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Dragon's Grove

Some emersed alteranthera from my propogator that I added at the weekend is not melting and instead is putting out new growth! I am feeling slightly confident that the things I have done may be just what is needed to turn this tank around. I am also seeing less diatoms on the monte carlo than a few weeks ago, fingers crossed, things will start to go better now.
 
Crossocheilus said:
After a blackout what should I do? Making sure CO2 is optimal, keep doing the same? Again, Ceg/Chris you have the results, but I feel flow is not the (biggest) issue as I can see some movement even at the base of plants at the back and plants in high flow areas are not flourishing either so it clearly isn't quite that simple.
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Ah well Ceg is the real expert but from where I'm sitting I'd suggest that you are already on the road to recovery. Algae takes hold swiftly...plants recover slowly but it seems your plants are now at least recovering.

The basic premise is that vibrant healthy plants are highly resistant to algae so focus on growing the plants and worry less about eradicating algae. Reducing light intensity/duration reduces the demands on everything and also offers less encouragement to algae. Your PH profile looks pretty OK to me and I wouldn't worry too much about the 1.8 drop, I have similar if I leave a glass of water to settle for 24hrs. It seems that accurately measuring CO2 availability is extremely difficult but the KH/PH is a very useful reference point to start from.

Next up it's watching the plants and gradually learning what is healthy growth and what is not so healthy growth, what is too yellowy or pale etc. etc. the learning never stops. At this stage you have a lot of potential pollution and ammonia generation possible from all the plant melt so meticulous housekeeping is required. It's also possible that you've built up a bit of a fertiliser soup from continuously adding more than is required for current growth and then not doing big enough water changes to reset the levels. So a few big water changes will help get you back to square one and then estimate your EI ferts around current growth levels but by no means under dosing. You might also want to consider night time aeration for a while at least to boost O2 availability for all those helpful bacteria until the plants start pumping out copious amounts by virtue of their vigorous growth.
 
Sounds like a plan

Half term coming up so lots of water changes and general upkeep possible.

I don't have any timers left to run my air pump (Homebase didn't have any last time I checked :thumbdown:) but will try to sort something out.
 
You can twist one of your spraybars each evening to slightly break the water surface for aeration, if it's not too inconvenient untill you get your timer sorted, you just have to twist it back into position each morning so as not to cause poor co2 for the day, it certainly sound like you have done your research and are getting the scape back on track, look forward to some updated pics soon :thumbup:
 
Once everything's growing healthier and algae is a thing of the past I'll try taking some better pics, and of course add some fish/shrimp!
 
Crossocheilus said:
Once everything's growing healthier and algae is a thing of the past I'll try taking some better pics, and of course add some fish/shrimp!
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Don't be shy on the Amano shrimps.. the photo and text below is taken from the Tropica site http://tropica.com/en/guide/algal-control/

Algal-control-0-2-4-shrimps_780x250.jpg

The picture above shows how efficient the Amano shrimp is when it comes to keeping a plant aquarium free from algae. The aquarium to the left had 3 shrimps, the one in the middle had none, while the one to the right had one shrimp during the start-up. They were all planted in the same way: 3 Anubias barteri var. nana and 3 Eleocharis parvula. The picture has been taken 3 months after the start-up. It is experiments like these that make Tropica recommend 1 Amano shrimp per 5 L water during the start-up of a new plant aquarium. Once a biological balance has been achieved in the aquarium, you can easily settle for fewer shrimps - e.g. 1 per 15 L water. However, if you have many fish that you feed, then we recommend that you maintain the population of 1 Amano shrimp per 5 L water.
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I'm thinking 20 amanos, as even that will be V. Expensive at £3.00 each so £60! Tropica recommend 36 for my tank which would cost £108 just for shrimp, that won't even breed! I will also have some cherries, which I will probably see if I can get cheap in the sale section of the forum. I will also have 10 ottos as part of the cleanup crew.

Sounds reasonable?
 
Just tested a copper harlequin in the tank and even in the net it immediately became very lethargic so I put him straight back into my lowtech. Until things have really changed for the better plant-wise I don't want to decrease CO2 so no fish/shrimp for a while yet.
 
Well after I found a major leak in my UP diffuser I contacted CO2Art who promptly sent a replacement with the new stronger body. This coincided with a FE running out. I have now installed the new diffuser and fe. Tomorrow everything should be up and running as usual, hopefully with a mich lower bubble rate, so longer lasting fe s.
 
Well the bubble rate isn't as low as I was hoping but the new diffuser is doing a good job, getting a nice lime green dc. But the big news is two tester fish from my other tank are doing really well with the fairly high co2. I am happy to add the rest of my 15 copper harlequins at some point this week. Next thing is to source some amano and red cherry shrimp, try to catch my other fish: sterba's cories (need more), ottos (need more), threadfin rainbowfish (need more).

Once all these fish are out of the small tank (65l) I may set it up as a softwater breeder for some liquorice and chocolate gourami.

I have also set up a nephrolepsis fern in some orchid substrate (bark chippings and moss) in a plastic box that had some chocolates in, on the back of the tank, I'm quite proud of it:

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Plants generally doing pretty well, still some old ragged bits but new growth is quite lush.

I trimmed the flame moss (made a right mess) but I'm still not very happy with it. Considering trying spiky moss, I want a taxiphyllum species so it has a chance of attaching. Or I could use fissidens/riccardia but I think a dry start is best for even coverage with these, and they are slow growers.

Just made a little skimmer guard:

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That's about it for now. Slowly but surely I am sorting this tank out, with the addition of livestock I hope I can finally begin to enjoy and appreciate this slice of nature.
 
Thanks for reminding me, I've been meaning to do a proper update.
I have added:

20 amano shrimp
17 cherry shrimp
25 copper harlequins
5 threadfin rainbow fish
4 ottos
4 sterba's cories
1 bamboo filter shrimp

I syphoned out the sand as it was covered in aqausoil and looked a mess and relaced with some spare aqausoil. I planted some MC trimmings in it and they are beginning to spread.

CO2 is now running 3 hours before lights on at 6bps with the latest UP inline after my old one leaked. This gets a nice lime dc an hour into the photoperiod. The skimmer no longer runs during the CO2 period, I found this degassed a lot.

Algae is minimal, no melt (apart from my hygrophila pinniatifida), good growth. I tried more light but saw some bba/staghorn a day after so have stayed with 2 T5s, using liquid carbon to kill the few tufts.

I have some sylvannia 865 39W T5s on order, having been unhappy with the colours from the T5s that came with my APS light and hearing from Viktor Lantos that these are the tubes he uses.

I've also finally got a flickr account so can now post pics taken with a better camera.

Pics to come...
 
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I took this one ages ago, but I'm very proud :happy:
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Macro attempt, with some accidental reflected product placement :shh:
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An amano tucking into a blood worm
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Spotted this berried cherry shrimp today - very excited!

Chris Jackson said:
Oh and what link did you use to get Flikr to work? I tried and found it a right faff..
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I removed some of the url I found, you just want it from "https://farm9.staticflickr" (or something similar) upto (and including) ".jpeg" then on the forum click the image icon next to the smiley face and paste the trimmed url. I am no computer expert but thats what I did after some experimenting and it worked, I hope my explaination isn't completely nonsensical ;)
 
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