FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Finally! I've had the CO2 up and running for over a month now and at first things in my tank did not improve at all. On the contrary, algae growth actually increased.

At first things seemed to go into the right direction, plant growth started up again, and from the early afternoon onwards the tank seemed like a big airstone, so much pearling happening all over. I hoped that the increased plant growth would start to outcompete the algae growth, but the opposite seemed to happen, day by day the water became greener and less transparent up to the point where I could not see the back of the tank anymore.

At that point I had enough and took some more drastic action and dropped the photoperiod down to four hours a day. Last thursday before I went on a 4 day trip the water had already cleared up considerably and the algae growth on the plants had come to a stop. Yeserday evening, when I came home, I took a quick peek and the water was crystal clear, I could see through the length of the tank again and the tufts of staghorn algae that had started to grow had now died off, turning very stringy and white

Needless to say that I'm pleased with the progress and now I can finally start increasing the photoperiod again and figure out a proper fertilization schedule. I'll probably come with some photos next week or so

Dr. Bonke,

This is a real nice diary that you have going! It's really interesting to watch the progress on someone else's tank...especially one that encounters some troubles and manages to still keep a great looking tank. (I think I remember reading it when you first posted, but I'm not sure that I posted much at the time)

About the algae - Have you ever used the pH&KH method to approximate your CO2? If so what did you come up with? I've found that if my pH is up over 15ppm, then algae has a real hard time establishing itself. The other things I've noticed in correlation with the staghorn algae was a combination of high PO4 and moderate nitrates. If I can keep those under control, then my plants usually take care of themselves.

Last edited by mattyboombatty at 22-Jun-2005 19:51

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

15 May was my last post here in this thread, since then the tank has been through quite some stress. After I switched to bottled CO2 I slowly managed to get rid of most of the algae in the tank. There is still some growth, but at the moment it is fairly good under control. However, the road to this point has not been a smooth one. During the past 5 months I have had a period where I was not really all that interested in my tank anymore, mostly due to the algae problem and generally I had too many other things going on to put a lot of effort in the maintenance of both tanks. I just fed the fish, that's where it ended. This resulted in two periods where the plants nearly filled up the entire tank, leaving very little space for the fish to swim. Basically, what I had was a big glass box of green, nothing much else could be seen. Halfway during this period I once removed a lot of plants, but otherwise didn't do anything special.

Then about 3 weeks ago I took a good look at the tank and just felt very ashamed at what had become of it. I spent several hours weeding and cleaning, and as a result it looked somewhat presentable again. Since then I've been maintaining it fairly well, and it is starting to show. The plants grow very nice and the water is chrystal clear. Yet, I'm still not too hapy with it as it is. The sword has grown quite immense over the last few weeks, each new leaf is bigger then the previous. I've now come to the point where I think it will have to go. Furthermore, my angels are turning into cows. They eat from almost every plant, from the sword, the sunset hygro, the lobelia cardinalis and the Bacopa. The only times they don't do that is when they lay eggs, which happens about every 2-3 weeks or so. But outside those times they ravage my plants. So I think I will move the couple to my fry tank and then get rid of the others (black one and the 7 in the fry tank). I'm thinking about replacing them with some diamond gouramis.

In any case, here's a photo of what the tank looks like at the moment.

Dr. Bonke attached this image:

hm... picture was 99k, I guess just too big... another try

Dr. Bonke attached this image:

Wow Dr. Bonke, that looks great. It really looks nice - I can't see any algae and it sure doesn't look like the angels are feasting on your plants. I love the look of the overgrown sword, it compliments the way you have scaped the tank well with the "full" part on the left and an open space in the middle and a veil of vals on the right. Those crypts in the front left are looking nice too. Well done!

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Dr.

Your tank looks very nice. I can understand that after all this hard work to get it set you got very frustrated when the algae took over. But I am glad to hear that you got it under control now. I am trying to imagine how your cows moo in the tank .

I agree that the sword is huge, maybe it is time for it to go. Your tank looks very much like a classic Dutch style, but – if you don’t mind – I have one suggestion.

I would change the way you use plants to create streets (for example with the Mayaca Fluviatilis and the Alternanthera reineckii ( ? ) right next to it). I would set the streets to go in an angle to the back and not so straight, otherwise it appears as if they are just groups of plants placed next to each other. Also, try to avoid of having two or more streets right next to each other. I know that is easier said than done, but I have faith in your abilities. BTW, did you know that your original log was an inspiration for my own [link=Planted Tank Log]http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/forums/Planted%20Aquaria/64425.html?200510240910" style="COLOR: #ff6633[/link]?

Good luck and keep us posted, I am glad you revived the log.

Ingo

---

Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Great Log Great Pictures and Great Aquarium.

Face up make your stand and realize your living in the golden Years

Thanks for the constructive comments people, I always very much appreciate those. Matty, Although I like the look of the sword and love it's color, especially the color of the new leaves, which start out as nearly pink, it really is getting too big for the tank. At the moment it is now shading half of the A. reineckii, and with a new leaf coming up every 4 days it is only getting bigger and bigger. It will have to go... as soon as I can get my courage together to rip the tank apart

In the photo the damage to the plants doesn't seem to be all that bad, but that is mostly because the plants grow fairly fast. The angels usullay rip the plants appart and then let them be for a few days, before grazing them bare again. It leaves the plants just enough time to recover a little so it doesn't look too bad from afar. Up close they look terrible, ezpecially the sunset hygro and the lobelia cardinalis look awful.

Ingo, I agree with your points about the "streets". It isn't my particular intention to have the plants grow in such straight groups. For the moment is it a temporary solution to keep an eye on what I have to work with. When I remove the sword, I think I will also remove most of the lava rock that is lying around. Initially I put those in to make some elevated terraces in the tank, but the cories decided that teraces are useless. in a matter of weeks the front of the tank was equalized in substrate hight, compared to the back. The lava rock is now just taking up space that I could use to grow plants. When that's gone I will have more space to palace the plant "streets" under an angle, as was the intention originally.

There are many things I have planned for the tank, it will be some months before I will have that all figured out

Dr. Bonke,

Thanks for reviving this log. It's always fun to read someone's else experience. I applaude the detail and the result you achieved with the tank. I must admit I didn't see this log originally and glazed over it just recently.

Is the black substrate on top regular gravel? Sorry if you've already addressed that. The Hygro Sunset is a tough plant. Many seasonal aquarists have trouble with it and it also seems to be an algae magnet. I had success with it for a while.

I had Angels for a while in a planted setup and it really doesn't work. Big schools of small fish seem to fit in with the scape and are less destructive.

My Scapes

Bah, messed up the Quiz again. Anyway, I think this weekend I'm going to rip the big Sword out of the tank, so most likely it is going to be a huge mess for a while. In the past two weeks it has kept on making new leaves every third day and each of them has reached the surface of the water. It's now shading approximately one third of the tank and it simply has to go. IT's a shame really, I like the look of swords quite a lot, and this one has a lovely color, especially in young leaves, which are a soft pink until they start stretching out. But in they just get too big. Maybe in another 10 years or so, when I'm having that 1000g tank I've always wanted, I will give them another try. Until then my experiments with Swords are over.

Maybe next week I'll have the courage to post a photo of the new look of the tank, without the sword and without most of the rock I put in there when I started out a year-and-a-half ago.

Good to see I still have at least one reader And thanks, me and my wife are indeed feeling better, we're now focussing on our upcoming vacation before thinking of a new "attempt".

Day 75: Recently the snail population in the tank has been growing almost exponentially, and that was getting a bit annoying since the most proliferate species of snail seems to be one that either eats plants or their eggs destroys plant tissue. In any case a certain plant species that I have, I think it's Hygrophila polysperma var. rosanervig "sunset", there is an awful lot of tiny holes appearing and the oler leaves are dropping like flies. I don't know the exact species of snail that's causeing it, but they have a very flat spiraled shaped shell, and they don't get too big, maybe 4 -6 mm in diameter (1/4 inch I guess). There must be hundreds of them so something needed to be done about it. And so I have.

My snail remedy consists of two pretty betta ladies, one is reddish with dark lines in the fins and the other is deep blue with a little bit of red (very pretty). Once released in the tank they immeadiately started exploring and especially the blue one has been very interested in the snails. I can already see about ten empty snail houses lying around and caught her picking on a snail several times so far. expect my snail problem to be something of the past in the near future

I also did another water test yesterday, and it looks pretty good, the water here in Finland is very soft, Hardness is about 3 or less and the pH of the water is around 6.5. When I get back from vacation I want to get some more light in the tank, it's currently only having 76 watts and I think I need some more to get some of the plants growing really nice in stead of just staying alive. I was also thinking of setting up a CO2 system, but with the softness of the water I may have to be a bit careful. We'll see then.

[span class="edited"][Edited by Bonke 2004-07-03 09:57][/span]

Hi everyone,

I just registered to these forums and thought I should introduce myself to you. I'm a 31 year old Dutchman who's currently living in Finland and fro most of my life I've had aquariums. Only the last 5 years I haven't had one, this was mostly related to the fact that I was moving to Finland. Recently I've been itching to setup a tank in my appartment, and last week I could no longer resist and bought myself a 65 gallon tank (240 liters) which should be delivered to my appartment today or tomorrow (hopefully today).

My plans for the tank are big, it'll be a community tank according to "Dutch" style (I'm dutch, so that does make sense doesn't it? ), meaning it will have lots of plants and a high degree of aquascaping. During the weekend I created myself a custom background from styrofoam, which now awaits the delivery of the aquarium so I can start hiding the filter components in it and then paint it with epoxy paint. I'm taking photos of the process (old fashioned real ones) and plan to keep some sort of diary of the building process online. I'll probably post the text with some pics here, if you're interested.

you'll hear more in other posts.

Day 1: The delivery of the aquarium is still a couple of days off, but Ive started to get some things together. First we went to some pet stores to get some bogwood and a hose for my filter. The first store we went to had ridiculous prices, one piece (rather large) cost 80 !!! In the second store I found some rather nice pieces (3) which were of a better price and cost 8 each, still more than I thought it would have cost me, but this is Finland after all and everything is expensive here.

Next we went to Bauhaus to buy a big piece of Styrofoam, a paint-stripper (pumped up hair dryer), silicone kit and epoxy paint. This all was for the creation of a background for the aquarium. I detest those flower prints that they sell as backgrounds for aquaria and the two kinds of background the aquarium shop had were ridiculously priced. One piece (which did look good I must admit) was about 80 x 40 cm and cost 180 !!!! I only have one word for it: Insane! Thats about half the price of the aquarium, and I would have needed 2 of them. A second option was a fairly standard piece of 50 x 40, it didnt look particularly good and yet it cost 25 a piece I needed 3 of them, so it would have cost 75 in total for a  ty background.

After reading some on the Internet about creating your own background I felt confident I could make a real nice one myself for about half of the price. It involves a lot of cutting in Styrofoam and then using the heat gun to get a nice rough texture and finally a layer of epoxy paint to give it a good color and seal if off so the fish can not damage it. Unfortunately Bauhaus did not have any good paint.

Today I did some of the cutting of the Styrofoam and glued some extra pieces onto it to make some larger rocks tomorrow Ill finalize the cutting and do the actual heating. The big piece of Foam was first cut into a piece of 120 x 55 cm and this was then cut into three pieces of 40 x 55 cm. This was done because otherwise Id never be able to get it into the aquarium since there is a support beam in the middle of the tank. One thing about the Styrofoam is that it gives an absolute horrible mess with the little white balls. A very sharp knife will keep that to a minimum, but it still took some time to clean up. A vacuum cleaner was very helpful with it since the little white balls are static, only the strong vacuum was able to get them off me.

I made some pictures of the process but they haven't been developed yet, once I have my Diary running on my own website I'll post a link to them so you can see how the whole process looked

Day 3: The Silicone kit had dried nicely and today I continued the cutting, this time I was a bit rougher to get a nice texture to the rocks and to get rid of the sharper edges, it resulted in an even greater mess then yesterday. The entire balcony (and me too) was covered in that crap. After vacuuming the balcony, replacing the bag in the vacuum cleaner and then vacuuming some more, everything was clean again and was it time to use the heat gun.

Since the gasses that come free when melting Styrofoam are very poisonous I opened all the windows on the balcony and since it was quite windy the gasses didnt bother me. I started out on a test piece since I didnt really know how fast the Styrofoam would melt. It melted actually quite slow when I held the gun at about 3 5 cm away from the surface. What you actually see is that the cells of the foam collapse, leaving a bit of a pitted structure which looks pretty rocky. Now I just have to find the right paint, and wait for the aquarium to arrive so I can figure out where Ill put the filter elements.

Day 4: We went to find some paint today, at the second store they did have some paint which was of the right kind (I think): Water based Epoxy paint well you can clean your tools with water after wards. Once it hardens out it should be completely waterproof and the reason why I wanted water based epoxy is that after the paint has settled, all the unwanted chemicals can be washed off since theyre water soluble. The only thing which Im still worried about is that it may actually melt the Styrofoam, but Ill find out about that later, several sites Ive seen on the web have been using epoxy paint on Styrofoam, so I guess it should work I hate the uncertainty! Anyway, like I said, that store did have the correct paint, but it only came in one color: grey. It was called Stone-grey, but it did not really convince me, so I left it there. The third store did not have the right one, but what it did have was all kinds of different pigments to color paint. For most of them I had no idea at all what the chemical composition was and whether it would be bad for the future fish or not, but one of the pigments was 100% Carbon. So in the end I bought a small can of carbon and then went back to the previous store to buy the grey paint. The idea is now that Ill mix them until I have the color which Id like. This will involve a bit of testing in order to find out if it works, if not Ill end up with a stone-grey background.

Day 5: Im very excited, its 10 in the evening and the aquarium has just been delivered! Its too late to do anything about it, but Ive just put it in its future place and added the unpainted background pieces to the tank. Of course I had not taken into account that the measurements of the tank that the factory gives are outside measurements and that the 55 cm high therefore is in fact on the inside only about 50 cm since the lamps are in there too. So I have to make the background pieces a bit shorter, no problem.

Also, the Guy who sold me the tank told me that he didnt have enough of the basalt split that I intend to use as substrate, so I can pick that up only later, on the good side though was that he is going to give me FREE fluorescent lamps fro the tank since the Juwel TL lamps are just ordinary office lamps. Since I had planned on replacing them anyway this is a nice surprise.

Besides the aquarium delivery I also today took care of the bogwood, I had intended to boil them here at home (to get rid of any bacteria and fungi etc), but then I remembered that at work I have access to an autoclave. An autoclave is basically a pumped up pressure cooker, where you can boil stuff at 120 C, if thats done for 20 minutes you kill absolutely everything. So I asked my boss if it was ok, and then I amused my colleagues by warning them of a possible smelly autoclave room and dragging those chunks of wood around. So now the wood is sterile and currently soaking in a big bucket of water so itll sink once it goes into the tank. Tomorrow Ill continue with the background.

Sounds like a plan... just make sure that you soak the wood long enough to get the tannins out the pieces. They'll discolour your water and make it slightly softer. This in no way harms fish, but just doesn't look quite right.

Hey, really nice. Welcome to FP. Keep us posted on the project and provide pics when you can.

Sounds like a plan... just make sure that you soak the wood long enough to get the tannins out the pieces. They'll discolour your water and make it slightly softer. This in no way harms fish, but just doesn't look quite right.

They're still soaking, though I'm not quite sure how long I can wait before putting them in And besides that, since I intend to have fish in there which like soft and slightly acidic water I don't mind it too much. I think that as long as I keep doing some frequent water changes, especially in the beginning, I should be fine.

Hey, really nice. Welcome to FP. Keep us posted on the project and provide pics when you can.

Thanks for the welcome, and I intend to keep updating this as I go, that's why I named it a Diary , so to continue with a short update:

Day 6: I didn't have too much time today to do much on the tank, after a long day at work me and my wife had the weekly dancing class (and for you guys out there, it's not nearly as horrible to do as everyone says it is) and then we stopped by at a restaurant on the way back, so we only arrived home at 10 pm. It gave me just enough time to trim the panels of the Styrofoam background so that they now actually fin in the tank. Even though they're white it still looks good. However, they still need some work as at the sides of the tank they don't quite reach the glass completely and there is just enough space for a fish to force its way in between and then to get stuck... and knowing fish that is exactly what they will do, so I think I'll round off the edges a bit tomorrow and make an opening where I can hide the filter drain. Tomorrow I might even reach the point that I can start the painting *shivers*

Day 7: After rounding off the edges of the background and removing more material to make it a bit thinner I started preparing the paint. As I mentioned before the paint is a marine grade epoxy paint which has a stone grey color, In order to make it a darker paint I bought some carbon powder that I want to mix with it.

When I opened the cans I noticed that the compounds had settled into fairly solid clumps on the bottom of the cans, a quick check on the side of the cans and then I saw the year 1993, so it seems that the paint is 11 years old I hope it still works the way it should. The base material was easy to liquefy, but the other part took a long time, and even then it wasnt entirely as runny as I would have liked. I mixed them together according to the instructions and mixed some more. It seemed better then.

I then started adding the carbon powder, one teaspoon at first, but it didnt seem to do much to the color. After having added a total of 5 teaspoons I thought it looked a bit darker than before but not nearly as dark as I would have liked, I didnt really want to add more though since the volume was increasing as well and I wasnt sure whether the carbon would have any effect on the polymerization process. So I decided to start painting.

I was happy to see that the Styrofoam was not being eaten away by the paint and on top of that, the paint, which liked a somewhat light grey in the pot, turned very dark once it was being spread out by the brush! A very nice color indeed! My theory is that the carbon powder did not really dissolve in the paint, but formed tiny bubbles of dry carbon which were surrounded by paint, so the paint didnt look any darker than before, only once it was being brushed out the bubbles would burst and the carbon would really mix with the paint.

The painting process was a pain. The foam had a lovely texture, a bit like lava rock, but that made it very hard to paint, brushing over it would leave a film of paint covering a small hole, which would then look like it was painted, but a few minutes later the film would have burst and a nice white spot was then visible. It took about 1 hours or so to do the 120 x 50 cm of background. Its currently drying on the balcony, tomorrow I will wash it off and hopefully will find that the paint has dried/polymerized properly This afternoon I think Ill go look for some nice looking rocks for making terraces in the tank.

edit: some typos

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-04-17 06:08][/span]

Sounds quite amazing so far, and you haven't even mentioned whats going into the tank. Keep us updated, I love reading about other peoples projects.

Mike

Sounds quite amazing so far, and you haven't even mentioned whats going into the tank. Keep us updated, I love reading about other peoples projects.

Thanks, I indeed haven't mentioned what exactly will be in the tanks, mostly because I ahevn't completely decided yet. I know I want a couple of Angelfish and probably some Diamond Gouramis (or is it pearl in english), the ones witht all the little black spots, red chest and pearl base . Besides those I don't know yet, maybe some Rasbora Hetermorpha in a little school, a couple of cories and possibly something else... we'll see. First I have to get the tank in working order, so the first fish are still a couple of weeks away.

Day 8: This morning after breakfast I took a look at the now almost black background. The paint had dried an even darker color than it was when it was wet, pretty good looking actually. I did see some small white spots where the paint hadn't cought properly, all about the size of a single styrofoam cell. I thought I would be able to get away with it.

So I placed the thing in the tank and took a photo, my film is now almost full so I think I'll have it developed next week, so expect some pictures in about a week or so. To be honest, it looked pretty damn good. Then I took the couple of pieces of bogwood that had been soaking for the past few days and also put them in the tank. Somehow when I bought them I thought they were kinda small, but in the tank they look a bit too big, I think I'll leave one of them out, the same counts for the rocks I found yesterday, I had a couple which I thought were way too small and now it turns out they are the ones which are more or less perfect in size... the aquarium in my mind is a lot bigger than the one in reality

So the background was in, the wood was there, time to put water in the tank for the first time! I was quite excited and then a bit worried, I have a 40 liter bucket (10.4 g) but where could I place it in order to have it higher than the tank. I didn't dare to put the thing on top of the tank and finally ended up making a mount out of two kitchen chairs (with high backs) and some wood, which was able to support my weight, so the 40 kg of the bucket should be fine in theroy. It wasn't all that stable though so I only filled the bucket half full.

When I had the tank for about one third full I noticed that the background was trying very hard to start floating, so I made a mental note that I really will have to glue it to the rear glass with silicone kit when I think it's ready. For now I used the bogwood to keep it in place. Then I took a good look at the part which was now underwater. My heart sank when I realized that I had forgotten about the magnifying properies of water and glass, anything in water behind glass looks about one third bigger than it actually is (that's why divers always claim to have seen huge fish when in fact it was a minnow or something). The problem it gave me was that the tiny white spots were now very much visible underwater. So I decided not to continue filling the tank, and in stead drained it. The background pieces are now drying in the sun and I'll paint the spots with a small brush in a little while.

Day 9: Well actually it's not really day 9, but more like day 13 or so, but to keep this a bit comprehensive I'll just keep posting this as if they are successive days.

In the past few days I've finished work on the background. After seeing all the white spots on it the other day I spent another 1 hours with a tiny brush dotting out the remaining white spots. Here the problem was mostly the carbon issue, it needed serious brushing in order to have it released into the paint, similar as to what I wrote on day 7. Then it was back to drying the thing for another 24 hours. The next day it looked pretty good, but it had a couple of sticky spots where I think the compounds of the paint did not quite mix as well as they should have (probably caused by the paint being so old )

I washed down the three parts of the background in the shower, then let them dry on the balcony for 2-3 hours and started with glueing them into the tank. I was a bit apprehensive about the glueing part since it means that taking them out is going to be a pain, but neither do I want to end up with the entire thing coming out of the substrate and floating in the tank, so in the end I decided to glue the whole thing in.

The glueing was done with aquarium grade silicone kit (be careful when you buy kit that it doesn't contain any anti-fungal poison, it'll kill your fish), and done over two days. I first glued in the left side part and braced it in place with some sticks with socks on both ends (to avoid damaging the styrofoam and the glass) I let that dry overnight and glued the second and third parts only the next day since I didn't have enough braces and I wasn't sure how much force I could put on the glass of the tank.

I let that also dry for 24 hours before removing the braces. Then it was time to fill the tank for the first time All in all it took 1 hour and 20 minutes to fill it up to capacity, but it looked great! I took some photos and now the film is full, so I'll have it developed in the next few days and will put links to the photos. I have the first water in for 24 hours now and will have it for another 24 before draining the tank, this is to leech all the epoxy chemicals that did not polymerize out of the background... it seems to work since the "sticky" spots I mentioned earlier have now dissolved and left some white spots of clean styrofoam *sigh*

more news will follow soon. This weekend I'm gonna put in the substrate, start up the filter and maybe put in some plants.

Day 10: Again it's been some time since the last write-up. In the past week I've been mostly waiting for the substrate, it's been quite annoying. When I bought the tank my LFS manager told me he'd get the rest of the substrate in 2 - 3 days (I got 20 kg out of the 40 I paid for). Those 2 - 3 days turned out to become 2 weeks and then I decided to switch to a different substrate, in stead of matte black basalt split, I now have some shiny black stuff. That is, it's shiny when it's dry, once it is wet it doesn't look shiny anymore, which I am quite glad about.

Anyway, so two days ago I finally had the substrate and could start with the decoration of the tank... kind of I first added a layer of TetraPlant Complete substrate in the tank so that my plants will have something to eat. Then I started washing the black substrate, that was one thing I learned from my grandfather about 20 years ago: whenever you buy new substrate, first wash it by putting it in a bucket, fill it half full with water and mix, wash away the dirty water and repeat until the water stays clear. It's funny, on those substrate packages it often says it has been treated in such a away you can use it in your tank straight away, but if you do you end up with some horrible murky soup. Also this time I was happy with that little bit of advice, the first bucket of water came off like mud.

Before I could actually start adding the substrate I needed some rocks to build some terraces in the tank, I had collected some rocks from the neighborhood, tested them with vinegar, baked them in the oven and was ready to use them, but my wife had seen lava rock in the LFS. And so we headed to the LFS to get lava rock, because "these horrible rocks you have just won't do!" I bought 5 big lava rocks of which I hammered two into smaller pieces with a screwdriver and a hammer, washed them off and build some nice elevated areas in the tank, then put the bogwood in the tank and started adding the substrate. There's now about 6-7 inches substrate height difference between the front and the back of the tank, which gives a nice dept to the tank, the bogwood looks fantastic! Then it was time to put in the plants, here's the species that I managed to get my hands on:

Lobelia cardinalis
Hydrocotyle verticillata
Cryptocoryne willisii
Alternanthera reineckii "roseafolia"
Anubias barteri var. nana
Lileaopsis brasiliensis
Hygrophila corymbosa "Siamensis"
Echinodous "Rose"
Ceratopteris thalictroides
Microsorum pteropus "Undolata"

They're now in the tank, looking quite nice though they still need a lot of growing. I'd still love to have Rotala indica and another low plant that I forgot the name of, but right now my budget is a bit low. It's now waiting until they start settling nicely before adding any fish.

Today I'm still going to install the filter and add some chemicals to get the cycle started. I'm going to run the filter with active carbon for the first 2 - 3 months or so since I'm not quite sure whether the background has now become completely "inactive", the carbon should take care of any impurities that can still "leak out". Regular water changes should also help. Tonight I'll take some first photos.

Day 17: The first fish are in the tank yesterday evening I went to a local LFS to take a peek at their collection, and it looked all pretty good. The owner of the LFS was a very helpful (overly so almost) old woman who was asking all kinds of questions about my tank, trying to figure out whether it was cycled and such. So in order to make sure it would be safe for the fish I bought a 5-in-1 test kit (horribly expensive btw: 30) to find out about my water quality. Here are the results:
NO3-: ~10
NO2-: 0
GH: 3-6
KH: 3-6
pH: ~7.0

Pretty nice values for a week old tank if I say so myself. Having these results in my pocket I went back to the LFS and bought 7 Hemigrammus bleheri or rummy-nose tetra. These fish are lovely school swimmers and stay very close together. Once I was back at home I found out that this species is actually a very sensitive fish, so maybe not such a great choise a first fish in the tank. Also I then noticed that two of the seven had somewhat whitish spots and I was instantly alarmed, the last thing I need is a disease straight when I put the first fish in the tank. Closer observation however showed that it wasn't directly a disease, but that the LFS saleswoman (who had a horrible time catching these guys) had managed to damage them with the catching net. Still slightly worried I released them after floating them in the tank for about an hour during which I added a bit of aquarium water to the bag every ten minutes. After release they first hid bedtween the plants straight awayu, having nearly no color at all, but within an hour the noses were nice bright red and they were swimming out in the open, the males even chasing the three females in the group. It looked good.

This morning when I woke the fist thing I did was check on the fish and found that one of the females had died, I have no idea why, she wasn't one of the damaged ones and the others seem perfectly fine, very active and eating nicely. I took out the dead one and will monitor the others, hopefully this was the only death.

It was probably the stress of moving. As you said, those fish aren't the most hardy for a new tank

Day 20: I'm going to become a father! This morning I saw the unrefutable evidence when my wife showed it to me: A BFP (or Big Fat Positive, as all the women call it). In Januari next year my normal life will officially end and will I have to learn to live with 2 hours sleep each night I'm very excited!

In other - more aquarium related - news, the 6 remaining rummy-nose tetras are doing fine, they're very active little fish and must have swum up and down the tank several thousands of times now. Today I'm going to get two black mollies which now will have some nice feeding grounds on some algea that are slowly starting to appear. In previous tanks that I had the black mollies always were very fond of the stringy type of algea and that's the one I start to see now.

One problem I see coming is this summer. The past few days temperatures here have been quite high (near 30 degrees celcius in the sun) and that lead to some uncomfortable high temperatures in the tank (also near 30). I think part of the problem is that the lights are about half an inch away from the water, adding heat to it. The heating element I have in the tank is at its lowest setting, so basically it's off. I may have to add a fan to the cover in order to clear the hot air. At least last night it was nice and cool so the water temp dropped back to about 25 degrees Celsius.

I'll keep you posted.

Day 23: Another little update, as you may (or may not) have noticed in my signature I now have 3 black mollies and 2 otos in my tank. They arrived a little bit sooner than I had planned, mostly because in a matter of three days the tank was having a LOT of algea growth. There were three different kinds of algea that I could distinguish: 1) a thin coating of reddish algea, which was growing pretty much everywhere, 2) a couple of small tufts of very dark green hairy algea, and 3) some light green stringy algea that could make stretches of several inches long.

The plants in the tank are growing pretty nicely, so I expected that the algea would disappear in the near future anyway, but since the reddish stuff was growing real fast (and I don't think light is really the problem since it also grows very near the surface), I decided that I better do something about it while my plants aren't suffering yet. So I went to my LFS and bought the three Black mollies and the two Otos. And those mollies meant business! As soon as they were released they started eating the algea, all the three different kinds. The Otos didn't quite start straight away, but they also seem to do their thing now The next day all the plants were clean, spotless! Just amazing, only the background and some small spots here and there were just a bit tainted. Needless to say that I'm very happy with these little fish... and if I don't add any other fish I'm afraid I'll end up with a school of mollies soon, the one male of the three was trying very hard to impregnate one of the two females (which by her size actually already may be pregnant).

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-05-12 02:41][/span]

Day 26: The tank is going great, the mollies and otos have pretty much eradicated the algea from the tank, only some small spots on the background remain and those actually don't look too bad, giving it a little bit more a natural look. Yesterday I increased the group of rummy-nose tetras to ten, now they form a really nice school of fish, flocking like birds almost

This morning me and my wife went to the LFS where I bought the tank, wanting to buy some Angelfish. I ended up buying cories and rosy tetras, the angelfish they had were only of the wildtype form and didn't look extremely happy. That LFS has a huge selection of cories and in the end I had my wife decide which ones she liked best and took those (5 of them). I just had a hard time finding out which specific subspecies of Corydoras it was. The owner of the LFS told me he got them as leopard cories, but that it wasn't that particular one. I found a nice site where they have photos of pretty much any kind of catfish and managed to identify mine as Corydoras cf. copei. Here is that site, if you're interested:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/core/index.htm

The rosy tetras were impressing my wife as well, and were pretty much the only "colorful" fish that I dared to put in the tank (most of the colorful ones were Cichlids and I'm not intending to have my tank turned into a sandbox), and I ended up buying 6 of those. The angelfish are now on hold for a while, my budget for the aquarium has been spent for the next two months at least

BTW, does anyone know whether Bettas attack rosy tetras? My wife would really like a betta male in the tank, but Since the rosy tetras have somewhat long fins I'm afraid it would end up in a fight.

I wouldn't put a male betta in a community tank that wasn't specifically tailored to his needs. I have heard of rosy barbs being rather nippy, so I wouldn't do it.

I would get one more cory so you would have a school .

Congrats on the baby!

---

They shade the glow of it with their mossy-misty costumes,
They wear masks of silk, porcelain, brass, and silver,
So as not to mislead with their own, ordinary faces.

CONGRATULATIONS on the baby!!! How exciting! Your tank sounds exciting too. I too, have rosie barbs and they are lovely, but as Peach said earlier, I wouldn't put a betta with them. They get rather nippy... ]

You are certainly doing your homework!! Pat yourself on the back! :88)

I have a 6 month old baby girl and I AM (we both are) sleeping through the night, so have faith!

Best wishes, Dutch friend!

Patty

Thanks for the best wishes and the information Peach Fuzz & Patty, it looks like there won't be any betta then, maybe we'll get one in a smaller tank at some point.

Day 27: Just a brief little update, there isn't that much new to tell. All the fish are doing great, the cories are still slightly nervous when someone walks near the tank, and they've managed to uproot some of the Hydrocotyle. I'm going to keep an eye on them though and take a look around for their specific feeding requirements, because so far they "nose" around a lot and pick up some small pieces of food when they find it, but they haven't made the connection to feeding time just yet... I expect that will change soon enough though.

The rummy tetras are doing very good, there's 6 of them, 4 males, 2 females and this morning the males were all trying to impress the females to mate... They sometimes disappeared as a couple into the thick vegetation and I could see the males shivering intensely so who knows, in a couple of days there might even be some fry (which probably won't survive very long). And there I thought the mollies were a   bunch

Day 27: second update. Damnation... it looks like the new fish brought Ich with them, I was just looking at the rummy nose tetras, one of the males has been a bit "off" for the past two days, not swimming in the school as much as normal, and now I noticed the tiniest spots on several of the others. So far the rummy nose tetras are the only ones to have it, but I'm sure the others will follow soon. Tomorrow I'll have to go get some medicine. Bleh, in 15 years of having aquariums this is only the second time I have a disease in my tank, I do not like it.

D-oh Sorry to hear that bonke, but fortunately it's the most common affliction in the home aquarium.

Slowly raise the temperature of the tank a few degrees, up to about 82. This will speed the life cycle of the parasite up, allowing more to be killed in a shorter time. You can turn the tank light off for a day or two as well, this eases stress on the fish and makes them easier to treat. Take our your carbon in the filtration system, and follow the directions on whatever medication you get. Be sure to read if there are special instrucitons for scaleless fish and/or tetras. You have both, so pander to them!

Good luck

Day 29: Yesterday I started with the anti-Ich treatment, the one "off" rummy-nose had passed away during the night as I expected it to do. The evening before it was breathing very laborously and had problems with maintaining buoyancy, I guess not having eaten for a couple of days didn't help him either. This was one of the two fish that got damaged by the LFS woman just over a week ago.

The other fish looked a little bit better, I didn't see as many spots as the evening before, but there still were some. The other damaged rummy-nose looked worst of all, though still eating well and being nice and active. My wife picked up the medication from the LFS during the afternoon, and in the evening I took out the carbon from the filter and added the medication to the tank... How I hated the green look it got...

This afternoon when I got home the water had cleared up quite a bit and the fish had no detectable spots, I'm not sure whether the medication always works so fast or whether the fish were already on the mend before I treated them, but things look hopeful. Tomorrow I have to add some more medication according to the instructions, and I think I'll stick to that, better to be completely rid of the parasite.

I'm still a bit worried about the rummy-nose tetras though, most of them eat pretty good and have nice "pointy" stomachs after a meal, but one or two of them don't eat that well it seems, though all of them are very active and schooling nicely (the one that died the other day didn't school for two days). I guess the general view of them being sensitive fish turns out to be quite right.

The Rummies on the other hand are extremely lively, the four males are continuously baltsing and trying to impress the females. That's one kind of fish I can absolutely recommend! My wife has started naming some of the fish in the tank, the big female mollie has become "Wanda", the male is "mr. Big", and the damaged rummy-nose has been called "spotty". The cories are harder to name though, because they all look alike, they have now been officially dubbed "swimming pigs" They're a cute bunch though, I never had cories before, but I like them a lot... even if they uproot some of the plants

Day 42: I just came back from a short vacation in my home-country (Netherlands). During the 6 days I was gone my wife has taken care of the aquarium and that worked out pretty good. Before I left there were two fish of which I thought they weren't going to make it, one was one of the most damaged rummy nose tetras, and the other was one of the 4 angelfish that I bought about 10 days ago from a department store...

Those angelfish were a story by themselves; I knew that at that department store they had a fish section, one wall of small tanks, 6 rows high and about 10 meters wide. So far I had managed to avoid it (I knew the fish there aren't treated that well), but since I had not been able to find angelfish that I liked I finally went there to take a peek. The situation in those tanks was even worse than I remembered; horribly overstocked, lousy filtration and many tanks had diseases. I counted about 10 dead fish lying in several tanks... They did however have a tank full of tiny angelfish (one inch), and they looked very lively and healthy... I guess they hadn't been there long yet. After some consideration, worrying about getting another disease (The Ich had cleared away in less than 2 days and didn't come back) I finally decided to go for them and bought four of them, one wild type striped one and three different kind of marbled versions. They were packed in a plastic box of the kind that I usually use for storing food in a freezer, and after asking I also got a bit of paper wrapping (it was COLD outside).

At home I took about an hour to get them acclimated to my tank conditions by adding a bit of water from the tank to the box every 10 minutes until the box was full. They were back to nice color within an hour or so and three of them started eating as soon as I added some food. One of them however wasnt really interested in food at all and just swam around, it didnt eat for about a week, but since two days ago it has started eating nicely and I think it will make it no idea what was wrong with it, but it obviously has managed to overcome it.

In the 6 days I was gone the plants have grown tremendously! I just spent about an hour with scissors in the tank cutting and replanting, it looks great again I had to take a picture; the role of film is now half full, so expect those photos in another 2 weeks or so. I think Ill enlist in the aquascaping contest, I think I stand a nice chance if I say so myself

Since I took the active carbon out of the filter the tannins coming from the bogwood are no longer filtered out, and that is pretty clear when you look at the water, it was now a bit like a very light tea color, not too bad, but I thought it was slightly too dark for my liking. I think it also captures some of the light away, and I already am at the edge of what I need for this tank, so a water change was definitely necessary. Today I did a 10% change, and Ill probably do another 10% towards the weekend. I checked what a second light mount for this tank would cost, and I will probably get one after my vacation 100,- is a bit much, but right now the 1.3 wpg is a bit on the low side.

Day 60: Where does the time go, my tank has been up and running for nearly 2 months now. Things are going fairly well. First the two things that makes it only "fairly well" and not great.

One of the Corydoras has gone missing. About 1 weeks ago one of them was somewhat lethargic, though breathing very hard, when it would swim it did so very erraticly, not straight, but sort of spinning like as if it was in some sort of rollercoaster. At first I thought that maybe it had a bout of bad indigestion since I had started feeding them some shrimp pellets the day before (specifically made for ground dwellers according to the box), but then the next day I couldn't find him anymore and haven't seen him since. I guess there is a tiny chance he jumped from the tank, there are two holes in the back, triangular, about 2" wide and 1" deep that guide the hoses and electric wiring of the heater and lamps. Most likely however is that he died somewhere in the thickest areas of plants and then got eaten by the others.

The other less nice thing is that I have a small algea problem, about a week ago I did a water change and added some plant fertilizer to the tank, It's one of these Tetra bottles and it states that you should add some once a month... I think I'm gonna let that go for a while. Within a couple of days after adding the fertilizer a nice green wavy carpet started to appear throughout the tank, on the background (where I don't mind it all that much), on the bog wood, and worst, on the plants. It came so fast that the Otos and the mollies couldn't eat a dent in it, and for a couple of days I was slightly worried. Luckily the plants also kept on growing nicely and 2 days ago I did some major weeding, cutting off all the algea infested plant areas. Since then the mollies have been having an algea banquet and large clean areas have appeared on the background. The water is crystal clear again and the tank looks great.

On the plus side as well is that my big mollie female has given birth some time ago. It was a bit of a surprise since she never looked any thinner than before, but about 2 weeks ago I suddenly noticed one of her offspring hiding between the plants. It must have been only 2 or 3 days old by then and since the latest addition to the tank, a medium sized black angelfish, is a fish who likes to hunt things, I didn't give the little one much of a chance of surviving. After two days we didn't see the little one anymore and I thought the angel had managed to catch it. However, when I did the weeding the other day, I suddenly noticed the small one again, it's grown quite nicely and I think that within 3 or 4 weeks it'll be able to swim out in the open. My wife was thrilled. It was good to see her smile again... we've had a rough week since she miscarried last wednesday.

Day 72: I wonder if anyone is still reading this report, but anyway, here's another installment. Yesterday when I came home from work and checked the tank I saw a couple of really fat and energetic angelfish staring back at me. At first I was a bit worried, none of them was pooping at the time and I feared some sort of constipation. So I decided to observe them for a bit to see whether they would "do something" So while I sat on the chair in front of the tank I suddenly noticed a little grey fish, about 5 mm long or so and I thought "Wanda (the big black molly, my wife's named her) has given birth!". And indeed, she looked all thin again and was continuously being harassed by the male.

So the Angels had a lovely feast of molly fry, and considering how fat Wanda used to be and how fat the Angels now were, there must have been many of them. Meanwhile I had lost track of that one fry and since the angels were still in hunt-mode I did not give it much of a chance (though that one from last time has survived and is now swimming freely throughout the tank). Later in the evening I saw it again and then my wife felt so sorry for it that she wanted me to save it, since it was swimming at the surface, close to the background it was easily scooped out with a glass. In the next 5 minutes I managed to catch another 4 of them, while one dived away into the plants.

Since I don't have a spare tank (I did manage to talk my wife into getting one, a small one, which I will make once I get back from my vacation in New york in a month or so) I had to make some sort of temporary solution. I took a plastic box that's usually used for storing food in the freezer, it's about 5" x 4" x 3". I still had some stryofoam left from when I made the background and cut a ring from it, which would just fit around the top of the freezer box, giving it some buoyancy. Then I took my dremel with the smallest drill (about 1 mm) and drilled a load of holes in the sides of the box, giving it some possibility to exchange water. This is now floating in the tank, containing the 5 fry and some floating leaves from plants (to give the fry a bit of cover). The angels are continuosly harrassing the fry, but can't get to them, I guess the fry will get used to that in time, though it must be a bit scary for them The angels look magnificent though, flaring their fins and looking mightily alert, almost as when they're having fry themselves and are protecting it.

Oh and on a side note, I now have the photos of the planted tank, I've also posted them in the photo booth, but here's one of them as well, just in case someone IS actually reading this

[/font]

Yep, still reading. With great interest.

The tank looks great BTW , good job on the background !
Actually we have a very similar set up. I also have mollies, angels and rummies and they do like those fry

PS. I was very sorry to hear about the miscarriage, hope your wife is feeling better.

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Bonke,

I wouldn't be too fast to blame the snails. I've had the sunset hygro before and gave up on it. Without sufficient light the leaves will just drop and float away.

I've had the same snails for some time. The wife made a game of catching them ! I actually just decided to leave them as I've noticed they will algae before a healthy plant and have yet to see one damage a plant. Ijust let my wife keep the population under control

How's the female betta working out ? I must admit I was never a fan of male bettas , but I think the females look great but wasn't sure about putting them in a large community tank.

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.