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Gourami Gloaming #4

Quick update. Needed to buy lighting for another tank and was looking at aquabars again when I noticed you could get them in the 'colour plus' with red and blue leds. I have put one on the big tank so there is a white led bar at the back and a colour plus at the front. I think I like the difference but not sure.

White bars
aa39e5a595d8afd4f34526a76e8ea6f3.jpg


Colour plus and white
0552de0365b4aedf5e1788276aa7e914.jpg


Also bought a Crinum calamistratum from aqua essentials and got this whopping specimen!
3d7a383b9b4aeb283969298a08a85e1a.jpg


And to finish, cluttered view of other side

Anyone have preferences on the lighting colour?
 
Quick update. Needed to buy lighting for another tank and was looking at aquabars again when I noticed you could get them in the 'colour plus' with red and blue leds. I have put one on the big tank so there is a white led bar at the back and a colour plus at the front. I think I like the difference but not sure.

White bars
aa39e5a595d8afd4f34526a76e8ea6f3.jpg


Colour plus and white
0552de0365b4aedf5e1788276aa7e914.jpg


Also bought a Crinum calamistratum from aqua essentials and got this whopping specimen!
3d7a383b9b4aeb283969298a08a85e1a.jpg


And to finish, cluttered view of other side
19909d1872f107d91371ff42c3a28403.jpg


Anyone have preferences on the lighting colour?
 
I think so too, troi. The wood looks better. The white light makes everything look a little flat.
 
Just watched the liquorice gourami flaring under the new light and wow, the blue is really popping!
 
Went to colins fish hut for a culture of gammarus shrimp and came away with 6 sphaerichthys acrostoma.
 
Will get some of my trademark bad phone pics when they are a bit more settled. Feeding well though and the liquorice gourami have just ignored the new tank mates.
 
Hi Lindy nice to see your tank coming on. Slightly off current topic, but where did you get your TMC Colour plus Aquabars from? They look the business, and I've Google them without much success.
 



where did you get your TMC Colour plus Aquabars from?

Homeleigh garden centre.
Just search for tmc aquabar. It looks like they just have white until you click on the drop down bar and get options.

Turning into a real chocolate box now!
Ha, making no claims, that is Alistairs domain!
 
Well the acrostoma are the shyest fish and while they do come forward at feeding time, if there is a phone taking pics forget it. These are the best for now.
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It was suggested that the cause of the dark spots appearing on the liquorice gourami was too much organic material/waste in the tank so took out around 40l of water while syphoning the crap from the back of the tank. Have decided to use rooibos teabags to stain the water as I just can't put in enough leaves to have any impact.
 
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There is one adult male with a jet black stripe along his body and red around his face but the stripe disappears almost completely if he is worried in any way. There are some identifiable as females and the others seem to be too young to show anything yet.
 
There have been a few changes. As the nutrasoil was buffering my ph up constantly I decided to stop trying to force this to be a blackwater. I took out all the gourami. The paros will have their own tank in the fish room that will be perfect blackwater conditions. The Acrostoma have gone back to Colin at the fish hut. The female betta splendens are now in this tank. I turned up the lights and added pressurised co2. Drop checker is a lovely lime green for duration of lights and at lights off an airstone comes on for a few hrs to gas off co2.
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Rather annoyingly, the ph is now going down to 5 with the addition of co2 so the paros would probably love it. I have seen them doing some courtship in the holding tank so hopefully they will breed once in their proper tank .
 
Oh and I nearly lost 3 female betta splendens to the little eheim skimmer! I'd put the skimmer on that morn on the 95l tank the girls were in and then gone back to move them over to the big tank that afternoon. Wondering where 3 bettas could have gone I thought 'surely not' and opened up the skimmer. Some fins were damaged so the spent the night in shallow water to get a rest and were back to perky the next day. Doing well in the big tank now whew! I'll need to change the name of this journal now...
 
This is more of a betta end as I'm moving on all the betta splendens girls after i lost 5 in this tank.
The tank has had a persistent film on the surface and stag horn algae and i think it is due to the leaf litter i put under the substrate when starting the tank up. Either my substrate isn't deep enough or lots of the rotting leaf litter has been brought to the surface by moving plants. The result is an overload of organic matter. I put some purigen in the filter and it has cleared the film but there is still a bit of an odour.
Anyhoo, planning to gut the tank and rearrange so that wood is not blocking flow. Will replace the tmc nutrasoil with something that won't buffer the ph up so i can have my gourami set up as originally planned. Just not sure what to use?
The substrate must not raise hardness or alter ph so I'm open to suggestions.
I'm thinking some sort of sand? As i would like to grow crypts and the like i will have to provide nutrition under the substrate so may use tropica stuff under the sand. Never used an inert substrate before so a bit clueless.
 
Fluval Stratum is pretty neutral, I haven't seen it do anything to my GH, KH or pH, nice dark colour also, there's two grades, Plant and Shrimp, the Shrimp grade has smaller granules. I'm using both together in my main Planted tank with no nutritious bottom (fert caps and EI) and C.Parva and C.Willisi grow well in it (just put some C.Undalata in yesterday so hopefully that does well also). I'm re-using some Shrimp grade to cap some Tropica substrate in my newly scaped shrimp tank. It's a nicer combination to plant in than Stratum on its own which can be a bit light if it's not deep enough.

:)
 
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