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dw1305

Expert
UKAPS Team
Joined
7 Apr 2008
Messages
16,969
Location
nr Bath
Hi all,
I haven't maintained any of the tanks in the lab. since the middle of March, the only thing I've done is topped the water up, but it was about 1/2 way down the tanks at that point. They don't have any fish, and a limited amount of snails etc. but were heavily planted with easy plants.

They live on a windowsill facing NW and they only really get any direct sunlight in the summer evenings. One of the tanks gets a bit more daylight and has a polystyrene backing, usually I put a piece of polystyrene behind the other two tanks in ~April. I didn't do this in 2020.

Yesterday I had a look at them, and they have a lot of algae growth, mainly BBA, much of which has subsequently died, and a really thick coating of BGA, both a Nostoc type in the moss mass a the water's surface and a more traditional smear type, mainly all over the dead BBA. There are also some filamentous diatoms and what may be dead green thread algae in the backed tank.

The floating plants look pretty unhappy, and it is only the Salvinia that may be salvageable and some of the Hygrophila corymbosa & Ceratopteris has died as well. I don't know quite how hot it has been, but probably up to ~40oC , as there are large S. facing windows and the blinds have been up.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi Darrel
The nights have been really humid and hot as well so this doesn't allow any chance of the tank temperatures to drop.
My two tanks are around 27 degrees "no heaters in use " and these are in darkish areas of the home.
I've had to float iced bottled water in the shrimp tank to cool them down!:eek:
hoggie
 
My unheated tank reached 29.5c yesterday as it gets lots of directly south/west sunlight in the afternoon-evening. I really should shut the blinds but it doesn't seem to do any harm over the eight years it's been running. I do get some bga between the substrate and the glass but the rest of the tank is spotless, through no skill whatsoever from the aquarist but possibly because it has a decent sized monstera sticking out of it.

The lfs near me has closed for a few days so they can turn all unnecessary equipments and lights off to keep everything alive. They were apparently struggling to keep everything under 30c, which I sympathise massively from my time running the shop. Our local maidenhead is in a greenhouse type area of the garden centre so I bet they are really suffering but 40c is something else to deal with, so no wonder your tanks have suffered.
 
Hi all,
tanks again eventually or will you go for complete restarts?
The tank with the backing just needs a bit maintenance and a filter clean etc.

The other two are much worse and my guess is that there won't be a lot worth saving, other than some of the moss and the Anubias plants. One tank has a cat litter moler clay substrate and that is now embedded in the mass of dead BBA, moss and mulm, so I might swap that over to sand.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi @dw1305/Darrel,
Yesterday I had a look at them, and they have a lot of algae growth, mainly BBA, much of which has subsequently died, and a really thick coating of BGA...

This may seem like a strange request but I would like to obtain some BGA/Cyano in order to do an experiment. Is there any possibility of you being able to pop a sample in the post to me? If it's in a small, sealed polythene bag (or similar) with a tiny bit of tank water, it's very likely to still be alive when I receive it. A jiffy bag might also be a good idea for the outer bag! I can PM you my address, email, etc.

JPC
 
This is my lock down cacti after returning to work after 4 months... This was over 20 years old, 50p from Ikea (including pot), bought to work as my baby daughter kept putting her hand in it. She is 21 now.
1597312316847.png
 
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