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90x30x30 low maintenance

The tank looks like a mess right now due to a lack of maintenance. Substantial BBA on the inlet pipe and on my plants, and most of the plants do not seem to be doing so well either. I could try to nurse them all back to health, but since the tank has been almost the same layout for at least 3 years or so (?) since I first set it up in a 60cm tank and then moved it over to this larger tank, I think i'll start planning a rescape and try growing different plants in here.

I don't really have a plan for how I want the tank to look like, but I'll start off by buying one or two large pieces of driftwood and see where things lead. Would be ideal if I could catch all the fish and move them somewhere else so that I can drain the whole tank and clean it more thoroughly and rescape that way, but I don't have the space to house the fish somewhere else for too long at the moment. I did just buy a bigger tank and I will be moving the Gastrodermus hastatuts there so i'll have an empty tank to use, so I'll probably move the fish there, then quickly work on the rescape with the canister running so that I can have all the fish back in their original tank within a day. I'll have to start gathering materials soon. I'll probably only reuse the sand, Hydrocotyle leucocephala and some of the Java fern. Probably some of the Anubias nana petites, although most of them are infested with BBA so i'll have to pick out the more spotless ones.

For now, just some random fish pics feat CW51 and CW27

20250628_144706 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
20250605_220112 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
20250605_220132 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
I found one of my Trigonostigma somphongsi stuck on the filter intake a few days ago. I thought she was dead she's actually very much alive, although she did seem badly hurt. Not sure what happened. I usually assume they're goners, but I decided to move her to another tank to see if she will recover. Here she is in the other tank, looking absolutely fine.

20250722_230015 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

I have no idea what happened to her but I guess she is recovering. I don't have that many of this fish left and the ones I do have, I think must be rather old (for them) now as they are fairly big and also rather pale. I did attribute the paleness to my lack of care, as these days I almost never feed them directly. They seem to be getting enough food from whatever the Corydoras knock into the water column when they eat. But the one that got hurt still has really lovely colour and that bold black stripe on her so I'm not quite sure why some of them have gotten so pale. Anyway, it's been at two to three years since any shop in Singapore has imported them, so I don't think I'll be getting more.

I've also recently thinned out my java ferns drastically and am trying new plants in here. Here's a picture of Echinodorus 'Ozelot'.

20250729_230326 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

I've also planted Echinodorus 'Red Rubin' (I think) and a Nymphaea of some kind. They have been planted in plastic containers of aquasoil. Because the tank doesn't have much width, there's not a lot of space in the back at all, and I think as a result the Corydoras have been hanging out in the front more.

I still have loads of BBA on my Anubias, which are honestly not doing great at all. And I've tried Bucephalandra here a couple of times but never managed to get them to thrive. Java ferns are doing alright but also have some BBA but i'll get round to removing the affected fronds as best as I can this weekend. I am thinking that the reason my Bucephalandra fail to thrive is down to my lackadaisical attitude to dosing fertilisers and the lack of aquasoil for them to feed on when I don't dose fertiliser. I used to be quite diligent in dosing but have gotten lazy of late, especially after my holidays in March and April during which they really suffered. I've basically gotten rid of all the Bucephalandra since they have been melting constantly.

As for the Anubias, I have spotted random floating leaves before, but very rarely, so I don't think their rhizomes are rotting. But they are overall doing poorly and largely infested by BBA and I think that I could perhaps take very drastic action and cut off nearly all their leaves and perhaps even behead some of them to force new growth further down their rhizomes, but it would take forever for them to regrow. The fastest way, I feel, to refresh this tank would simply be to buy completely new and healthy plants and start taking care of them properly. So at the moment I'm a little torn over what to do but I think perhaps I'll inspect the plants individually this weekend and trim back heavily, then get rid of some and buy new ones in their place, so that this way I get to do both.
 
Changed up the plants a little. Wondering what I can do to help the Echinodorus grow bigger. Root tabs would help, obviously, but I did have trouble with keeping one of them planted. Sometimes I would wake up or come home from work to find the sword floating about. It seemed to be having some trouble putting out roots. It hasn't floated off for a few weeks now though, so I think I finally buried it deep enough and it should have rooted by now. Just worried that when I try to bury the root tab I'll uproot the plant by accident.

The aquasoil i'm using is something from Japan which isn't particularly rich in nutrients, I think. But i'm not sure if I should be adding a root tab so soon too. The containers I have them in are transparent so perhaps I'll do that once I can see some roots.

I've left the Hydrocotyle leucocephala floating in there and I've also added a little bit of hornwort from another tank, just thrown it in there for no reason. They're just floating there and looking a little messy at the moment until I figure out what to do with them.

20250810_230238 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
Really like the progress you made with this tank since the start. Very good looking.
chickennublet said:
but I did have trouble with keeping one of them planted
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You can simply weigh it down with a plant weight, most plants will grow like an epiphyte anyway. You may have to deal with the roots being exposed if the weight is not enough to keep it below the sand, but I think that is a rare possibility. I've grown swords and other plants in bare buckets and nutrient less gravel myself and it they tend to do just fine.
 
ValleyMykel said:
Really like the progress you made with this tank since the start. Very good looking.

You can simply weigh it down with a plant weight, most plants will grow like an epiphyte anyway. You may have to deal with the roots being exposed if the weight is not enough to keep it below the sand, but I think that is a rare possibility. I've grown swords and other plants in bare buckets and nutrient less gravel myself and it they tend to do just fine.
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Thank you. I don't think that sand is deep enough to really plant in but I've planted the swords and Nymphaea in containers filled with aquasoil. I'd like to plant more stuff in those containers eventually too! I'll keep the option of using plant weights in mind.
 
Picture of tthe tank a few days ago

20251008_215035 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

Looks rather messy at the moment and I think I prefer how it looked like before. The Java fern on the left looks a little out of place. I'll probably split that plant up and move them into other parts of the tank. There's also a lot of BBA on the Anubias. Think a big trim is probably in order to get rid of the infested leaves. Obviously I've been slacking off on maintenance...

I like how the tank looked before when there was a big Anubias coffeefolia in there, so I might have to get one again but we'll see.

I'm still not ruling out a complete rescape where I just get rid of all but a small handful of plants and filling the space up with wood and leaf litter. The fish might prefer that too, to be honest.
 
chickennublet said:
lot of BBA on
Click to expand...
I think if I was you I would want to eliminate this recurring issue. Why is it so problematic in this setup?

Java fern, Echinodorus, I have removed the latter from my tank, it was just taking over, which I feared it might, but in my four foot tank, plants that grow to a spread of two or three feet are just too much, the former I've tried to remove, it always gets algae on the tips in my tank, but immature plants, from bits of broken leaf, keep appearing on my filter inlets.
 
Connswater said:
I think if I was you I would want to eliminate this recurring issue. Why is it so problematic in this setup?

Java fern, Echinodorus, I have removed the latter from my tank, it was just taking over, which I feared it might, but in my four foot tank, plants that grow to a spread of two or three feet are just too much, the former I've tried to remove, it always gets algae on the tips in my tank, but immature plants, from bits of broken leaf, keep appearing on my filter inlets.
Click to expand...
I think it's because the tank is just kinda dirty and I don't have a dedicated clean up crew at all. There used to be red cherry shrimp in here but they've slowly died out. I used to feed this tank pellets and they would get everywhere so the shrimp ate a lot and the poplulation was healthly, but i switched to tab based foods for the bottom feeders and I guess there wasn't enough food for them. I'm not exactly sure what the reason is for their demise. Their progenitors are multiplying in my other tanks though.

I've also not been very on top of maintenance to be honest. I have skipped a water change here and there and have not been removing affected leaves and old leaves, which is probably contributing to the issue. The fish look nice and healthy, but the Anubias is unsightly. I thought of adding amano shrimp to help keep the tank a little cleaner, but I don't want them fighting my fish for their food. We all know how food aggressive those things can get.

My two other non-CO2, sparsely planted tanks don't have any real algae problems at all, although those are also less heavily stocked and only have very small fish in them.

Oh also just want to add that my Echinodorus are contained in a plastic container so I don't think they'll be able to spread too much!
 
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20251011_200925 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

20251011_200900 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

Mystery eggs! Any fry that hatches out of these probably won't grow to an appreciable size so I'll never know what these are, and they might a hybrid anyway (I've seen my knaacki spawning with a caudimaculatum before). But it's nice to see that they're happy enough to spawn.
 
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Few more pictures from after maintenance. Looks a little better but could do with more plants of a different shade of green. The Nymphaea does not appear to be growing very big which is a bummer. I did buy it when it was very small so maybe it just needs more time.

20251011_212126 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

Fish pics. That particular CW51 and the CW155 are probably my favourites.

Sterbai
20251011_203734 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

CW51 and Knaacki
20251011_205516 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

CW115, still very small
20251011_204021 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

CW155, had three small ones at one point but only this one made it. It has grown!
20251011_204035 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

CW27 and concolor. I got the concolor really small, and I doubt these will ever reach full size. I think two of them have grown a little since I got them though.
20251011_205855 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
I was just watching my other smaller tank recently where I put one of my Hoplisoma caudimaculatum. It had a small tear in its dorsal fin, so I had moved it into the smaller tank where I could better observe it. That tank is a lot dimmer than this tank and doesn't have much in terms of planting at all, but I throw a bunch of dead leaves in there every water change. I was watching it digging around in the sand and I noticed that I seem to enjoy watching that little fish in that tank more so than this tank.

It is alone in there, but it also seems to be more at ease. It doesn't bolt the moment it sees me the way that the fish in this tank do. So as I think I've mentioned before multiple times in the past, I think it's time to make some big changes to this tank. I'll start by slowly removing the Anubias and Java fern, so that eventually the only plants in here will be the Hydrocotyle leucocephala and the Echinodorus, then dim the lights and reduce the CO2 substantially. I'll probably plant more Echinodorus in here too, and also add more driftwood and start to add dried leaves in here, and hopefully the changes in the environment will help the fish feel more settled, and I'll be able to enjoy this tank more as well. It would mean less plant trimming required overall too, which is a good thing. Right now the Hoplisoma sterbai appear to be spawning as I just noticed them chasing each other around, so it's not like they hate it in here. But it might be time for a change.

The Trigonostigma somphongsi are Southeast Asian fish, but I think i'll let them remain in this tank until they naturally expire.

I think what I might be worried about is a possible reduction in filtration capacity because of the reduction in plant mass, but i'm hoping that the filter combined with the fast growing Brazilian pennywort and swords will be enough.
 
Hey all
Haven't updated in a long time. The tank hasn't been doing that good, I've been getting a lot of algae issues on the glass but that's probably because I haven't been doing much maintenance at all. I went on holiday at the start of the year too, so including the time before that the tank has gone without maintenance for about four weeks I think (until yesterday!).

I found the energy yesterday to clean the tank up. Wiped the glass as much as I could and also trimmed and thinned out the plants. The java fern was really overgrown. I wish I had taken a picture from before I started doing maintenance because the difference is like night and day. I'm glad I did it because now I can finally look inside the tank again. There is still some algae and also BBA on the glass, but I hope I can keep up with the water changes and keep things under control. The filter will need opening up next weekend too which i'm not looking forward to. I'm glad that the fish are fine for the most part at least. I probably lost one of the Somphong's rasbora, I noticed one looking a little weak after I came back from holiday, but that's about it. There aren't many mid or top dwelling fish in this tank, the inhabitants are still mostly Corydoradinae.

I found a little baby while doing maintenance yesterday. I'm not sure what it is, could be a hybrid since there's a bunch of Hoplisoma in there, but it's most likely Hoplisoma sterbai which isn't the most exciting, but hey it's always nice to see fry! I know my fish have spawned before and I've seen fry before, but so far this is the first time I've ever seen one get to this size in this tank.

I've also recently noticed that my concolor has some pretty high dorsal fins! I never noticed that when I picked them up over a year ago. I guess they must have grown a little. I also just saw a picture I posted here of my CW155 when I first acquired them and they were so small. I only have 1 left but he looks so different now. He's grown! Hope they continue to grow up well.

20260125_215223 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

The baby
20260125_214855 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr

Hoplisoma concolor showing off his dorsal fin
20260125_215725 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
Hiya.

So, CO2 has nearly ran out for this tank and to be honest, I can't be arsed to get it refilled so I am planning to dim the lights a little (it is already quite dim) and throw in some leaf litter because I have leaves in my other tanks and really like the look. I might also want to get some Otocinclus for this tank, I do like those little catfish a lot.
 
This Tank is looking alright at the moment. The CO2 ran out and I mentioned wanting to put some leaf litter in here, but I haven't gotten round to doing that yet. I think it looked better back when I had a buttload of Anubias nana petite in the tank and I kind of wish I had kept up with the water changes before I let

I have been having a little bit of trouble with the Hoplisoma in another tank lately, but I am happy to say the ones in here have not given me any trouble at all for quite a while now.
20260219_222617 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
20260219_223227 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
20260219_223332 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
20260219_223059 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
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