Carlo when grown emersed but when growing submersed, it can become a stem plant. I contacted the seller and they were really nice and gave me a refund, which I'm pretty happy about. I still really want a Monte Carlo carpet so I'll be ordering some soon but I'll leave the pearlweed in at the moment because I need the plant load to fight these diatoms.

Water params
GH- 180 ppm
KH - 240 ppm
pH - 7.0
NO2 - 10 ppm
NO3 - 80 ppm

Looks like I have a bit of a nitrite/nitrate spike. It might be the result of all the melt that's been happening, will see if a water change and more API Quick Start helps


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

minorhero said:


> Definitely get a liquid ammonia test. Those cards are frankly not perfect. It will save you a lot of time and frustration in the future if all your livestock dies and you are trying to figure out why.


Darn, I was hoping to be lazy about that test. I did want the liquid nitrite and nitrate tests too (as I'm using test strips atm), I might as well bite the bullet and get the API Master Kit. Thanks for the advice!


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

*27/1/2022*

Now all caught up! I finally got new plants!










New additions:

Ludwigia Super Red Mini
Mini Christmas Moss
Bucephalandra Sekadau
Limnophila Hippuridoides (thrown in for free by seller, yay!)
I got these from a different Aussie seller, Aquarzon, who seemed a lot more legit, they had written all their own notes on all their listings. We've had a really humid, hot week so some of the plants had melted a little in transit but they were all salvageable with a little trimming. I kept seeing aquascapers on YouTube using superglue to attach moss and epiphytes and was always suspicious but damn, that stuff works well.
I made some space in the back middle for the Ludwigia, super excited to see it grow out. After fighting floating Lindernia rotundifolia for so many days, I'm getting pretty decent at planting stems now. However when I tried to shift some of the Stauro to make room for the Limnophila Hippuridoides, it just fell apart, most likely because all the leaves and stems were covered with brown algae at this point. I think I really need to take these diatoms seriously and start dosing Excel. Most of my remaining Stauro have some degree of diatom coverage as well. I've seen signs of hair grass, green dust, and staghorn algae previously but physically picking them out and water changes have kept those at bay so far. My CO2 rate has been on the low side as well, so that's not helping.

*Water params:*
GH- 180
KH - 180
pH - 7.0
NO2 - 3
NO3 - 40

Looks like the nitrite and nitrates have come down, phew


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

Looking so sweet! I got the same ludwigia yesterday but I got mine from tissue culture so the plantlets are tiiiiiny.... but super cute looking already. Can't wait for it to grow.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

LidijaPN said:


> Looking so sweet! I got the same ludwigia yesterday but I got mine from tissue culture so the plantlets are tiiiiiny.... but super cute looking already. Can't wait for it to grow.


Nice! I didn't even know you could get Ludwigia Super Red from tissue culture, wow! I had to really trim down most of mine after transport melt so most of it is hidden behind the big rock. Hope yours grows soon too


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

geraldk said:


> Nice! I didn't even know you could get Ludwigia Super Red from tissue culture, wow! I had to really trim down most of mine after transport melt so most of it is hidden behind the big rock. Hope yours grows soon too


it's a local place and they have a lot of stuff in culture. It's pretty cool. The plants are green when they're babies, they're so tiny but fully formed, little stalks of about 2 inches with tiny leaves just a few mm across.... it's really funny when my tiny juvenile chili rasbora swim next to my tiny juvenile ludwigias it looks like a little world in miniature


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Finally got fauna in the tank yesterday! I got from a local seller:

8 juvenile cherry red shrimp. Apparently sakura to fire red grade. Some of them haven't finished colouring up completely so we'll see
5 blue ramshorn snails
I had originally wanted 10 shrimp but I was clearing out the seller's last Reds. She was offering White Snow "cherry" shrimp as well but doing some research, only Cardinias come in white? My GH and pH params are too high for Cardinias so I declined but man, that would have looked so sweet. Maybe in the next tank or rescape if I change out the hardscape.

Anyways, I spent the afternoon drip acclimating the shrimp and snails, should have taken pictures of that. Ran an airline tube from the tank to a bucket on the floor where I dumped the animals and their travel water into. I probably should have dosed with Prime since the snails had pooped a bunch in transit but turned out OK in the end. Let it drip at 1 drop a second for 3 hours (controlled the flow with a clamp since I don't have a valve) to let them acclimate to the temperature and TDS and once it looked like the volume had doubled, transferred them to the tank. Since they're so small, it was hard catching them in a net, had to suck some of the shrimp up with my meat baster. Once the animals were in the tank, I turned off the lights for the rest of the day to keep them from being stressed. The snails definitely didn't like the light, I could see one of them immediately start to burrow in the 5 mins before I turned off the lights. It stopped as soon as it went dark though


















They seem to all be OK, I could see the shrimp swimming in the dim ambient light of the room and when the lights came on this morning, they were jetting around the tank. I can see them picking away at my brown algae so am hesitant to feed them quite yet. The snails are BUSY, they demolished most of the brown algae on the rock and half of them are working on some melted leaves I didn't manage to clean out yet. I am just really afraid of them multiplying too much, I really don't want to have to pick them out and stomp them.
Here is the tank atm










I did a trim of the grass right before the shrimp came in, I'm so glad I bought wave scissors for this. Some more of the Ludwigia Super Red Mini had melted, probably still stressed from transit so I snipped off the dying bits and transplanted what I could behind the rock. The bit you can see poking up is doing really well though, its growing. I also glued a small stem on top of the rock, that seems to be staying alive too. I ordered some (hopefully) real Monte Carlo coming next week so I will be getting rid of most of the pearlweed then. I might keep a small bush of it around, since I heard it's super good for shrimp fry. I've been dosing Excel via a syringe to try and save my Stauro but might give a few days break to let the animals settle. Maybe they can help it too by clearing the brown algae suffocating it.

Water params after an 80% water change right before shrimp arrived:
GH- 180
KH - 80
pH - 7.0 (I think the test strip is off, my pH pen is telling me 7.8)
NO2 - 0.5
NO3 - 20


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Finally got the last of my plants for awhile. What's changed:

Replaced most of the pearlweed with Monte Carlo
Added some red root floaters
I ordered 2 lots of the Monte Carlo, the floaters were a free bonus from the shop. I had been considering them if I got a fish that needed shade, so score! How the tank looks a day after planting










I left a bush of the pearlweed in between the 2 rocks as I heard it's excellent for shrimp fry. The snails are all still going strong and I've managed to count 7 shrimp so I'm not sure if I've lost one. They are difficult to count since they're so active! They've been doing a great job at cleaning up a lot of the algae and dead plant matter. Unfortunately, it looks like they haven't been able to save another of my Staurogyne repens.










The one circled in blue is barely hanging on with a little sprout still hanging in there. The red circle is some dead stems and roots of the lost one, looks like the snails and shrimp have already started stripping it. I still have 3 stems left of my original 6, let's hope they turn around. Really wish I had gotten at least the snails earlier to combat the diatoms.

Latest water params:
GH- 180
KH - 120
pH - 8.2
NO2 - 0.5
NO3 - 20


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

So a few learnings and updates. I used to have my flow output just jetting out from a small cutoff tube. It was angled towards the surface, hoping for a little agitation but it was hard to keep it from blowing away any Lindernia rotundifolia that happened to droop near it. So I took the chance on trying a spray bar kit except the attachment points are a little weird for it, hence it being angled like that. To be honest though, I might end up replacing the cheap Aqua One powerhead that came with the tank and get a whole new system. It tends to rattle so I need to lubricate it once every few weeks with Vaseline.

Otherwise, shrimp are doing well, I can see them molting roughly once a week and I've counted 7 so maybe only 1 died? The snails have laid eggs and have just hatched. I decided to leave them for now, let's see if I come to regret that decision. The diatoms are just exploding, and hair grass algae is starting to show up everywhere, I suspect it's because my DIY CO2 slowed down. A few good shakes and the rate is back up to make the drop checker lime green again. I was trying to spot dose Flourish Excel to keep the hair grass algae in check but am worried it might be smashing my moss
On the plant side, the carpet is coming in nicely. The pearlweed and hair grass are exploding, I need to trim them this weekend. Some of the moss is struggling on top of the rock, maybe the Excel, maybe the high light. The Ludwigia is struggling too, the lower shoots behind the rock aren't getting enough light or flow of CO2.

Speaking of the rocks, they are really spitting out calcium. I can definitely notice my TDS going up by 20 every day. I would love to go to a weekly water change schedule, especially after stocking fish, but it looks like it needs to be at least 30% bi-weekly for now to lower the TDS from 300. I'm pretty sure most of that TDS is calcium because the water deposits on the aquarium are crazy. I have ~30 TDS tap water and can halve that with Brita filtering. With a 30-40% change, it lowers the TDS of the aquarium to 200. I might need to try to shrink the rock somehow or replace it


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

your rocks are beautiful and I love how they look with the mosses attached... too bad they're throwing off your water parameters. The whole tank honestly looks really stunning to me. I adore red root floaters, wish I could give them a shot but they wouldn't love my current low tech setup. Such an awesome pop of color though.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

LidijaPN said:


> your rocks are beautiful and I love how they look with the mosses attached... too bad they're throwing off your water parameters. The whole tank honestly looks really stunning to me. I adore red root floaters, wish I could give them a shot but they wouldn't love my current low tech setup. Such an awesome pop of color though.


Thanks! I ended up removing the big rock, could not break the thing. I might try to get a smaller rock, maybe even some wood. I would like a little bit of calcium leeching, it's good for the cherry shrimp.

You should definitely give red root floaters go, they don't need CO2, just need decent light to make them red. It might actually be good for a low-tech setup since they'll absorb excess nutrients and help your plants outcompete algae if you ever have trouble with that. Although, if your plants are suffering from nutrient deficiencies, they'll only make it worse The other thing to watch out for is if they shade plants that need light, I have to corral mine sometimes to stop stunting my poor Ludwigia like they're trying to do in that last photo


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

geraldk said:


> Thanks! I ended up removing the big rock, could not break the thing. I might try to get a smaller rock, maybe even some wood. I would like a little bit of calcium leeching, it's good for the cherry shrimp.
> 
> You should definitely give red root floaters go, they don't need CO2, just need decent light to make them red. It might actually be good for a low-tech setup since they'll absorb excess nutrients and help your plants outcompete algae if you ever have trouble with that. Although, if your plants are suffering from nutrient deficiencies, they'll only make it worse The other thing to watch out for is if they shade plants that need light, I have to corral mine sometimes to stop stunting my poor Ludwigia like they're trying to do in that last photo


Yeah my problem is my tank is covered and the light doesn’t cover the whole surface... and it doesn’t work for any floater. The ones in the light boom and the ones that float to the side die and foul up the water. I’ll use them for sure when I set up my beautiful future rimless tank with suspended light ♥


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Sooo, I removed the big rock a week ago, a day after my last post. I did not realise how many problems the rock had attached to it

It was leeching tons of calcium into the water. Now with only the small rock, my TDS is only crawling up each day where I could probably go 1.5 weeks without a water change before it hits 300. Still did a 30% water change yesterday though, because of my EI-style fertilisation regime
It was blocking flow and light to the Ludwigia Super Red Mini. Only 1 stem was really flourishing and even then, the part of it that was behind the rock was sad looking. I've cut and replanted that stem to encourage growth and have replanted the smaller stems that were barely hanging in there into the centre of the tank, where they get prime spot for light and CO2 flow.
It was growing tons of diatoms and green spot algae. I think it was the single largest food source in the tank for the snails, which I think is what's causing their nuclear explosion of population growth. I haven't been feeding any of the animals in the tank since the start of the month and am still murdering snail eggs every day. The small rock is finally clear of diatoms and I'm hoping now is when I start starving the snail babies

I did a bit of a trim in my water change session, the grass and pearlweed are just winning at life. Hopefully this week I'll be able to make it out to the fish supply store (that doesn't have animals but has super cheap stuff) and grab an API Master Test Kit and a piece of wood to replace big rock. Most of my moss is chilling in a bucket of water outside waiting for me to get into gear. 
Also, I had to sleep in the office last night because the wife was sick, and the AquaOne Maxi 101 powerhead kept waking me up with it's rattling. First thing in the morning, I ordered a new powerhead to replace it: the Dymax DP200. I've tried so many things to try and hack it into quietness: removed the suction cup housing, added Vaseline to the impeller shaft, added Vaseline to the pipe that contacts the aquarium wall, added filter floss behind the spray bar to keep it from rattling against the back wall. NO MORE


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

I finally made it out to that aquarium shop and get that piece of wood (they were out of stock on the test kits though T_T). I got some driftwood that had been plucked from the beaches of New Zealand. $20 for a small piece of wood is slightly ridiculous but it was pre-treated for aquarium use so I'll take it. I still boiled it for 15 mins, scrubbed it with a toothbrush, and soaked it in a bucket overnight before I superglued the moss and plonked it into the tank. I got a rock behind it that you can't see that I've paper towel superglued to anchor it, it kinda keeps the left side down but the right side floats up so I've wedged that under my drop checker










It actually works pretty well!
My yeast CO2 was getting near the bottom so I've swapped that out for a fresh bottle as well. Since I have higher plant mass, I'm going for a slightly higher rate with the recipe of 250g sugar, 250ml water, 1 tablespoon of gelatin, and 4g of yeast. Last time I had used a little more gelatin.

I did a trim of the pearlweed (it's growing so fast, this might need to be a weekly maintenance thing) and moved some plants around to fit the wood. Just that one stem of Ludwigia Super Red Mini is doing well, everything has struggled to take off and I think I'm going to get rid of the tiny sad 3cm shoots. I don't mind that to be honest, it was always supposed to be an accent and if the little I have at the moment grows out, it will be perfect.
The Staurogyne repens is hanging in there. I've ripped out some of the overgrown grass and replanted them to the front so they can get prime light and CO2.








There's just 3 shoots left, here's 2 of them. One stem is doing great at recovery, it's already grown a side shoot. The other one hung in there with its 2 original leaves (it started with like 10) and finally got new growth before the leaves are finally giving up. That little guy is a trooper, it had tried to grow new things twice before, just to get smashed by algae. This time hungry shrimp and snails are helping it out.

All the other plants are doing great and I'm just trimming them. I really love the look of my scape now. I just need those 2 plants to grow out as well as my moss and Buce and I'm happy. Still need to get fish, maybe this next weekend. The shrimp and snails are doing well. I've only smashed 1 snail egg cluster in the last 5 days and the shrimp keep getting bigger, redder, and always have full poo shoots and I haven't been feeding them all month

I did get in that new powerhead to replace my sometimes rattley one









It's a Dymax DP200. I didn't expect it to be so tiny! It's USB powered (bonus if my power goes out, I can plug it into a battery pack) and apparently DC motors are supposed to be really quiet compared to their AC counterparts. Unfortunately the output pipe thing is too small to fit the spray bar and outlet pipes so I need to figure out some adapters and stuff before I can use it


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

I should talk about my experiments as well. I have a little bit of a few kinds of hairgrass algae and tiny bits of green spot algae. I physically pull out the hairgrass algae from time to time so it isn't killing any of my plants atm except maybe the red root floaters sometimes but those propagate way faster than they're dying so I don't really care. I spot dose with Excel whenever I can be bothered on weekdays (about 1-2 times a week). My fertiliser is an all-in-one that recommends 1/2 a pump 3x a week and 50% weekly water changes (EI dosing). My experiments are mainly to minimise algae growth while maintaining high plant growth (including reds).

My photoperiod is currently 7 hours atm with 1 hour ramp up and ramp down times. 2 hours at 70% intensity, a 1 hour siesta, and then 5 hours of 80% light. The siesta is mainly so I can stretch the photoperiod to my working periods, it's kinda nice to have the aquarium light remind me I need to go eat and get away from the desk. The 80% bump in the later part of the day was an adjustment I made last week, didn't seem to result in an algae explosion, maybe just slightly more hairgrass. But the Ludwigia loved it, so going to keep it up. I also cut down on the fertiliser to 2x instead of 3x.

This week I'm going to see what the increase in CO2 will do along with going back to 3x a week fertiliser. I'm hoping I keep up the growth on the Ludwigia and maybe even the Stauro and seeing what the algae does


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

This was my tank yesterday after a water change and a trim. I noticed that just chopping the stem plants, the Bacopa and the Pennywort, in half when I trim is not good. New shoots come out at the sides of the cut and I get weird angles. So now I'm trying to cut much lower, out of sight, and replant the top bit. Hopefully over time it results in neater forests of them. I was really happy with my tank at this point. I had good growth of everything, the Stauro and Ludwigia were bouncing back, I could notice copepods and detritus worms, which I don't mind. My shrimp were finally mature enough to start saddling up.

But copepods and detritus worms weren't the only hitchhikers. This morning I noticed a weird algae on the glass right in front of the pearlweed bush. When I looked closer, I recognised a pest I had hoped never to encounter:










*HYDRA. OH NOES.*

Apparently they feed on the copepods. Sure, I don't care about those guys. Also, they eat baby shrimp too. GET OFF MY LAWN. I've noticed they sting the adult shrimp too when they get near. Reading some threads on this forum, it sounds like there are 3 option for me

1. Treat with hydrogen peroxide
2. Treat with anti-planaria stuff that contains betel nut extract
3. Get fish to eat them or at least outcompete them

Getting fish is my eventual solution but because my wife isn't well, we can't get to a fish shop until at least next weekend and possibly longer. Betel nut extract seems to be a more comprehensive solution but it will probably murder all my snails. I do want to keep the snail population in check but that's a bit extreme and it sounds like it might be awhile and many water changes later that I get to have them back. 
So in the meantime, I'm trying H2O2 to keep them in check. I used the amounts recommended by Mark's Shrimp Tank as an upper dosing guide. For a 22 litre tank, it came out to be about 6.6mL of hydrogen peroxide, I rounded that down to 6mL since I wasn't really interested in doing a full tank treatment, just spots. Diluted it with tank water 50:50, and squirted them and the surrounding plants generously with the filter off. It was really interesting, the whole area fizzed up. I turned the filter back on after an hour. I think some of them died in the initial hit? After a few hours, there were maybe only 20% of them left on the glass. The rest could have just ran away, they can somersault or float away apparently. If I see them again tomorrow, I can just blast them again.
Was reading this interesting thread at a saltwater forum where they talk about using hydrogen peroxide as a tank-wide treatment of cyanobacteria and might use that in the future as my dosing guide, basically 1:10 of 3% H2O2, 2x a day. Saltwater is way more sensitive than my cherry shrimp so their dosing regime seems pretty conservative and I love their comprehensive testing regime, gives much more weight than some random advice. Just gotta be careful that my shrimp don't directly ingest any H2O2


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

I got a fish finally!










He's a half-moon betta named Wick. We were throwing around badass names and John Wick was brought up. Since his red fins make him look like a flame, thought Wick was a good fit. When we were looking in the fish store, my wife fell in love with him at first sight. I tried to go look at other possible fish, like White Clouds, Zebra Danios, or CPDs, but she was freaking every time someone else looked at the bettas and pointed at him so the decision had already been made haha. I know there was a risk (and still is) of him murdering every cherry shrimp I have but I counted 7 out of a possible 8 today so that's a good sign. I'm keeping him well fed for now just in case. He's very inquisitive, started exploring 10 mins after being introduced to the tank. He likes to wriggle in amongst the stems, the grass, everywhere. I had kinda counted on some of those places being safe havens for the shrimp sooo I hope he stays good friends with them. It seems he mostly ignores them unless they try to dart away, which most of them are learning not to do anymore. It's good to see him being so slow with those long fins though, he could not catch up with any darting shrimp. It's funny seeing him be so lazy sometimes, he'll just lay down on the plants, the substrate or even let himself get sucked onto the filter intake vents and just chill there and catch his breath after swimming in the current.

I took out my good camera to take photos of them all so here's the shrimp as well. I freaked out that the middle one has the white ring of death but she's stayed alive for 2 days now with those markings so that's good. I got some Hikari Shrimp Cuisine from the LFS along with Wick, so hopefully that will give them enough calcium after a diet of only algae and biofilm for a month.










As far as my hydra problem is going, they're no longer clustered in the same spot, I can see them here and there throughout the tank on plant leaves now. I had tried treating them with hydrogen peroxide with 1/2 ml twice a day for a few days but it didn't seem to do much except kill baby snails and pearlweed leaves that got caught in the direct path (pearlweed has since recovered because it's just bulletproof like that). I can see Wick eating the seed shrimp or whatever at night so I'm hoping the hydra start to starve out. My shrimp are still in the process of maturing and saddling up so hopefully I have a little more time to beat them before the shrimp fry become hydra snacks. I need all the shrimp fry I can get with Wick in the picture now

I'm also seeing pinholes in some of my older Ludwigia Super Red leaves. Reading from other posts, it might be a potassium deficiency, which makes sense as I'm under-dosing my all-in-one fertilizer. I'll try grabbing some Seachem Potassium next week.

Tank shot


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## DangerFish (11 mo ago)

geraldk said:


> I got a fish finally!
> 
> View attachment 1039233
> 
> ...


Red beta with cherry shrimp looks amazing


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

DangerFish said:


> Red beta with cherry shrimp looks amazing


Thanks!


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Wow, having a fish with personality makes the tank way more distracting. I have the tank in between my desk and my wife's desk and I'll just watch it during meetings, when I'm waiting for code to test, etc. My wife can sit staring at it for hours as well. I think Wick knows when we look at him because he'll come up to the glass and start going crazy begging for food. I've read bettas are really prone to constipation if you overfeed them so we've really been trying to hold back but it's HARD.

Tank shot









Another 2 weeks, another trim of the pearlweed, another fistfuls of red root floaters thrown away. I tried giving a coworker some trimmings last week and did a diluted bleach bath of 1:20 and the floaters pretty much insta-melted. Luckily, 2 days later, they regrew enough that I was able to give him a ziploc bag full of fresh ones (gave him fair warning they weren't sanitized though). I'm wary of trying to sell them or give them away atm because of my hydra infestation, which is unfortunately still growing and spreading around the tank. I've ordered some planaria/hydra medication which I'm guessing is fenbendazole based, let's see how that goes. It might decimate my snail population so the plan is to move as many of them as I can find to a bucket for a week or two while the treatment works and then I do water changes and activated charcoal. There are a LOT of baby snails hiding in here though so if they croak, I need to be on top of water changes and vacuuming.










Here's Wick posing with a RCS, who I think are starting to have babies, excited! Some of the larger females have been hiding for a week and only recently resurfaced, apparently one of the males were going crazy the day they disappeared too. Not expecting anything this time but maybe in a month I'll start looking. The mini Buce in the middle has been doing really well too, I might be able to split the rhizome soon. The "Buce" to the right I found is actually a very small Stauro shoot that I thought had died. It's growing very slowly and I might keep it as an epiphyte for a little longer until it grows more decent roots, I lost a struggling Stauro shoot because I think it didn't have good enough roots to make it.










Speaking of epiphytes, here's my experiment with keeping a Ludwigia Super Red shoot alive just tangled in the moss. It's growing new really red leaves, which is a great sign, I might want to try doing a sakura tree scape with a bonsai and epiphyte Ludwigia Super Red as the "flowers" in the future. The Christmas moss is starting to do really well, it's grown pretty thick in some places of the tank where I think the mama and molting shrimp disappear to sometimes. Hopefully the baby shrimp are safe in it too.










This was an interesting story as I was doing my mid-week water top-up. My tank is one of those all-in-ones where the back of the tank is dedicated to filtration. It has 3 chambers, I've stuffed 2 of them with bio media, and this 3rd chamber houses all the tech: heater, powerhead, CO2 diffuser, and my ammonia card. The main tank and these filter chambers are separated by a wall of black plastic. I tried to push the limit in filling water and a RCS managed to jump the barrier at the top of the tank and get inside this "tech" chamber. Good thing the powerhead was covered up, otherwise it could have made him into a shrimp smoothie. It took me and my wife a good hour to try and siphon him up and return him to the main tank because our net is too big to fit into that small space. While I was doing this, I had the powerhead removed and left a hole open where the powerhead outlet normally returns water to the main tank. Silly Wick the betta managed to squeeze through it to see what the fun was all about. I was cursing and trying to push his head back in but he would have none of it and wiggled his way through. Luckily my wife managed to convince him to come back out by clicking the tweezers and giving him a treat. He is a rascal that one.
I'm not sure if it's typical for betta to be weird like this but Wick loves to wiggle into unexpected places. I had planted the bacopa stems pretty densely in the back of the tank, there isn't supposed to be that space around the elbow joint in the picture. Wick managed to wiggle back there and push himself out a little cubby so he could hang out in the corner there. His favourite thing is to go in the bottom corner, shove his face in the soil, and just thrash about. Just yesterday I tried trimming and replanting some new tops in there, he just pushed them out again. Sigh

Water params:
GH - 10 dkH
KH - 8 dKH
pH - 7.0
NO2 - 0 ppm
NO3 - 10 ppm

Hoping to get that Master test kit and Potassium this Friday


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

Woah this is such a fascinating and eventful journal ⭐

Wick is adorable even if he’s a weirdo 😂 And so beautiful.

I don’t get how your ph is so low with your gh and kh so high. My gh is just over 5 and my kh is just over 3 and my ph is still like 7.4 at best. Annoying.

Your ludwigia is SO GORGEOUS!! I’m jelly. I hope mine will make it now that I’ve planted it in a peaceful jar and there are no pesky pond snails to bother it. But it’s still far from being even red, far less big and happy. 

The branch is a big improvement over the rock!!! Aquarium wood prices are nuts but I do love the look of it. And it’s great for growing biofilm etc. I notice my chilis are always picking stuff off the wood but never off the rocks. 

Everything is growing in so nicely!! You’re lucky to have copepods. I wish I had some. I never see anything in the water.


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## Jaguar (Oct 13, 2011)

I love the contrast of the red betta in all the green plants. Looking good!


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

Yep, he is an accent, like the ludwigia 😊


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

LidijaPN said:


> Woah this is such a fascinating and eventful journal ⭐
> 
> Wick is adorable even if he’s a weirdo 😂 And so beautiful.
> 
> ...


Thanks! I really need to post videos of him doing the strangest things. I've never seen a fish with so much personality before. 

I don't quite trust my pH readings to be honest, I've been using test strips. When my digital pH meter was calibrated (it's way off atm), it was reading 8 or high 7s, this was before I removed the big rock. I'm hoping once I get the master test kit, I'll get more accurate readings for pH. I did get an API GH/KH drop test so those readings are accurate at least. My tap water is pretty soft and I'm guessing the wood might be dropping the pH slightly. I'm pretty sure the KH buffering of my aqua soil is shot though

I read that you got a few hitchhiker snails in your jar! My ramshorns leave my Ludwigia alone for the most part, so I reckon they'll be safe. It took a little bit for my Ludwigia to flourish, what I currently have really came from 1 stem that I've trimmed and replanted, everything else melted in transit during a heatwave or withered behind that big rock.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Jaguar said:


> I love the contrast of the red betta in all the green plants. Looking good!


Thanks! I was trying to get a mostly green tank with slight accents like the Ludwigia, the red shrimp, and hopefully a bright fish like ember tetras, CPDs, or a red betta haha.


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

geraldk said:


> Thanks! I really need to post videos of him doing the strangest things. I've never seen a fish with so much personality before.
> 
> I don't quite trust my pH readings to be honest, I've been using test strips. When my digital pH meter was calibrated (it's way off atm), it was reading 8 or high 7s, this was before I removed the big rock. I'm hoping once I get the master test kit, I'll get more accurate readings for pH. I did get an API GH/KH drop test so those readings are accurate at least. My tap water is pretty soft and I'm guessing the wood might be dropping the pH slightly. I'm pretty sure the KH buffering of my aqua soil is shot though
> 
> I read that you got a few hitchhiker snails in your jar! My ramshorns leave my Ludwigia alone for the most part, so I reckon they'll be safe. It took a little bit for my Ludwigia to flourish, what I currently have really came from 1 stem that I've trimmed and replanted, everything else melted in transit during a heatwave or withered behind that big rock.


Ludwigia is a little moody it seems... mine are trying to grow out but really not impressive in terms of growth. I won’t lose hope tho. I have some in the jar and some in a tub on the window for a bit of natural light... I gave up on growing them out in the tank, they just weren’t doing well and everything was overshadowing them. Maybe they will do better when they can keep their heads up above the crowd so to speak.

API ph liquids seem ok to me? I didn’t calibrate them or anything but they seem to make sense in general terms...

Yeah only Chug and chuglets bothered ludwigia. None of them in the jar for now...


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Tank shot. I ended up doing a massive trim yesterday with my weekly water change, I pretty much ripped up and replanted the carpet on the right side. The dwarf grass was just dominating too much and I wanted parts of the tank to have a nice clean Monte Carlo carpet. I initially wanted a hybrid carpet to give it a natural look but the grass is just too strong! On the left side, the grass wasn't too dominant so I just cut it down, almost to the substrate. I also tried to clean up the green stems in the back.










The Ludwigia and the Limnophila Hippuridoides have been doing really well. I might need to trim and replant them next week as they're starting to reach the top. Crazy to think the Ludwigia really just came from 1 stem and the Limnophilia came from 2!

The moss is also getting quite bushy, although as I was pulling hair algae from them, I noticed that I pretty much had the whos who of algae living in them. Staghorn, hairgrass, black beard, they all came to the party. I've trimmed the bits with staghorn and black beard off because I do NOT want to be dealing with an outbreak of those. I want to trim the moss but the moss is also the shrimp's favourite place to hide. I've found out that they have 2 seperate homes in the moss, one in the back of the tank and one in the front, where the rock that is completely covered by moss is.










Wick is doing great, the blue in his fins is getting stronger. I wonder if his fins will eventually turn completely blue. I would prefer the red but that's not up to me anymore. He still ignores the shrimp and has started learning that when a human is near the top of the tank, and especially when they take off the light shades, it's time for food in the top right corner of the tank. I think my recent trimming of the stems and grass has been to his liking, he hasn't bashed around the bacopa lately and likes to lie down on the soft, trimmed Monte Carlo carpet now.
Unfortunately the hydra are still multiplying all over the tank and I am still waiting on my planaria/hydra killer. The curveball is that I'm going to be flying overseas for 2 weeks next Monday so if it doesn't come soon, I will need to let them grow for another month. If it comes soon enough, I can treat and then do the water changes and cleanup before I go so I don't leave my poor wife to deal with an ammonia-ridden tank.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

I always forget to take a before and after shot on trimming but luckily my wife reminded me today! 

Before:









After:









I did a decent trim last week but this week was even bigger. I think I cut pretty much every plant species in this tank except the struggling Staurogyne. I'll be going overseas for 2.5 weeks so tried to overtrim it a bit. Got the wife involved as well, she'll be looking after the tank while I'm gone. Have to admit, her sense in cutting the moss back so much makes it look a lot nicer than if it was just me. You can actually see we have a rock in there again where it got completely obscured before. I kept the moss trimmings in the back filter part of the tank, want to try a little experiment with utilising some of that back space for the shrimp when I get back. The rotundifolia in the back right really got culled and there was a LOT of aerial roots that I found was due to many of the plants had been uprooted this whole time (looking at you Wick).
Apologies for the fuzz, the green dust algae has been building up on the glass and I've been unable to wipe it off due to the subject of the next topic: HYDRA.

So I finally got the planaria/hydra treatment on Wednesday. I'm using a product from an Australian brand called Liverpool Creek Aquarium. It doesn't list the ingredients but judging by the directions, I'm pretty sure it's fenbendazole in liquid. The directions say 3 pumps for a 5-gallon and leave for 48 hours. Since my timeline is so short and I didn't want to leave my poor wife to deal with mass snail deaths and ammonia spikes, I under-dosed at just 2 pumps and only left it for 24 hours. I tried to remove a good amount of snails into a Tupperware that I had left some plant trimmings from last week just in case. Shrimp seemed unfazed, they just kept grazing as usual. Wick got a bit agitated, he was flashing a lot, scratching himself on the rock, log, substrate. He still ate though. We kept the lid on and the flow extra splashy, fenbendazole can apparently lower the oxygen in the water. I did wake up at 4am to tiptoe over and check on him, he was sleeping fine though.

After the 24 hours on Thursday, neither the hydra or the ramshorn snails left in the tank seemed fazed. As a last ditch effort, I tried to syringe up 1ml of medication and spot treat the hydra on the glass. I gave that an hour and begrudgingly, I did a 50% water change to clear up the medication and added some carbon to the filter. I added the refugees back into the tank, but I think I managed to murder 15 of the snail babies, the adults all seemed fine though. Whether it was temperature shock, or ammonia from the plant trimmings, I'm not sure. I thought ramshorns were pretty bulletproof. Wick seemed to have calmed down at this point though. In fact, he seemed so appreciative of the water getting cleared, he decided to blow a bubble nest in his favourite feeding corner after the water change.










24 hours later on Friday, the hydra seemed noticeably less happy, many of them had retracted their tentacles. I might've still had a little bit of the medication in the tank (not sure how fast and effective carbon is at cleaning medications) but maybe they were only starting to feel the poison. Needless to say, their misfortune brought me much joy. I think one of our shrimp popped her eggs this day and another was saddling up.
On Saturday, I normally do tank maintenance, but the hydra were still hanging on the glass and plant leaves. The majority of them were fully retracted now, just tiny green specks. Tiny green landmines though, if I disturbed them, it could lead to even more hydra. So I waited another day.
Finally, today on Sunday. There are still a few specks of hydra here and there but many of them had fallen off. I can't wait any longer as I fly tomorrow so did a big trim and a big water change. Making sure to try and vacuum up near the substrate and pick up any hydra bodies. Delighting in the xenocide I had just meted out. They might come back, if even a few survived, they spread rapidly. But now I have medicine and am not afraid to use it wahahaha.

In more Wick news, I found a saltwater aquarium shop nearby that sold frozen brine shrimp. He looooves his Hikari betta pellets but a weekly treat could be nice, especially after the medication saga. At first, he was hesitant to eat it, just letting it float to the ground. He was more than happy to eat it though when it was stuck on a finger and he had to jump for it (maybe because he can't inspect it as much). Afterwards, he was hunting around the whole aquarium up trying to find the morsels that dropped earlier. Great, I don't have to find and siphon the bits myself. But I didn't appreciate him uprooting half the flora I had been trying to replant in his frenzied search...


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

Delighting in the xenocide hahahahaha


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

So I've been overseas for a couple of weeks










Wife was taking care of the tank while I was gone for 2 weeks, she did a pretty decent job. Did a trim and water change, tested the water, dosed ferts. Then she got sick the second week and we had a power outage so the lights were left on for 24 hours one night and algae exploded. The plants got overgrown in that second week too so I had a big trim session when I got back.



















You could already see the green dust algae in the main tank photo. It's always dusted the hardscape but it really got all over the glass. We also got some gnarly harigrass algae that's combined to form vines (at least it makes it easy to remove that way). But the main player now seems to be this staghorn algae shown in my Mini Christmas moss.










After a big clean and trim. I tried to really cut back the grass, there were large chunks of staghorn in it. It was all over some of the Bacopa in the back left as well, I removed some stems that were particularly covered. All the moss has at least some level of infection, I tried to trim a lot of it away but it looks like I'm going to be spot dosing Excel all week, boo.

Good news though is that the Ludwigia Super Red is really thriving now. It's finally going toe-to-toe with the other stems, the Bacopa Monnieri and the Pennywort, in terms of growth and I'm having to trim it back now. Even the "epiphyte" stem I left tangled in the moss is doing super well, it's almost reached the top of the water. I am both excited and filled with dread. It's thriving, which is good, but I had wanted to try a bonsai tree with Ludwigia "leaves" in a future tank and that will be a lot of maintenance trimming if it grows this fast.
Also good news, the hydra seem to be no more. Wife reported that they had been reduced to specks when she cleaned them off the glass and a careful inspection shows none in the tank currently. #WINNING










Wick is currently doing well. Maybe a few more black scales on his side and a tad bit more blue on his top fin. His bottom fin that had been damaged while he was thrashing about when I was treating the tank with hydra medication seems to have been stabilised, hopefully it grows back out soon. He did have a scary episode of lethargy and possible swim bladder dodginess while I was away that was probably a constipation issue. The poor wife stayed up all night worrying about him because he was swimming weakly. Luckily a 1.5 day fast seemed to have fixed it but we are now super careful in trying not to overfeed him. It's hard when he's probably feasting on copepods and shrimp fry every night so we have to look at his tummy and make a call every morning on his meal sizes. 
Also, just a few moments ago, I heard a thrash in the tank and a juvenile ramshorn snail sinking to the bottom and Wick looking smug above it. The snail looked like it had a bite taken out of it, and it's not coming out of it's shell. Wick might be a snail hunter. That could explain the empty snail shells littered around the tank. I can blame it on Wick and not my bad snail husbandry, yes yes.
On one hand, that solves my snail population issue. On the other, it might solve it a little too well. All the adult snails are still alive (although none of them have any tentacles left...) so that's a good sign. They only live for about a year though, so I do need a few juveniles to make it to adulthood to replace them. Maybe I need a jar or Tupperware...










Final bit of news, we saw a baby shrimp! Here's a terrible blurry photo of it before it darted away to the depths but it's fantastic to see that Wick isn't as good of a shrimp hunter as we had feared. If I see one, there might be more so here's hoping. Hide well for now little shrimpies and come out big and fat later


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

That’s a super eventful update! Sounds like you’re taking decisive steps against algae... do you have lights on timers? I bought the cheapest possible mechanical timers for the lights and although a power outage will set them off course, they will still switch off after 8 hours..... could prevent future algae blooms.

Yay for shrimpy!!!! We saw a shrimpy yesterday too!!! That’s very exciting. Very sadness for snails with no antennae though 😔 maybe a different sort of snail? Ramshorns have long enticing antennae that are maybe too inviting for Wick. Pond snails have short stubby ones... but are mostly smaller so might still become snacks? Maybe no snails in Wick’s domain? That sounds like a very hard life for them...


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

LidijaPN said:


> That’s a super eventful update! Sounds like you’re taking decisive steps against algae... do you have lights on timers? I bought the cheapest possible mechanical timers for the lights and although a power outage will set them off course, they will still switch off after 8 hours..... could prevent future algae blooms.
> 
> Yay for shrimpy!!!! We saw a shrimpy yesterday too!!! That’s very exciting. Very sadness for snails with no antennae though 😔 maybe a different sort of snail? Ramshorns have long enticing antennae that are maybe too inviting for Wick. Pond snails have short stubby ones... but are mostly smaller so might still become snacks? Maybe no snails in Wick’s domain? That sounds like a very hard life for them...


My light is supposed to be on a schedule where it goes on at 9:30am and turn off at 5:30 with a 1-hour ramping in addition to an hour-long siesta at lunch. I guess I've just learned that it doesn't handle power outages well so a mechanical timer would probably be a good backup plan.

Congrats on your baby shrimps as well! It's apparently a common thing with ramshorns and bettas to have the antenna nipped off. It might be cruel but I'm not that concerned about the snails having a hard time. They're mainly in the tank to do a job, just like the copepods and detritus worms. If some of them end up as fish snacks, I'm OK with that. As long as it isn't me killing them with bad water or something.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Have a lot of big trims planned every week for a couple of weeks. Didn't want to do it all at once because it involves ripping out plants and replanting, it's time consuming and kicks up a lot of debris. This was after a 2 hour session of:

Really cutting the pearlweed bush back. I noticed in previous tank entries, it was a nice neat little bush but slowly we had let it grow to push against the glass. It's supposed to be a mid ground, not an in-your-face foreground plant.
Ripping up the carpet on the front left side. Removing as much Eleocharis grass from it. Replanting just the Monte Carlo to cover the old area as well as in front of the pearlweed. The Eleocharis was a mistake to let loose on the carpet. It takes over everything, is a pain to clean up after trimming, doesn't look as nice as I had hoped, and Wick hates it. Wick likes laying down on the carpet when it's freshly trimmed. When the grass grows, he will literally try to fight the blades of grass before giving up and go lay down on the right side of the tank, where we've already mostly eradicated it. While it is funny to see him nip and tail bash the grass, I felt sorry for him.
General trimming of moss, and trimming and replanting tops of all the stems in the back. I'm happy with the Bacopa and Rotundifolia growth, its just maintaining it now. The Ludwigia Super Red is finally thriving so now I can try to trim-replant and make it dense.

Next weekend's trimming session will be ripping up and replanting the rest of the carpet that lines the left side wall. Also, harvesting some moss.

So I made a fruitful trip to the aquarium shop. Got an API Master Kit (although I really only needed a Nitrite and Nitrate test at this point, might as well), backup sponge filter, and Eheim heater (because I don't trust my AquaOne crappy heater to not boil my tank). I kinda realised that I was really only a tank/bucket/jar away from being able to set up another tank. Then my wife brought up the idea of setting up a small shrimp tank so the cherry shrimp babies would have a better chance. Still want to get a 90p at some point but it's not too hard to squeeze in a 25cm cube on the desk or something, right? And if its low tech, it's low maintenance, right? I still have leftover aquasoil and I could throw trimmings into it like the moss. With fresh aquasoil, maybe I could do caridina shrimp. Stay tuned.

Anyways, baby shrimp time.










I've seen 2 babies at a time, this one is big enough that it's daring to venture out in the open quite a bit now. There could very well be more, I think we've seen the shrimp berried 8 or so times so far. They've got a ton of hiding places


















These are the spots in the tank where I've seen shrimp poke out from that Wick can't easily access. As well as inside the pearlweed bush. Sometimes in the morning, we don't see any of the shrimp. Then around lunchtime, there's 6 chilling out in the open. I don't really want to poke around in the shrimp kingdom because I want the small babies to stay nice and snug and not out, where they'll end up in Wick's stomach. Just have to be patient and trust that more juvenile shrimp will magically pop out from these dark recesses. Although it probably didn't help I wacked back that pearlweed bush...

Wick is loving life. He blew another bubble nest that wasn't very good










Apparently they need a bit of practice. Keep trying little buddy.

GH - 10 dGH
KH - 7 dKH
pH - 7.2
NO2 - 0 ppm
NO3 - 2-ish ppm
TDS - 210
Ammonia - 0 ppm

That NO3 test is hard to read. Aside from being the most involved test to run, it's just slightly darker yellow than zero on the card. So I guessed 2


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

Your tank is coming along so beautifully!!! I dream of my super red being that.... well, super red, lol.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Eventful week. First, a before trimming shot









If I was just upkeeping the tank, I didn't have to do much, just trim the pearlweed really. But, 3 hours later...









Forgive the thermometer in the middle there, I'm still wary of the new heater working correctly. I finally installed the spray bar correctly where it's completely above water instead of sitting diagonally as seen in previous entries. The flow now creates a "lane" on the water surface where the red root floaters get blown away and everything under that lane gets premium light. I would like the Ludwigia Super Red to get this light and not really the Bacopa, so I moved/culled the Bacopa to make room for some Ludwigia replants. As mentioned last week, I pulled up the rest of the carpet and carefully extracted the dwarf grass from it and replanted the pure Monte Carlo. Finally, I split the micro Buce on the log into 2 plants and attempted to glue them back on the log (failed, so I've just woven them into the moss for now).

I'm also battling Black beard algae. It most likely got a foothold when my CO2 rate was lowered while I was away. With a new batch of DIY CO2 running at a higher rate and daily spot-dosing of Excel, I'm hoping to slowly get rid of it. This particular Bacopa stem, I just got rid of but you can see BBA covering some of the leaves.









I haven't been steady in my potassium dosing so am getting some nutrient deficiencies in my Ludwigia as seen by the pinholes in the leaves. Was only really doing once a week potassium along with a twice a week all-in-one fertiliser dose, will try to up that to twice a week too.










Onto Wick the betta news. I had mentioned in a previous entry that Wick was attacking some of the juvenile ramshorn snails. Well, he attacked one of the adults early this week and it didn't survive. I heard a splash, then the sinking snail shell. I left it overnight, to see if it would recover. The original snails I had bought are getting quite old and sometimes they fall and don't move again for half a day. While I was at the office the next day, my wife saw the shrimp start to eat it so it was definitely dead. Wick had been leaving it alone all this time, he must not have seen it as food. As soon as he saw the shrimp eating it, he got FOMO, beat the shrimp back, and grabbed the snail carcass and took off with it. He managed to smash the remaining bits of shell (it had already started falling apart when the shrimp were eating it so it must have been pretty thin) and then proceeded to choke down the entire adult snail meat. He was pretty uncomfortable for the first day, mostly sitting on a plant near the surface, taking breaths of air often, and even attacking the plant when he got super grumpy. Here's a blurry shot of him being bloated.









We fasted him or fed him minimal amounts all week and he finally did a big poo. Betta are really prone to getting constipation so this was a relief to see.









And it looks like he's finally somewhat back to normal today









Did this silly boy learn his lesson? NO. He hasn't attacked any more snails since then but he takes great interest in dead snail shells ESPECIALLY if there's a shrimp near one. If a shrimp is grazing near something interesting, he will snap at them to chase them off, then investigate the area where they were grazing at. In short, my betta is an ***hole but at least he's OK now.

And at least he hasn't killed any shrimp yet. Out of the 5 original snails I purchased in January, I have 2 left. One I killed with bad water when I moved it for hydra treatment. One Wick killed. One died of old age this week, it's shell must have been thicker because only the detrivores got to it and I removed the empty shell when I was able to reach it during water change. There are still plenty of the next generation of snails and I still see eggs on plant leaves every now and then. I just gotta be careful when a full adult passes. When I read the instructions on some betta foods they read: "Feed as much as your betta can eat in 2 minutes". For my glutton of a betta, he would definitely gorge himself to death in 2 minutes.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Latest tank shot. Really trimmed back the pearlweed, I'm trying to make it recede from the front of the tank and move back to fill the space between the log and the rock. Apparently when I try to trim the top of the log, I'm too conservative so my wife does that haircut haha. I'm leaving the moss get overgrown everywhere else because I would like to harvest it next week for a new tank (more on that later!).
I was watching a YouTube video of someone doing a maintenance session and realised I was doing the stem plants all wrong. Basically every week, I'm trimming and replanting a few stems. This guy let them grow out, cut everything and replanted the tops all at once. HMMMM.
Still battling the BBA. Trying to dose Excel every day I can and I think I'm starting to win. I managed to beat it off one of my Buce and now it's slowly receding from my Limnophila and the other Buce.
Trimmed and replanted the Limnophila. I really like that plant but it sheds leaves like crazy that don't get optimal light. Also the last time I tried to replant a cutting, it ended up competing with the Rotundifolia and lost. I thought about removing it if it wasn't for the fact that Wick likes perching himself on the top of it often. And he is the boss of the tank.










Speaking of the boss, he's doing better. He was still grumpy last weekend, snapping at shrimp and chasing them all into hiding. My wife made the wise decision to fast him for 2 more days and he seems a lot happier afterwards. Ignores the shrimp again (mostly) and being curious and doing stupid stuff again.








I caught him impersonating a Moray Eel here. He isn't content with just swimming normally. He feels the need to burrow in the strangest places. In this particular instance, he's coming out of the pearlweed bush. I can't imagine that must be pleasant but I've seen him pop out of there at least 3 times this week so I guess it must be fun? He'll also randomly dive into the carpet or the grass and snap at some invisible copepods or detritus worms. Sure buddy, whatever floats your boat. He's managed to get a small hole in his top fin that you can't see in the pic above. We're keeping a close eye in case it's some kind of fin rot but most likely it was his mole antics.










Managed to snap a baby shrimp today now that Wick isn't in a mood anymore. They're growing FAST!

So new tank. I've always wanted to try Caridina shrimp but didn't want to go full hard mode on my first tank. And trying Caridina shrimp in the 90p community we're planning (but still a few months away) might be an expensive mistake. So the solution is another tank! Am waffling on a 25cm or another 30cm cube. I'm lucky to have pretty soft water in Melbourne so for water changes I think I can get away with dechlorinated tap water but will need to either buy distilled water or invest in a cheap RO system for top-ups. I'm not sure if I want to go low or high-tech as well. I saw a video recently where someone kickstarted their tank with CO2 before giving it away as a present and transition to low-tech, it looked like it worked pretty well! I would definitely like to minimise stem plants and pearlweed to save on maintenance and do more buce, anubias, reuse my Mini Christmas Moss, maybe even the Monte Carlo?


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

I love Wick the Molefish!! Can’t wait to see your caridina tank too. I’d love to have those one day. 

What’s the tall plant on the right side of the tank that has long thin leaves, really red on top and totally bare stem on the bottom?


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

LidijaPN said:


> I love Wick the Molefish!! Can’t wait to see your caridina tank too. I’d love to have those one day.
> 
> What’s the tall plant on the right side of the tank that has long thin leaves, really red on top and totally bare stem on the bottom?


Haha, Wick the Molefish!

Ugh, I double checked and what I've been referring to as "Hygrophilia" is actually Limnophila Hippuridoides haha. I might go back and edit my posts to fix that mistake. That is that long thin leaf plant. Under lower light conditions, the leaves are green on top but always have the reddish-purple bottom. The one you can see in the latest tank shot, that bit managed to reach the top of the water and get maximum light so the leaves turned completely red. I trimmed and replanted it in the front so it's now visible. The bare stems used to be full of leaves but they seem to die off if they don't get optimal light. It's probably not the best to have them in an area that is usually shaded by the floaters but they are Wick's favourite perching plant so it looks like they're staying. They are definitely my slowest growing stem plant, even with CO2, I only trim and replant them maybe once every 1.5 months?


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

geraldk said:


> Haha, Wick the Molefish!
> 
> Ugh, I double checked and what I've been referring to as "Hygrophilia" is actually Limnophila Hippuridoides haha. I might go back and edit my posts to fix that mistake. That is that long thin leaf plant. Under lower light conditions, the leaves are green on top but always have the reddish-purple bottom. The one you can see in the latest tank shot, that bit managed to reach the top of the water and get maximum light so the leaves turned completely red. I trimmed and replanted it in the front so it's now visible. The bare stems used to be full of leaves but they seem to die off if they don't get optimal light. It's probably not the best to have them in an area that is usually shaded by the floaters but they are Wick's favourite perching plant so it looks like they're staying. They are definitely my slowest growing stem plant, even with CO2, I only trim and replant them maybe once every 1.5 months?


oh I see, that's one of them tharrr fancy plants that you can only have with CO2! It's very pretty.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Before trimming









After trimming









Today's journal is pretty bland compared to previous roller-coasters. Now that I'm winning the fight against black beard algae with Seachem Excel and trimming, I think this tank is starting to settle into a stable state and now my aim is to try and see how I can minimise maintenance. This Saturday's session only took around 1.5 hours and it involved aggressively trimming the moss and clearing out some of the stems like the pearlweed, Ludwigia, and the rotundifolia. I'm trying to let the Bacopa grow out a little so I can trim and replant them all at once. 
I think lowering the light down to 65% is helping in the fight against BBA but now green dust algae is starting to grow a lot on the glass as you can see in the before pic. I would much much rather be dealing with that though, so much easier to clean with a scrubber sponge thing or toothbrush. Also, I think I upset one of my Buce by trying to "paint" it with Excel last week to rid it of BBA. Got rid of the algae fine, but it looks like it damaged some of its leaves as well. Lesson for next time.

The moss trimmings are going to be used in the shrimp tank I am in the process of setting up ever so slowly. I should start documenting that and start a new tank journal...

For fauna news, I lost another adult ramshorn snail and am down to the last of my original 5. If they were around 6 months old when I got them, I suppose it would make sense that they would start dying of old age. Wick is doing well, getting up to his usual antics. I see the shrimp pop up now and then but I think it's only the brave ones, the other ones are still wary of Wick after his grumpy spell. I did see 2 of the babies out earlier today so that is good news. When I was doing maintenance, they all hid completely out of sight somehow so I have no idea how many in total I have.


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

I find shrimp fascinating in that sense that nobody really knows how many they have. Like when people go ‘oh yeah I thought there were around a dozen in there, but then I tore down the tank and found 150.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

I'm preparing another batch of CO2 for tomorrow's tank maintenance and I realized I've never shown my DIY CO2 system. I've been using a yeast system to generate CO2 for my tank, as you can see, it usually lives under my desk out of sight. This particular batch is starting to run out; while it has a little bit of sugar gel left to eat, the production has dropped due to the yeast being suffocated by the alcohol they're producing so its time for a refill. I mainly followed MJ Aquascaping's videos on constructing it (Video). The bottle caps were the hard part for me, I didn't drill a smaller hole than the hose and thus my silicone kept leaking because it was handling all the pressure. I also switched from using silicon (which cures in 24 hours) to hot glue (which cures in 2 minutes) as my sealant.
Anyways, you can see 2 bottles, the big one has my mixture that is generating the CO2 and the Mountain Dew bottle is just filled with water, it cleans the CO2 and prevents byproducts like alcohol from getting into my tank. I tried to use bottles that have previously held carbonated drinks as these are actually made to hold pressurised CO2, as opposed to normal water bottles where some companies are trying to make them thinner to use less plastic (Good for the environment but bad for your CO2 system). You can see a cheap check valve between the two bottles, there is also a check valve between the Mountain Dew bottle and my diffuser. I've found those to pretty much do nothing in preventing crap from flowing through them but at least they are pretty convenient to serve as detachment points of the airline hoses.








I follow MJ's recipe pretty closely with 250ml sugar, 250ml water, about 4-5 teaspoons of yeast mixed with a little sugar, and 1 tablespoon of gelatin powder instead of the gelatin sheets he uses (powder was cheaper for me). The mixture usually lasts me for about 5 weeks and it's pretty easy to cook up. When I finally get going with my other nano tank, I'll just be doubling the amount I make each session, so minimal overhead.








I have an airline hose running from underneath my desk to a metal diffuser in the back of my tank. It diffuses bubbles up to the intake of the powerhead that drives my filter, which spews them into the tank via a spray bar (see red arrows in pic). I'm struggling a little bit with balancing spreading CO2 throughout the tank with flow vs keeping flow low enough to be comfy for my betta (but that is not the CO2 system's fault).

So lets talk about some struggles with this system. One of them is inconsistent rate of CO2. When I replace with a fresh mixture, I will have no CO2 for at least 6 hours. I found I can shortcut that by filling my cleaner bottle (the Mountain Dew one) with soda water and shaking it to give a head-start in generating CO2 pressure. Usually I try to change out my bottles as soon as lights go off though, it'll have plenty of time overnight to start again (unless I have leaks). After that, I get turbo CO2 for maybe 2-3 days while the yeast eats the initial batch of raw sugar (I should probably cut down on that this time around...). Then it's pretty consistent until the final 1.5 weeks, where it'll start slowing, probably because the alcohol is starting to smash the yeast. At this point I'll need to start shaking the bottle each morning, this'll give a burst where the CO2 in the wastewater gets released and the yeast will 'wake up' a little and give me increased rate for a few hours.
Another factor that changes the rate is temperature. Higher temps increase the rate and vice versa. I'm pretty fortunate that I live in a temperate climate in a high-rise apartment with concrete walls that dampen temperature swings. On average in summer the room is 23 degrees Celsius and in winter it's around 20. That does still affect the rate a little so I try to adjust my yeast amount in the mixture to compensate for the seasons.








Another headache is my bottle caps springing leaks. Usually it happens when I just change bottles or when I'm shaking to get a turbo boost. This was the main factor to get a hot glue gun and also order this handy cap from eBay that has sturdy molded connectors to go on the Mountain Dew bottle, I'll be installing it when I change out the mixtures. The good part about all this is that I definitely know my remaining bottle cap is the point of failure for pressure on my system. I'm pretty darn confident that my bottles will never explode because my cap will always fail first and spew smelly CO2 gas all over my office. It smells a bit like sulfur btw but going properly through the cleaner bottle and an aquarium cleans that out so you can't smell it normally.

Not an issue for me but the rate of CO2 is limited with this DIY system. For a small 5-gallon tank like mine, one bottle is more than enough to feed my plants. For anything bigger than 10 gallons, I would definitely need 2 generator bottles linked with a T-valve thing. Anything bigger than 20, it's not worth the hassle and should probably go pressurised.

The benefits of this system that make all the headache worth it are the cheapness and the convenience. The biggest cost was the diffuser but I would have needed that anyways with a pressurised system. When I need a refill, it's just everyday grocery items down the street (but most likely already in my pantry), instead of planning a trip on the weekend to the fish shop and potentially having a week without CO2. And finally, it's just really cool that you have this cycle of ecosystems working together. You have a world where you're feeding yeast some sugar to poop CO2 that will feed your other world of plants that are also kinda eating the poop of some bacteria in your tank that are eating your fish's poop. This is kinda making it sound like the Human Centipede so I will stop here


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

Ahahhahahahaha I laughed so hard at the final sentence, such an unexpected turn!!! 😂

I made my CO2 system sort of the same way but I used agar agar instead of gelatin and I don’t think that worked out because I had the initial wild explosion like you, then about a week of somewhat reasonable flow and then it just stopped. So next time I might try gelatin and see if it works better... I’d be really tempted to get a small tank like a 5g and use it for plants only and maybe run the dinky CO2 into it.... I don’t think I’d dare mess with my 29g with a system like that.... In the meantime I might run another bucket experiment and see if I can make it work better than the first one... shouldn’t be hard considering the first one killed everything lol.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

LidijaPN said:


> Ahahhahahahaha I laughed so hard at the final sentence, such an unexpected turn!!! 😂
> 
> I made my CO2 system sort of the same way but I used agar agar instead of gelatin and I don’t think that worked out because I had the initial wild explosion like you, then about a week of somewhat reasonable flow and then it just stopped. So next time I might try gelatin and see if it works better...


Ohh, that could explain your huge rate. When you say "it just stopped", did your mixture run out or the yeast stopped eating the mixture? I was trying to do research earlier to see if I could change this mixture up to get it more consistent. Apparently some people have tried baking soda or brown sugar to get their yeast to slow down as well.

A beer brewer wrote this fascinating article on using his brewing experience in aquascaping DIY CO2 and one of the biggest takeaways for me is that yeast needs not just sugar, but protein and other nutrients as well. I might try adding some Vegemite (a black sludge made from beer brewing byproduct that's spread on toast in Australia) to my mix, although this article mentions that ginger can be used as well. Another revelation is that you can reuse the yeast as its dormant, not dead, at least for awhile. If I ever decide to invest in expensive yeast like wine or champagne yeast, that might be useful! 
And if you wanted to go all-in and do some home-brew...


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

geraldk said:


> Ohh, that could explain your huge rate. When you say "it just stopped", did your mixture run out or the yeast stopped eating the mixture? I was trying to do research earlier to see if I could change this mixture up to get it more consistent. Apparently some people have tried baking soda or brown sugar to get their yeast to slow down as well.
> 
> A beer brewer wrote this fascinating article on using his brewing experience in aquascaping DIY CO2 and one of the biggest takeaways for me is that yeast needs not just sugar, but protein and other nutrients as well. I might try adding some Vegemite (a black sludge made from beer brewing byproduct that's spread on toast in Australia) to my mix, although this article mentions that ginger can be used as well. Another revelation is that you can reuse the yeast as its dormant, not dead, at least for awhile. If I ever decide to invest in expensive yeast like wine or champagne yeast, that might be useful!
> And if you wanted to go all-in and do some home-brew...


Omg I just love these ridiculous rabbit holes!!! Will be reading through all of this with interest. Haven’t seen vegemite here but we do have ginger!!


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## Chucker (Apr 9, 2011)

LidijaPN said:


> Omg I just love these ridiculous rabbit holes!!! Will be reading through all of this with interest. Haven’t seen vegemite here but we do have ginger!!



Vegemite, eh


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

The things people go through to avoid using pressurized co2 is really hysterical. 🤪


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

Asteroid said:


> The things people go through to avoid using pressurized co2 is really hysterical. 🤪


Well where’s the fun in it just working?? 😂

I feel it’s a completely different psychology. It’s the difference between wanting to buy a new Ferrari and wanting to buy some ancient old-timer and slowly fix it up to former glory. We want different things.

Also the Human Centipede thing @geraldk mentioned. You wouldn’t understand.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

LidijaPN said:


> Omg I just love these ridiculous rabbit holes!!! Will be reading through all of this with interest. Haven’t seen vegemite here but we do have ginger!!


It'd probably help with the foul smell too. Oh, I believe in the UK they have Marmite, if that's available in Canada-land. 



Asteroid said:


> The things people go through to avoid using pressurized co2 is really hysterical. 🤪


In my particular case, it's getting a Honda Civic vs a BMW M5. I wanna fill that cheap car with standard unleaded gas, don't need all the bells and whistles, and want easy cheap maintenance. Vs a driving dream machine but man, it is hard to get maintained. 🤓


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

geraldk said:


> In my particular case, it's getting a Honda Civic vs a BMW M5. I wanna fill that cheap car with standard unleaded gas, don't need all the bells and whistles, and want easy cheap maintenance. Vs a driving dream machine but man, it is hard to get maintained. 🤓


For me, pressurized is more like a Tesla, high performance, low maintenance.


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## LidijaPN (12 mo ago)

I think neither of you will be surprised that I don’t own a car lol


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Soooo, June really sucked. Started out well, I got some pink ramshorn snails and they were pretty cool. But then things started to go downhill. My wife ended up in the hospital (she's back home now). And then Wick started ballooning. I hoped it was because I accidentally overfed him brine shrimp on Sunday but a week of fasting and he was just getting worse and then his scales started sticking up. I knew now I was dealing with the dreaded dropsy.








Tried dipping in an Epsom salt bath, he really didn't like that and it didn't really help. His pine-coning got worse and that's usually a sign that his organs have started to shut down, especially the kidneys and fluid is starting to build up. At this point, even if I somehow got antibiotics and started treating, it would just be delaying the inevitable (also, stupid Seachem Kanaplex is really hard to get in Australia, I'm still waiting for my bottle to arrive from America). I have better pictures of him but they're pretty upsetting to me so you'll have to make do with this one. I did what I could to keep him comfortable but to be honest, I went into the office a lot that week because it was hard to be at home alone with my dying little buddy and nothing I could do about it except wonder if and when I should euthanise him. Skipped the water change during that sad week, got inconsistent with fertilising, and stopped paying attention to the CO2 so obviously the tank exploded with algae.









When Wick passed I buried him in a houseplant. It gave me a little comfort that the plant wasn't doing so great before but now it seems to be doing fantastic with Wick's life force bolstering it. It might be awhile before we get another fish and it'll obviously be another betta because we just loved Wick's big personality. I wasn't sure if it was reacting badly to an Excel treatment, bacteria brought in by the snails, the overfeeding causing stress, or just bad genes that caused the infection that led to the dropsy.








Rest in peace little Wick. I really miss your antics and curious nature and I hope that you were happy being lord of the overgrown little planted wonderland on my desk.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

With the tank in algae hell and a need to change things up, I decided to take the opportunity to try a rescape of the tank. The overgrowth of the stem plants and mosses made flow pretty poor in parts of the tank and the slope in the substrate I had started with got flattened by constant replanting of the stem plants. Also, I had been in the process of dry-starting a new tank, which I'll talk about in a future post. I wanted to move some of the plants in this tank to the new one, get rid of some completely, and simplify things.









This is Phase 1 of the rescape. Really tried trimming down the moss and pearlweed. Moved all the Lindernia rotundifolia to the new tank and replaced it with Bacopa. I added extra soil to slope the right side of the tank nicely. There was a rock that was glued to the driftwood to keep it anchored, I chucked that because the wood was waterlogged enough to not need it and it took space. I uprooted all the Staurogyne Repens which I had assumed was really struggling but the roots I pulled out said otherwise. Half the Stauro is going to the new tank. Ripped out the Limnophila Hippuridoides and put that in the new tank as well. Ripped up and replanted a lot of the Monte Carlo carpet to cover a bigger area since the wood could be moved further back.

After a week of looking at that and planning:








This is how the tank currently looks after Phase 2. That moss mat on the rock had gotten so thick that it detached so I re-glued some tufts back onto the rock and it'll need some time to regrow. There was still some Eleocharis Belem (hair-grass) behind the rock on the left that was absolutely infested with Black Beard algae, so I ripped all that out. The Monte Carlo carpet was pretty infested with algae as well so I picked out as much as I could and replanted it. There was a lot of mulm trapped under the moss mat and carpet that I vacuumed up in the water change, I wonder if that might've elevated phosphate levels and was part of what was causing my algae outbreaks. A lot of the Ludwigia Super Red in the back was infested as well so I trimmed most of the affected leaves and threw away a whole stem. I also decided I hated dealing with pearlweed and just got rid of the rest of it.
At this point I got my plant order for the new tank in and I got way too much Hydrocotyle Tripartia Japan in it so I threw some in here. It might be nice to throw in some more once the carpet establishes itself.
My current plant list for this tank looks like this:

Bacopa monnieri
Hydrocotyle Tripartia "Japan"
Ludwigia Super Red Mini
Bucephalandra Sekadau
Micranthemum sp. Monte Carlo
Staurogyne repens
Phyllanthus fluitans (red root floater)
Mini Christmas Moss
I'm not sure if I want to keep the Bacopa on the right side or not. It's nice because Bacopa can handle being shaded by that wood pretty well and it looks symmetrical. But I don't love the look of Bacopa that much to fill my tank with it. I would like a bigger leaved plant for a future betta to chill out on, maybe stick an Anubias on the middle of the driftwood or something and it'll hide the Bacopa. Any suggestions?


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

I'm going to add my other tank to this journal I've decided. I'll retroactively add entries as the tank has been running for about 1.5 months already.

May 28th
Finally got all my gear together for my nano caridina shrimp cube. Here's the shopping list:

YiDing Crystal Blue Cube 30cm x 30cm x 30cm. I paid extra to get that sweet sweet low-iron goodness. Comes pre-installed with some thin foam on the bottom that pretty much does nothing. I think technically this one is a 7-gallon
Aquario Neo Diffuser Special Extend Size S. To be used to diffuse another DIY yeast reactor CO2 system
Oase FiltoSmart 60 canister filter
Hanging CO2 drop checker
Small glass shrimp feeding dish
AquaOne LED Light. Rated at 7W, this was the crappy light that came with my other tank that's never been used until now...
Analog power timer. So I don't have to manually shut off the light.

I've seeded the sponge and ceramic filter media that came with the FiltoSmart in my other tank. I won't start it for this tank until later.










Substrate and Hardscape

5kg of "natural" gravel
About 2kg of ADA Amazonia v2
3kg bag of lava rock. I just bought a bag of "BBQ Volcanic" rock from my local hardware store
2 pieces of wood. No idea what kind of wood, just labelled "aquarium safe" from my LFS that I overpaid for

I prepped the wood by boiling for 40 minutes and then letting it sit in a bucket for a week. Got quite a bit of tannins out. I boiled the lava rocks as well, being careful to do it slowly as I've heard they can explode if heated too fast (but maybe that's just chucking them into a roaring fire). Had to rinse them a few times as well as they had quite a bit of dust stuck to them. Rinsed the gravel several times in a bucket with cold tap water.










Took some Mini Christmas Moss from my other tank, chopped it up and super-glued it to the wood. Only had enough to patch one piece of wood though but I'm going to try doing a dry start for 3 weeks so I'm not in a hurry. This is the initial setup sitting on my desk. I also bought some "frosted" window vinyl stuff, which I cut to size and applied to the back of the tank. I might try a DIY LED screen sometime with it.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

May 30th










Read up on how Takashi Amano did moss dry-starts so decided to try that instead of trying to slowly harvest enough moss to stick on here. Blended up some moss with some water, a dash of liquid fertiliser, and a dash of Excel (that last one was probably a bad choice) and painted it over the wood. I'm keeping it covered with plastic wrap, spraying it with some tap water 3 times a day and leaving it open to breathe for about 10-15 mins a day. I sucked up excess liquid by sticking a syringe in the gravel and sucking it up to prevent algae. The light is on for 12 hours a day.

At some point, I got my hands on some Malaysian Gold Vine wood to add as "roots" that I tried to add to this as it was dry-starting and they just got fuzzy with mould, so I removed them. Surprisingly, the main pieces of wood did not grow mould in this whole dry-start, although they did get a little bit of that fuzzy slime when they were soaking in the bucket.

Here's how the tank looks at the end of the dry start on June 25th:









The moss on the left piece of wood did pretty well, the best chunks were the parts I originally super-glued. It struggled a little on the wood on the right, the moss stuck in crevices did a little better. 

I changed the layout of the lava rocks to make it more of a cove. Trying to create some perspective by putting the largest pieces in the front and smaller ones in the back. I also buried some lava rocks in the back to help strongly slope the gravel. I want to pour aquasoil in the back for my stem plants and in pockets among holes in the wood and rocks to plant Staurogyne Repens


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

June 25th










After filling with water. I lost some of the moss on the right piece of wood, it hadn't rooted and just floated away in the water. You can kinda see in the back I've filled with aquasoil and added the Amazonia root tabs. They'll be leeching ammonia in the water for the next week or two so I've started my filter with the pre-seeded media. Managed to harvest some Monte Carlo from my other tank and I've super-glued tufts of them onto the rocks so they can grow emersed and droop down.
I cut bits of the Malaysian Gold Vine and stuck them in places to look like roots but man, in the water they look super bright orange. My wife says I've added pretzels in the tank and I can't disagree. I might start removing them.










A shot of my desk with the 2 tanks. My office doesn't have windows so I've thrown in a bunch of lights in here and having 2 bright water boxes helps to brighten the room up a lot too. When Wick was alive, he'd often chill out on my side of the tank and watch me type away and beg for food when he noticed me looking at him. Miss that little guy


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

July 3rd










Tank has been running for about a week. After I filled it I moved some plants from my other tank to this one:

Mini Christmas Moss
Monte Carlo
Lindernia rotundifolia
Limnophila Hippuridoides
Bucephalandra Sekadau
Phyllanthus fluitans (red root floater)
The moss and Monte Carlo handled the ammonia spike like champs. The Limnophila is growing stunted and greener instead of purple but that might be because of the weak light. The Rotundifolia and floaters melted a little at first but seem to be bouncing back now that the tank is stabilizing. Tests show that the readings are:

0.4ppm of Ammonia (Down from 1.0ppm on June 28th)
0.25ppm of Nitrites (Down from 2.0ppm on June 28th)
5.0ppm of Nitrates
pH of 6 or below
I ordered a new batch of plants which includes some buce. I heard buce can be sensitive to high ammonia so I didn't want it for the initial filling but a week in with levels dropping, I felt that it was probably OK. New plants include:

Bucephalandra Brownie Phantom Mini
Bucephalandra Theia
Bucephalandra G1 (shop obtained originally as sp "Red" but after observing it turned out to be bull**** so they called it G1 after the green leaves. They're really conscientious about not mislabelling plants, appreciated that)
Bucephalandra Lamandau
Bucephalandra Blue Hades
Anubias Nana Petite
Hydrocotyle Tripartita sp 'Japan'
Riccardia sp. 'Chamedryfolia' (Mini Pellia Moss)
The Pellia Moss I was unsure about as well, so I stuck in half of it when the package arrived a few days ago and I held half in my other tank just floating in a small container at the top. Funnily enough, the one I stuck in this tank is doing great and the one I had "saved" in my original tank got burned from too much light. Hopefully it recovers!


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Current Day








Mostly for my own reference, I labelled the buce in this latest tank shot. The tank is now fully cycled with readings of:

pH 6.0 or less
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrites
5ppm Nitrates
~2 degrees KH (It's hard to read the test, as it was clear-ish at 1 drop)
~3 degrees GH (again, hard to read the test when it was so clear)
TDS 65
The Monte Carlo is just going beast mode, wish it did that in my other tank. I brought in some algae-infested plants from my other tank but I've been overdosing gluteraldehyde here and it looks like it's keeping them at bay. Some of the buce is doing OK, the Lamandau is making a new leaf. The Blue Hades is keeping its flower but its moved its leaves to be all weird and bunched. The Brownie Phantom Mini is slowly turning some of its leaves a light green, I'm hoping that's just the weak light. 
The Rotundifolia is still struggling but its growing slowly. The floaters aren't dying but they're not beast mode like they are in my other tank. CO2 has been high. I have a feeling that it's just the light letting me down. This crappy AquaOne LED seems like it's just 10% of the power of the Chihiros WRGB2 in my other tank. Since I don't have a carpet and mostly easy plants, I thought I could get away with it but now that I have all this expensive buce, it's just a waste to let them suffer. Might look into getting a Chihiros C2 but I'll start water-column fertilising lightly to see if it makes a difference. I suppose I should be culling some of those floaters as well...

As far as animals, I noticed some hitchhiker baby snails. Don't mind them, hopefully they're baby pink ones from my other tank. I would like to test with a neocaridina from my other tank but my GH is way too low to support shrimp atm, I've ordered some GH booster to fix that up. This tank is also filling up with seed shrimp and detritus worms. As long as I don't get hydra, planaria, or weird nightmare leeches. We're planning on a trip at the end of the month, after that I can think about the real residents of this tank: caridina shrimp!


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Back to OG cube, here's a tank shot I took this morning









I'm happy with how the layout is at the moment. The carpet is growing in OK, some bits of Monte Carlo and the Stauro keep insisting on floating and I keep replanting them but overall it's been growing back in. The Ludwigia is recovering, I might let it grow another week before I trim and replant it, hopefully covering up those poor sad bare stems. The Hydrocotlye has been growing like mad although a few random leaves here and there have been getting smashed by algae. At least I don't have to feel bad about trimming them off, I had to throw away a whole bit of stem and leaves during maintenance this last weekend. 

My main issue has been trying to get decent CO2 flow. Ever since I switched powerheads, it's been something I've been struggling with because of the difference in intakes. I have my CO2 diffuser in the sump portion of my tank feeding into the intake of my powerhead that then spits the CO2 bubbles into the tank. My old powerhead was more easily able to suck in the bubbles as long as the diffuser flow was kinda near it. The new powerhead is way quieter but can only slurp up CO2 bubbles from a small pipe. So I've been tinkering with trying to guide the bubbles into this pipe, which wasn't very efficient at first (and my plants were suffering for it) but I think it's a lot better now. Behold, my bubble funnel








It's basically a plastic wrapper rubber-banded about the powerhead intake pipe in a funnel shape and a small plastic box superglued to it making sure it stays open over the diffuser. I outlined in red the basic structure. It's looking like 95% of the bubbles are getting slurped up properly and the CO2 drop checker is the greenest I've seen it at the current bubble count. I've dropped my light intensity to about 50% while this has been going on to try and minimise algae but if this keeps stable, I might be able to bump it back up to 70%.

In animal news my shrimp have been doing fantastic now that there isn't a killer fish murdering their babies.








Here is a pic of one of at least 10 babies I've counted. The big green leaves in that photo are Monte Carlo so hopefully that gives you an idea of how tiny that baby is. Unfortunately, I've caught sight of planaria in the tank. I've managed to catch two with my tweezers and I tried to make a water bottle trap. It managed to temporarily catch 1 planaria that later escaped unfortunately. Since I don't see them regularly, I'll hold off on fenbendazole treatment in consideration to my struggling ramshorn snail population. I'll see if I can hold them off until we can get another betta. This kinda feels like deja vu, except last time it was hydra that I was trying to hold off until the fish hero arrived... 😰


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

July 24th 2022:









Back to the 7g cube, I upgraded the light from my old AquaOne crappy light to a Chihiros C2. Hopefully my floaters actually turn redder now and my Limnophilia Hippuridoides actually gets some purple instead of a straight green










Unfortunately this tank has gotten a hydra infestation. I think it's from the plants, I really should have given them a H2O2 bath instead of just trusting the store. Luckily I still have plenty of Planaria treatment but I was trying to grow out the baby pink ramshorn snails in this tank as it settles. Will be going on holiday in a week so just going to try a few days treatment before I flush it out with a last water change before I go.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Let's see what a holiday can do to a tank. This is my tank before I went on a 6-day holiday. I think the apartment was around 18-19 degrees Celsius during that time, I lowered the lighting to be 30% at 4 hours a day. DIY CO2 was left on the entire time.








This is right after I got back. The carpet filled in a bit more although I can notice a lot of the new growth has bigger leaves. Ludwigia Super Red has grown a little, green tips on the new growth from the lowered lightning though. Hydrocotyle has gone mad, really spreading out everywhere and rooting in several places.
I have a lingering BBA issue but that seems to have gotten better. Green dust algae on the glass isn't too bad, I used to have to scrape that twice a week on a normal lightning schedule. What has gone crazy is the hair algae, it's formed several thick ropes. At least it's easy to remove that way.








Here's a final shot after cleanup. I culled a lot of the Hydrocotyle that was infested with green spot and hair algae. Some of where it rooted in the substrate was through my Monte Carlo carpet so I had to rip a bit of that up and replant.
I'm also trying something different with my flow. I had it running in a makeshift spray bar over the front of the tank so that the carpet could get optimal flow. Now that the carpet has filled in, I'm going to try something similar to my other tank where it runs down the back of the tank and is a lot calmer. If this works OK, I think it'll be a lot more comfortable for a betta.

In other news, I lost another male Cherry shrimp. Not sure how he died but there were about 6 planaria chomping on his body so I'm really suspecting them. Managed to bring 3 of them out with his body and dunk them in bleach but I've ordered one of those glass planaria traps to see if I can keep them under control. I only have 2 low grade males left. Hopefully if this betta works out, I'll see if I can grab some more Cherry Shrimp.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

If you ever wondered on how unstoppable pearlweed is:








It started as a leaf that I accidentally smeared onto a piece of wood in a tank otherwise devoid of pearlweed. Survived a dry start.








And now it is a thriving stem that is branching. Still stuck on the wood, growing as an epiphyte. I might have to keep it, in honour of it's resilience


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

So lots of updates today! Had a wonderful week of aquarium fun.
First, I managed to control the hair grass algae, specifically spirogyra algae in the tank and some cladophora algae in my mosses and carpet. I went to a different LFS and got some good advice while making some purchases. New stuff includes:

Anubias barteri for this tank. I wanted some broad leaved plants to be a hammock for the incoming betta.
Rotala Blood Red for the other tank. Decided I really disliked the stringy look of the Lindernia rotundifolia in the back so wanted to replace it with something bushy and red
RO water for the other tank. Messaged the shrimp breeder I wanted to buy from and his KH is absolute zero while my tap water is around 3-4 dKH. Guess I better commit.

Anyways, back to the algae. I did a 3-day blackout and it worked better than any amount of Excel did. The strings that were left were pale, limp, and dead. A week later and some of it did come back to life but a lot more manageable. I could do another 3-day blackout to weaken it further but a fish ruined all that. More on that later.









Apologies for the heater smack in the front, I was trying to tune the temp at the time for the fish.

I've also been struggling with my ramshorns dying. I only had 1 pink ramshorn left in this tank and 2 left in the other tank. Thanks to advice from people on this forum, it looks like the combo of the betel nut treatments I was using to eliminate hydra, heavy dosing of Excel to smash the BBA and spirogyra, and CO2 injection are contributing to this. It's pretty difficult to find local sources and online was too expensive for pink ramshorns. Luckily a local aquarist was giving away red ramshorns by the bucketload so I probably grabbed at least 50 ramshorns and a few Malaysian Trumpet snails. He appreciated some of my prolific red root floaters so win for both of us!










My snail factory 3 liter Tupperware with ghetto sponge filter. It's filled with a lot more poop now, I've got to figure out how to maintain this easier. I've been throwing plant trimmings in here too and dead animals and they all get cleaned up. Wait, dead animals? Foreshadowing!

On Saturday, the wife decided that she was ready to go betta hunting. In the tank flow was almost non-existent, I'd stopped dosing Excel and my major algae problems were under control, CO2 was stable and lime green, and I got the temp back up to 24C/76F. It was ready. We had a reputable online retailer that specialised in bettas as backup but one thing that was really important to us was finding one with a personality we liked and that meant meeting him in person at the store. I had a handful of stores I wanted to visit, I'd read advice on Facebook groups and Youtube LFS tours on good shops in Melbourne. A few calls later to confirm betta stocking levels and off we went.

The first store was impressive but their betta selection was not that great. On the phone they said they had 30 bettas, it was more like 10. They had some nice colors: Hellboy, "Sunset", Koi, and "USA" (lol) but they were mostly plakats and their only longfin had a lot of fin rot and it was a Dumbo.
The second shop, despite being a 40 minute drive away, was the most impressive LFS I've been to yet. They had a lot of rare fish, tons of plants, all their tank racks had pothos in them, and they had at least 70 bettas including some wild types although $500 for one is a bit hard to swallow. We ended up walking out with a Lavender Butterfly Halfmoon (not sure if he's a Rosetail though). Introducing our new king of the tank: Nova. Short for supernova, because he looks kinda like an explosion








Nova's been pretty curious, even in his first day in the tank. Still afraid of human fingers but definitely comes out and investigates whenever someone walks into the room. Constantly checking out his new domain. He even does stupid stuff like Wick used to do








He chases the smaller shrimp sometimes but only halfheartedly. The larger shrimp will stand their ground against him and he loses interest usually. Usually.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

The next day, I figured, might as well keep this train rolling. The other tank is ready for inhabitants as well, it's dealing with a diatom outbreak that is threatening to overwhelm the plants in it. The new influx of snails is starting to clean that up but diatoms would be so so delicious for shrimp. I had messaged a local seller about the water parameters he kept his Shadow Panda Taiwan Bee shrimp in and it was as follows:
- 0dKH, 5dGH, 120 TDS, 19 degrees C, 5.5-6pH
I managed to get my tank to
- 1dKH, 5dGH, 115TDS, 20 degrees C, 6.1 pH

Drove over to his place to pickup and he ended up giving me a tour of his racks of shrimp breeding tanks and we ended up nerding out about shrimp for an hour, got tons of great advice. Ended up picking up 6 shadow pandas to start with along with 2 red cherry males. Apparently it's illegal to import shrimp in Australia so he's had to recreate lines himself from what's available, his Shadow Pandas are Extreme Blue Bolts crossed with black King Kong shrimp. If these shadow pandas work out, definitely going back for more.









Shadow panda crew!
Drip acclimated until the TDS readings equalised and they seem to be doing well so far! I'll wait a month but it's fun peering into the tank now and actually look for something that isn't 1-2 snails.

I drip acclimated the cherry shrimp as well and released them into the main tank. What I forgot to take into account is that there is a giant mega-predator named Nova in the tank as well. When the second shrimp leapt from the net into the open tank, Nova chased and caught him. I don't think Nova actually intended to eat the shrimp as he let it go almost immediately but it died shortly after from injuries or shock. Nova was sorta picking at the body afterwards, then a big female shrimp started eating at him. I didn't want Nova to accidentally choke on the shrimp's body so I decided to remove it. I actually had to fight the female shrimp, she did not want to let go of the carcass. Definitely my fault and inexperience, I should have been more careful in releasing a disorientated shrimp into danger.

The next morning, I found an adult female shrimp's body in the tank. Oh no, I've let him have a taste for blood and now he's a psycho killer. Immediately went into crisis mode and spent the next hour netting any shrimp I could see, 2 adult females and 1 juvenile male ( I think its a male). I considered putting them into the snail tank but that thing is full of ammonia. So I acclimated and moved them to the caridina tank. Slightly uncomfortable is better than dead. Had to start work but there was a lot of uncomfortable glances at the fish swimming around, especially when he got near one of the remaining shrimp. However, Nova was just as nonchalant as before. Sometimes giving halfhearted chases or nips at the smaller shrimp but happy to just watch the larger ones. Maybe... maybe I killed that shrimp. What if it was the one I was fighting the previous day over the carcass and I nudged her a little too hard with my tweezers, it might've shocked her into death? Maybe Nova is (mostly) innocent and the monster is me? I'll leave the shrimp be for now and keep a watchful eye on that tank, I've done enough damage for now.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

First up, the 5g cube. Did my first maintenance with Nova yesterday, he seemed to handle it well. Sometimes he got scared and it looks like the filter intake vents in the top right of the tank is his "safe" spot. But he likes it when I uproot things, he'll sit and wait for the dust to kick up because he can snap at the seed shrimp and worms or whatever gets pulled out with it. This session was mainly about trimming and replanting the Ludwigia Super Red Mini after nearly losing it to BBA. Trimmed and replanted the Bacopa to keep that corner of the tank dense and a shrimp haven. Finally getting to trim the moss, it's pretty infested with cladophora algae. And really trimming that Hydrocotyle to keep it in check. I think once I propagate enough of the Anubias Barteri, I'd like to completely take out the Hydrocotyle and replace it with a fat sprig of Anubias. I've already managed to split it into 2, one on top for the betta to chill out on near the surface and one glued to a rock underneath the wood to fill in that space with a low-light friendly plant.








The Monte Carlo carpet has finally filled in but I'm getting some dead spots, random spots infested with BBA, and cladophora algae. I'll let it fill in for another week and try to trim those bits out.









Also got hydra again. I think this came in on my last online plant order along with planaria. I got given some liquid Panacur by the shrimp guy so started treating that this week, let's see if fenbendazole affects my snails. I'm dosing 1ml for my 24 liter tank, which is a little under, but let's see how it goes. Didn't have carbon and have removed my Purigen from the filter for now.








Nova's been doing well except for the fact that he's become a very picky eater. He was fine eating his betta pellets, both Hikari Bio Gold and Azoo Betta Pro shrimp patties, for the first 2-3 days. Then suddenly, he starts consistently spitting them out. Always willing to try putting them into his mouth, chewing on it a little, then out. We let that go on for 4 days, twice a day, then tried frozen brine shrimp. He definitely went crazy for that. I think this is definitely a case of junior not wanting to eat his veggies but just wants candy all the time. He had never had brine shrimp until yesterday so it's possible he got used to the delicious taste of seed shrimp and baby cherry shrimp. He definitely seemed hungry yesterday morning, he was nipping at snails. And now that his belly is full of brine shrimp, he is leaving the snails alone again. Naughty boy.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

For the 7g shrimp cube maintenance is a lot easier. I should only really be doing a maximum of a 15-20% water change, which is enough, things here are slower growing due to the reduced light. The caridinas are doing OK, I think I've only seen 4 at a time since that first pic. I think they prefer spending most of the time hidden underneath the rocks, which is why it's so hard to see them sometimes.
The neocaridinas seem to be doing OK. I'm still a little worried about them as the water parameters are definitely too acidic and KH-free but they seem to be more active than the caridinas, go figure. 

Plant-wise, the buce is growing slowly but I do plan on trying to propagate those in the future when they're ready. Really enjoying how the Monte Carlo has been weeping, I found a bonus clump in the back of this tank hidden among some stems so I'm trying to make it grow on the wood. Currently have it "stuck" on the wood via a lead weight but I might need to pull out enough water to glue it on the wood, then re-add the tank water. I can't really remove the wood from the tank anymore as it's really what is holding the soil slopes in place. Trying to encourage the Rotala Blood Red to grow so it can continue to replace the Lindernia rotundifolia.








I also made a DIY LED back panel based off this video, it looks pretty cool. There is a chance I could run into algae issues with it as the LED light strip is an extension of my normal room lighting, which is typically on for 12-14 hours, so will be keeping an eye on that.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Today I thought I would try to document my usual weekend maintenance routine. I usually do maintenance on Saturday mornings on both my tanks.








First off is measurements. Usually it's just TDS I care about, sometimes a test strip. In the betta tank, I usually read a TDS of around 300 on Saturday. Today it's a little low (it's saying 248) because I had to do a water change on Wednesday night due to fenbendazole treatment ending. It looks like it worked btw. If the TDS is on the higher side, I dilute my replacement water with RO water but with this TDS, I'm OK with 100% tap water.








In Melbourne, we have pretty soft water (it's reading 39). With leaner dosing, I'm trying to change less water so I'm aiming for a 20% change. I try to prep my replacement water as a first step with a few drops of Prime and preheat it with a spare heater (the water is really cold in winter as well) while I do the trimming.








I try to evacuate the red root floaters so they don't get in the way in a spare takeout container. During this time, I cull some of the ones with algae or not doing well. This time I've removed about 25% of the floaters and still have this much for a 30x30cm surface area.








Here's my aquascaping tools. I've got 2 sets of cheap tools from Amazon for ~$20 each as I don't want to cross-contaminate between my tanks. Curved scissors, straight tweezers, bent tweezers, sand scraper, Oral-B electric toothbrush, and you can't see it in here but I recently got an algae scraper razor thingy. I found out one of my Anubias Barteri was rotted so I was trying to save what rhizome I could with a hobby knife before I quarantine it for recovery in the snail tank. Today's trimming involved trimming a few stems, trimming the moss, and replanting a bit of the Monte Carlo. Some of my carpet has some strange necrosis so I've trimmed it out and replaced it with healthy overgrown bits. I've also buried some root tabs in the dying parts of the carpet.








Discarded plant bits in another takeaway container. The leaves of the poor Anubias just sloughed off as I was taking the plant out the water, so sad. I'm also battling some cladophora algae in the moss, I use the toothbrush to brush as much of it off as I can weekly. I don't know what else I can do, manual removal weekly seems to keep it in check but reading the forums, blackouts don't seem to work and I don't want to use chemicals like Excel and H2O2 that will nuke my moss.








Aside from that, I scrape the algae off the walls and squeeze my filter sponges in dirty tank water. Here's my water change apparatus. Just a pipe that I suck water about 2/3 through, then let gravity suck it into a bucket. I've rubber-banded a turkey baster to the end that goes in the tank so I can blow up debris and guide the suction with one hand while the other hand is covering the end that spits water in the bucket so that I can pull water out in bursts. I need to be efficient with the water I'm pulling out because a 20% water change means I only have a gallon to play with to get all that trimmed moss out.









I also managed to capture a red cherry male that I'm moving to my other tank. Here I'm drip acclimating him with an airline hose that I've tied a knot just tight enough to get 1 drip a second. It took about 2 hours to get the TDS in his cup (200-ish) about the same as the new tank (150).









Tank after maintenance! Nova gets some frozen brine shrimp as a reward for going through this ordeal (he LOVES his candy) and I throw in a little bit of Seachem Stress Guard just in case. Usually I fertilize the water column right after a water change but I'm trying to delay it by a day to see what happens this week.









The other tank is similar but I'm trying to only do a 10-15% water change here as the shrimp are more sensitive. Also, I don't replace with tap water, it's RO water that's been remineralised with GH booster. At least I don't need to preheat the water as shrimp don't need heaters. My algae is different in this tank as well, I don't get cladophora but I do have spirogyra. I know 3-day blackouts are pretty effective against it but I also have Rotala H'ra Blood Red in the back that I'm trying to get growing so I've been putting it off.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

So after a week, how is lean dosing working? I'm getting less algae at least. The cladophora slowed down along with this fuzzy green algae I've been getting in the carpet








I'm also getting some dying leaves happening in the carpet. I think this is due to reduced light because of the red root floaters almost covering the surface. Usually I get pearling bubbles in the afternoon from the carpet but I haven't seen it this week. I've culled a lot more floaters this week to try and help.








Plant culls from this week's maintenance. Mix of red root floaters, algae, hydrocotyle tripartita, and a bit of Christmas moss.
I held back from scraping green dust algae from the glass throughout the week and it didn't get too bad.








Full tank shot








So onto some fauna news. My wife caught Nova attacking an adult shrimp one morning earlier in the week. She tried to pull out the shrimp to save it but it died from shock a few minutes afterwards, it had a chunk taken out of the underside of its tail. Nova might have caught it unawares from behind where it couldn't see him. So during today's maintenance, I've moved some more cherry shrimp into the caridina tank. I think they're pretty happy there; a day after I moved the male shrimp in the previous week's post, one of the females was berried. As soon as he was put in the tank, he seemed very active, I thought he was eagerly exploring his new surroundings. But nah, he was just a horndog and wasn't wasting any time.
I'm hoping to build up some population in that tank and maybe I can use Nova's tank for culls. I'll try to leave some lower grade shrimp in there so he remembers how to get along with them.








Also clearing out a lot of floaters in this tank


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Not much to report this week. 









I think culling the floaters and making more light is helping the carpet out? Its got less dead spots and I'm grabbing less of that fuzzy green hair algae. Still grabbing plenty of cladophora algae from the Christmas moss though boo.
I think the leaner dosing is slowing things down? Not by much, but maybe? I'm roughly following Seachem's "Low Maintenance" dosing chart but I'm replacing Flourish and Iron with my all-in-one and skipping Excel. Hopefully I'm not overdosing Potassium? My all-in-one has 5.25ppm in 6ml (for a 100L tank) and I'm under-dosing at 1ml for my 24L tank. 

Other tank is doing well. I have 6 cherry shrimp in there now and they seem to be more active than the shadow pandas, even though it's more caridina parameters. I counted at least 5 shadow pandas one time so I might have 5 or 6. Which is great, I might try to pick up 4 more next week to bolster their numbers as I've hit 1 month of keeping most (or all) of them alive!










I trimmed and replanted some more of the Rotala Bood Red, it's slowly replacing the Rotundifolia. The Limnophilia is doing great, I've never seen it so bushy and healthy. The lower leaves always melted in the other tank, but in this one, they all stay alive. Maybe it was a flow thing. When I replaced the light from my cheap AquaOne to a Chihiros C2, the growth got noticeably more compact as well and I saw more purple colouring. 








The main gripe I have at this point is that I have hydra infestations AGAIN. In both tanks. I think treating one, then the other was not a good idea. I was sharing syringes and that probably cross-contaminated so I've bought a pack of syringes from Amazon to help that out. I'll treat both tanks with fenbendazole at the same time this week to combat it.


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## Whiskeyjack (5 mo ago)

Your tanks are looking great! Always nice to see posts from a fellow Melbournite 😄


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Whiskeyjack said:


> Your tanks are looking great! Always nice to see posts from a fellow Melbournite 😄


Thanks! Yeah, always glad to see local hobbyists on here 🙌


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

First of all, tank updates:
















Got some time this long weekend to get some new shrimp and plants for the tanks. I got a pot of tissue culture staurogyne repens, this was the first tissue culture plant I've gotten. Wow, so much bang for the buck! I separated it into 9 sections: 7 of them went into the betta tank, 1 in the shrimp tank, and I just chucked the last one into the snail Tupperware. Next time I need to make a carpet, definitely going tissue culture pots. I also got some more anubias petite, that's currently sitting in the snail Tupperware to quarantine for a week, then most of it is going in the betta tank with a small cutting in the shrimp tank.
I also grabbed 4 more shadow panda shrimp for the shrimp cube. The seller was nice enough to top up my dwindling supply of Panacur, which successfully smashed the rest of the hydra in both tanks, woo! After receiving some good advice on another thread, I was comfortable enough to do large water changes to clean up the medicine as long as I parameter matched the replacement water. It's nice to see at least a few shadow pandas out and about instead of nearly all of them hiding so much. The seller mentioned that in his own observations what shrimp tend to become bolder once there are about 10-15 in a colony so that might it too.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

I also managed to pick up some more chemicals. Figured talking about my collection of chemicals would be interesting so here we go








Here's most of my chemicals I've managed to accumulate so far. As you can see, I have pretty strong brand loyalty to Seachem and LCA (Liverpool Creek Aquarium, an Australian brand) haha. Some of these I might have wasted my money on but most I would consider good investments. Let's dig in:








First of all, my water column fertilisers. The Seachem Flourish, I've hardly used. I bought it first and didn't realise it was pretty much a micro-only fert, and decided to switch to an all-in-one EI dosing system to make it easy for myself as a beginner. Otherwise, I would have needed to buy Nitrate, Phosphate, and Potassium and then figure out how to dose those every day. The LCA was easy to use with an EI dosing method and it is "shrimp-safe" because it has less copper (but really, I don't think it matters much for all but the most sensitive shrimp). However, I did notice pinholes and dying leaves on my Ludwigia so I bought some Potassium to supplement it. The amount of Potassium in the LCA at recommended hi-tech dosing is 5.25ppm, which seems lower than Green Aqua's recommended 12ppm. I seem to get less pinholes now so I guess it's working? I'm also trying to transition to leaner dosing, which is still a work in progress.








Next up is the pest fixers. The LCA Planaria Fix works well, maybe too well. It doesn't say on the label but I heard from an LFS that it's basically betel nut extract. Whatever it is, it does kill hydra and probably planaria but it also murders my ramshorn snails for months. Instead, I'm using Panacur (not pictured) and that seems to target the hydra and planaria better and the snails are still alive.
I used to use the Seachem Flourish Excel a lot, when I had more algae issues because I was still figuring out how to balance the tank. I dosed it daily at the recommended amount, often spot dosing onto problem leaves. These days, I'm trying not to use it at all as it might've been helping to kill my snails and might possibly have hurt my last betta as well. Gluteraldehyde is not great for humans, who knows what it's doing to my aquarium life long-term. No More Black Beard I later found out is just another version of Seachem Excel, maybe stronger. I wouldn't say they were a waste of money in the end, it was good to have that crutch as I was learning. I still do use gluteraldehyde sometimes to disinfect new plants and clean up trimmings with algae on them before I replant. I'll either paint Excel onto the leaves or put the plant in a bath with 3x the recommended dosing for 15 mins.
I'll sometimes use hydrogen peroxide as an alternative when painting chemicals onto plants to get rid of algae. I tend to use H2O2 for plants with more hardier leaves. I'm more comfortable with H2O2 getting in my water but it just seems like it'd be more corrosive on application?








The fish chemicals. Seachem Prime is a dechlorinator as I still use tap water for the fish tank. Tbh, I'm pretty lazy when dosing it, I just shake out a few drops in my replacement water. It's so concentrated that I'm only supposed to fill to 1 thread in the cap for my entire tank. So a few drops is probably more than enough for a 30% water change. I had to import the Seachem Stress Guard from America, it's supposed to help heal fins and scales, have antiseptic properties, etc. It's a blue liquid so I'm guessing it has a little bit of methylene blue? Our current betta, Nova, has managed to fray some of his fins and bash his head so I keep dosing it every other day to make sure he doesn't get infected. Mostly an overabundance of caution as I definitely don't want this betta to get dropsy.








Here's the chemicals specific for the shrimp tank. LCA Shrimp Mineral Premium is basically just a liquid GH booster that I remineralise my replacement RO water with. It's expensive for what it is but it's so convenient to just add a few drops of liquid and the water is ready to go instead of endlessly stirring salts to dissolve them. It also claims to have "balanced trace elements and Vitamin C". Sure.
I grabbed the LCA Shrimp Vitality over the weekend, it was highly recommended by several local shrimp keepers as it adds humic and fulvic acids which are great for shrimp. In a nutshell, it seems like it's concentrated tannins in a bottle with some preservative. I didn't really want to start chucking Indian Almond leaves and Adler cones in my small scape so this was a great alternative. I read a really interesting article on the benefits of tannins, humic, and fulvic acids here. I haven't really noticed the water browning in my tank at the recommended dose either. I do have to be careful handling it as it can really stain clothes and the carpet.








Finally, my "oh ****" chemicals that I hope to never really have to use. I pretty much bought all these when my previous betta, Wick, was dying. I can't think of any situation where I'd use the aquarium salt, that was a bad purchase. The epsom salt is supposed to help with bloating, Wick really hated being in it though so I'd only use it in emergencies. The Seachem Kanaplex is supposed to be a hardcore antibacterial medication, only to be used in a hospital tank as it can crash the cycle. I never got the chance to use it as I had to order it from America and it arrived a month after Wick had already passed. If Nova ever gets sick, I'll be glad to have it on hand though.









As I have pretty small tanks, the pump bottles that came with many of my chemicals dispense too much liquid. So for many of my pumps, I've had to "baffle" the pump by wrapping tape around half the stem so instead of dispensing 2ml per pump, it only dispenses 1ml.








I've tested this too. Pumping from a bottle of water into a small container and then syringing it up, I did a full pump after my modification and managed to get 1ml each time in 7 runs. I'm tempted to drop by Daiso and grab extra pump bottles for things like Stress Guard and Potassium. It just makes dosing chemicals that little bit easier each day to just pump instead of syringing.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

So I haven't updated this in awhile, been busy lately. Still keeping up with weekly maintenance of the tanks though.

First of all, poor Nova. He has some kind of strange fin melt. He's had frayed caudal fins since he got them, pretty sure it was fin nipping since he's pretty much a rosetail. Here's how he started:









When it deteriorated to this overnight, I started medicating with Kanaplex. He was still active when it came time to feed him but seemed to rest when we weren't around a lot more. I basically soaked his pellets in Kanaplex infused water and he ate them fine








During treatment, it didn't seem to progress much, maybe a slight bit of extra curling in his dorsal and anal fins. His ventral fins since we got him were always balled up so I wonder if he has been sick this whole time. Sometimes the day after a heavy dose of Kanaplex, he'd be a bit extra lethargic but always happy to eat every day.








This is what he looks like atm, it's gotten a little worse just a few days after his final Kanaplex dose. This might be the last time you see this tank in a decent state as I'll be moving to dosing some aquarium salt as a next step (guess I'll be using it after all).









Nova's tank is doing OK. I'm having to clean off some fuzzy hairgrass algae in the moss, carpet, sometimes the stem plants. But after the algae mess I dealt with earlier, it seems easy mode. Since this shot was taken, I've dosed with some additional tannins aside from that Indian Almond Leaf on the right. I only recently learned how to properly clean mulm from under the carpet with my turkey baster, I wasn't really stirring it up well enough before. That might be part of my issues. Having a cleaner substrate, lowering the light by 10% and having the light lowered further from the tannins might help with the algae. Although, tbh, if the worst happens and Nova goes, I'll probably tear down this tank and start over.

Just for reference, last water tests right before water change show:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 4
pH: 7.1
KH: 9dKH
GH: 11dGH









Part of the reason for that is because of this tank. It's been doing SO AMAZING all this time. Hardly any algae. Hardly any biofilm on the water surface even. The only plant that struggles is the staurogyne in the front that I had planted in the initial stages, it suddenly decided to ditch all of it's leaves after doing amazing for so long. The tissue culture staurogyne was doing OK during that time, so shrug? Then again, it sits in shadow the whole time so I never had high hopes for it in the first place.
You can't really see any of them atm, but there are at least 8 shadow pandas, 4 cherry shrimp adults, and I saw a cherry shrimp juvenile during the last water change. I actually thought it was a small piece of pink meat at first and almost sucked it up, haha. I'd be tempted to put Nova in this tank if it wasn't for the fact it has such expensive shrimp in it and the hardscape has a lot of sharp edges.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

Sooo, the worst did happen. After a fight of 2 weeks with various medications, we lost Nova 😢. The aquarium salt didn't work, I tried treating with a general cure of methylene blue and malachite green after an LFS suggestion, and his fins kept getting smaller and he kept slowing down until the end. Asking on forums afterwards, it seems like it was another case of bad genetics (we think Wick's disease stemmed from the same thing as well).
Here's the tank not long after treatment. I wish I had taken more pictures, it had gotten super green. I had done a large water change and had put in carbon for half a day in this picture









I tried to evacuate all the snails I could but there was 1 left and the shrimp as well. Both seemed to survive the aquarium salt and the malachite green unfazed. The malachite green + methylene blue had tinged all the white rubber bits in the tank a teal color and the Christmas moss as well. 
Like I mentioned in the previous post, I think I'm going to tear down this scape eventually. I already removed all the hardscape and am in the process of converting it into a grow out tank. The different look is helping me not get as sad every time I glance at the tank and start automatically looking for a colourful water puppy.








I'm looking at replacing it with an ADA 45p tank. A shop near me is getting a shipment in mid-December so that gives lots of time to plan the layout, gather hardscape, and grow some plants out for it. With the limited desk space, it'll be in a peninsula layout so that'll be interesting. Definitely getting another betta for it but I'll be more mindful of genetics so looking for either an alien hybrid or a more established colorway of plakat betta.
I definitely want lots of that anubias nana so I've split my biggest one into several pieces. Hopefully it's more successful than my last attempt where the rhizome just completely rotted away. The Mini Christmas moss was a pain to deal with so I think I'm going to skip it and go with the riccardia and another moss. I trimmed a few bits of riccardia from the shrimp tank and tied it onto some lava rocks in the front left. I really like Limnophila hippuridoides and the Rotala blood red from the shrimp tank so I'll be growing trimmings of those in here. The bacopa I might start cutting back in favour of something bushier. I think I'll start cutting back the Monte Carlo carpet as well, I'll run an experiment where I keep high flow running to see if the algae on it gets better but it's pretty difficult to upkeep a carpet in a nano betta tank where I need to keep minimal flow and am limited in my choices for an algae crew. Having some weeping would be great though and it works nicely in the shrimp tank.

Speaking of shrimp tank








Doing great as usual. Aside from a tiny bit of green dust and spirogyra, the algae is pretty minimal and easy to clean. The caridinas still haven't berried so I've been trying to feed them daily to plump them up. I've cut back my bacterial powder feeding to once a week though as I'm starting to get an explosion of copepods








I know they don't do bad things to the tank but ugh, it just looks so gross. Part of me wants to get an endler guppy or two to just clear them out but I wouldn't have any long-term plans for them so that's a bit unfair.
Anyways, I did a big trim of the moss and hydrocotyle. I had already grabbed a canister filter for the upcoming new tank and tried to use it as a moss vacuum cleaner. It worked pretty ok until the moss clogged up the line. And then trying to restart it was a pain, with it spraying and leaking water everywhere and the powerful outflow nearly ripping some of my moss off the wood. So just moved to holding a net underneath while I cut. 









I did find a shrimplet. I've seen this little guy come out at feeding time but I am a little disappointed there's only 1. I've seen the cherry shrimp berried on 3 seperate occasions and out of all those, just this 1 champion survived? Hopefully dosing bacterial powder helps survivability of these little guys, especially when the caridinas start to berry up.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

A pretty boring update today but it might be the last pic of this tank before I start tearing it down.








It's been just a grow-out tank with trimmings from the shrimp tank ever since Nova passed. With the brighter Chihiros WRGB2 light, the reds of the Rotala are really popping. Still having a little bit of trouble with hairgrass algae so I've started dosing Excel back into this tank daily. I mentioned in the last post that I was thinking of upgrading to a 45p, but measuring it all out, I do have space for a 60p. The only issue is the weight; this 5-gallon will sit on my wife's side of the desk, she will house another betta eventually, and we currently have 7-year old particleboard IKEA tabletops holding two 30cm cubes and a 60p. Looking at new tabletops, we would need to get one custom made to the sizes we prefer but it'd be pretty expensive. Or I could try to build my own but I'm limited in how much I can DIY in a small apartment and I'm a pretty n00b handyman in general. So I decided to do an easy and cheap DIY and just build a frame for my existing table.
Here's some plans I drew up. The red is my existing furniture, green is the aquariums, yellow is my tabletop, and blue was the frame measurements:









And here it is installed underneath my tabletop. I built a second frame on my wife's side as well. I cut up some pine timber and screwed and doweled them together into a frame:








I screwed the existing steel table legs to the frame instead of the tabletop directly on one side, and the other rests on an ALEX drawer unit from IKEA. I'll reinforce that with some angle brackets but it should be able to handle a 60p sitting on top of it. Each of the 30cm cube aquariums sit on the bracing of the frame. I'm glad I went simple because the bracings weren't completely level but it's enough to get the job done. I'm not used to labor like this, I'm so sore after all that sawing, drilling, and lifting.

The new 60p will be in a peninsula layout. I'm planning on trying to make an autumn-themed aqua scape with it: lots of red and orange stem plants, some black branches, a somewhat blackwater tank with some leaf litter on the edges. With 17 gallon tank, I think I could stock it with a giant betta and a small school of... something. Something that can handle 26C/78F temps at least. Scape first, non-betta fishes later.









The shrimp tank is doing well. Still no berried caridinas. I did slack on feeding them a day or two this week but I've been keeping an almost daily feeding regimen. In this pic, I skipped feeding for a day and when I stick in a shrimp pop, they all swarm it within an hour. I try to vary their foods but they definitely have preferences. They love these Taiwanese shrimp wafers I got from the shrimp breeder best, then the shrimp pops, then Hikari Shrimp Cuisine, and they only nibble on shrimp snow (soybean hulls). I try to gauge their preferences based on how quickly they swarm the food and how hard they fight each other over it. I've been doing weekly 20% water changes with remineralised RO water but maybe I'll lessen that a bit.


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

My original tank, the 5G AquaNano cube, is in the process of being broken down. I took most of the plants to populate my new 60p: all the Limnophilia and Staurogyne, most of the Rotala and Ludwigia, about half the Monte Carlo, and all the Anubias. I left the Bacopa and to just help it fight off algae, I replanted some that I had floating around in my snail tank. It's mostly an experiment tank atm, I've removed the CO2 and only have it at a 5-hour photoperiod. The light got swapped out as well, this tank now has the Chihiros C2. I'm interested in seeing how the plants transition to low-tech; so far, with the reduced lighting period and reducing the water-column fertilisation to once a week, it's doing pretty well! The hairgrass algae on the Monte Carlo has basically stopped in it's tracks, not receded as I had to clean some manually, but it's not expanding. I did up the flow, it's almost a whirlpool in there. I'll try to baffle it at some point and see how it goes. The snails and the lone cherry shrimp in there seem to be doing well. Snails don't usually do too well in here, hopefully the low-tech will suit them better.
The tank was moved to my wife's desk and it'll eventually be broken down completely and restarted with a low-tech scape she'll design and house a betta eventually. But that's far off, maybe February next year. Until then, the experiments continue!








This tank has finally started given me headaches. About a week and a half ago, the shadow pandas started to hide more and not come out for food as much. I thought it was the constant bumping of setting up the new tank. Then one morning, I noticed a tiny blue thing twitching, when I turned the lights on to check, it was a dead shadow panda shrimp with only its tail left and detritus worms swarming its body. I quickly removed it and tested ammonia. 0.25ppm. Panic mode started. Did a 20% water change and overdosed with Prime. I tried to put one of their favourite wafers in. I could only count 3 shadow pandas that half-heartedly nibbled on it. Did I lose most of my colony? Just the caridinas, mind you, the neocaridinas seemed fine, even the shrimplets were coming out.

Over the course of the week, I've been doing almost daily 15-20% water changes and Prime dosing on this tank and cutting back on feeding. Just more of the bacterial food. I think it's helped as they finally seem to be more lively and coming out to feed again. I've managed to count at least 6 caridinas at once, I'll count myself lucky to only lose 3. All the Neos are accounted for, those guys are bulletproof. I think what might have happened is maybe a combo of removing 30% of the filter media to seed the 60p and snails dying made the ammonia spike happen. Then there might also be 2 shadow panda bodies as well. The back of the tank is so densely planted with stems and there are tons of nooks and crannies in amongst the lava rocks, I'll never be able to find the bodies. I'm just buying time until the army of detritus worms and copepods clean up. I just gotta be vigilant about testing every morning. I even got a zero reading on Wednesday and skipped the water change but Thursday it shot back up to 0.2ppm. Good thing I kept dosing Prime.








At the very least, there's an upside to all this. This shadow panda female had berried right before the incident and managed to hold onto the eggs this whole time. She's upside down under a leaf in this pic but you can see the eggs. They're hard to see otherwise because the caridina's carapace is so thick, unlike Neos where you can see the eggs through the thin carapace. Here's hoping for success!


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## nathanl164 (12 d ago)

Despite the headaches, it still looked very nice!


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## ElvishDuck (1 mo ago)

Great looking tanks! I'm sorry for your fish losses, those were both extraordinary colored Bettas. Looking forward to the "autumn" tank!


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

nathanl164 said:


> Despite the headaches, it still looked very nice!


Thanks!



ElvishDuck said:


> Great looking tanks! I'm sorry for your fish losses, those were both extraordinary colored Bettas. Looking forward to the "autumn" tank!


Thanks! I'm still looking to stick with beautifully coloured bettas, but maybe I'll choose other parts of their genetics that are safer. I actually have that tank up and running here, its about time I updated both journals actually...


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## geraldk (12 mo ago)

First of all, the OG 5G cube. I've really been trying to neglect this tank (easier when it's not sitting next to me on my desk) and haven't done a water change in like, a month. As you can see, there's quite a bit of hairgrass algae, and I get a decent amount of dust algae on the glass, although I scraped the front of the tank to get a good shot. Most of the plants are actually doing pretty well aside from the Bacopa. I even threw some Limnophilia in the back and while it's growing nowhere near the rate of my high-tech tanks, it's not melting or anything. Despite nearly being smothered by the algae, the Monte Carlo carpet is doing OK too, it's just growing up a little more.
I broke down my snail tank and this one will be next. I read that aquasoil can absorb medication so I'll be getting rid of everything in this tank besides the snails, those will go in my 60p. The lone cherry shrimp that was in this tank has already been drip acclimated and moved to the 60p. Then it'll get reset and start cycling for it's new inhabitant.










The shrimp tank has some stories. First of all, in one water change I managed to add too many tannins and I think it caused 1-2 of my caridinas to die. I found a dead female in the front with 2-3 dead eggs one morning, I immediately did a 40% water change and started monitoring ammonia. Harsh lesson learned. Luckily, it looks like a decent amount of shimplets made it, I was able to count 3 hanging out on a Buce.








I feel like it's a race between my ineptitude and the shrimp propagating to see if I have any left. The Neos have been happily chugging along, although I think I wasn't feeding the babies enough, I was only getting 1 survivor per female getting berried. This last batch seems to have at least 3 shrimplets, maybe because I started feeding bacterial food 3-4x per week in a desperate bid to keep the caridina babies alive.








I got another Buce flower! This only lasted a day before it started falling apart 😢. Most of the buce are starting to get big enough for me to consider chopping them to propagate them. 

You can't really tell in my photos but spirogyra algae is really starting to become an issue in this tank now. I did a 3-day blackout right after the new year to try and control it but it bounced back so I'm currently doing another 3-day blackout. If that doesn't work, I'll be away on holiday this weekend for several days, good time for another blackout. I saw a few strands that had made it to my 60p, maybe I should just blackout the whole room...


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