Day 43 :
Planted up the Helanthium tenellum, aka Pygmy Chain Sword, aka Floaty Floaty Pain in the Bum. Oh my god I hate this substrate, or is it always this hard planting underwater?
First experience with Tropica 1-2 tubs. They seem pricey, but they can cram quite a few plants into those little pots :
In the end I found the fancy aquascaping tweezers were no use, my best bet was to hold it down in the substrate with thumb and forefinger, flicking neighbouring bits of substrate over it with the other fingers (the other hand was holding down other links in the chain to stop them lifting the whole thing up). After an hour or so of cursing and swearing, I got it in … mostly.
Try as I might I just could not get more of those roots to stay under ... and if I tried too hard the bloody thing would just make a break for the surface again. I'm hoping the roots will grow longer and anchor things better over time (and any new plants from runners figure things out for themselves). Fingers crossed, it's not like I've just added a bunch of creatures famous for churning up substrate or anything is it?
Oh.
Ah well, at least I’ve removed that HOB filter, with that blasting away the bottom of the tank (the outflow was near the front too) the Helanthium wouldn’t have lasted 5 seconds.
After all that, time for a treat, and another trip to a store recommended on this forum, Wholesale Tropicals in Bethnal Green. Wowsers, another great discovery, and this one is actually reasonably local to me. For me personally it loses a couple of points for in having no information other than scientific name and price on the tanks (no indication of size, difficulty, behaviour, parameters, etc), so I guess they’re targeting more experienced aquarists … either that or they just really like being asked lots of stupid questions. But the selection of plants and fish was incredible, so I will definitely be back, many times.
So, at this point, the tank was definitely what some might call “cycled” others might call “in active plant growth”, not exactly matured/seasoned, but I felt it was ready for some more inhabitants. By this point I had read hundreds of articles and forum posts, and watched countless youtube videos about potential additional fish for a community tank, but over the past week or two a lot of those had been pushed out of my mind by an exciting alternative option. One that would hopefully add another link in the food chain, one that has a relatively low bio-load, one that might even breed (if the guppies and hydra don’t get the offspring first).
Well, hello there little guy (or gal)
I was actually after Cherry Reds, but they were out of stock, so they offered me a discount on half a dozen Bloody Marys instead. “This one’s pregnant” he noticed as he fished the last one out, bonus.
Possibly I should have held out for the Cherry Reds and come back another day. My fault, I didn’t realise Bloody Mary’s were a different lineage rather than just a higher grade, so if I want to bump up the population now I need to stick with (slightly more expensive, slightly harder to find) Bloody Mary’s or risk ending up with a colony of brown shrimp. “But why up the population?” you may wonder, “six is plenty to begin with and one is about to have a few dozen babies”. Well …
Sadly the berried/pregnant one never actually made it into the tank. Obviously in a more delicate state, the shock of transport and acclimatisation (too fast or too slow, I actually suspect the latter) was too much for her. So, 40 days in and my first “fish” death. Much sooner than I would have hoped. It was only a tiny one, but it’s pretty gutting isn’t it? Did I mention the differing colours and patterns of the guppies have enabled our son to give them all individual names? Are we going to regret that in the long run? Eventually, inevitably, yes. I just hope it’s in a year or two, rather than in a month or two (though one thing I’ve noticed looking around various shops is that our guppies are mostly pretty big compared to others, I don’t think they exactly have their whole lives still ahead of them
.)
And as for the other five shrimp, well, they’re still alive … I think. But 90% of the time when you’re looking at the tank you wouldn’t bloody know it. “Come Son, sit by the tank and play the new game ‘where’s shrimpy’, hours of gameplay, only occasional reward” “No thanks Dad, I’d rather play Lego Superheroes”.
I know some people would say this was inevitable with Poecilia “what’s that? whatever it is, I think I’ll try and eat it” reticulata and Neocaridina “kinda small, kinda tasty, kinda nervous” davidi, but actually from the start neither species seemed particularly bothered with or by the other. It’s just that the shrimp are really good at hiding, and, well, really small. Even if they’re just happily sitting and munching up some biofilm, unless they’re right at the front, they are generally impossible to spot. Sit close and stare, stare really hard, stare really hard for a really long time, you might just see one. I’d be convinced that a bunch of them had just died out of sight and there was only one left, but once in a blue moon you might see two at the same time. Hopefully they’ll come out of their shells at some point.
Boom. Boom.
Planted up the Helanthium tenellum, aka Pygmy Chain Sword, aka Floaty Floaty Pain in the Bum. Oh my god I hate this substrate, or is it always this hard planting underwater?
First experience with Tropica 1-2 tubs. They seem pricey, but they can cram quite a few plants into those little pots :
In the end I found the fancy aquascaping tweezers were no use, my best bet was to hold it down in the substrate with thumb and forefinger, flicking neighbouring bits of substrate over it with the other fingers (the other hand was holding down other links in the chain to stop them lifting the whole thing up). After an hour or so of cursing and swearing, I got it in … mostly.
Try as I might I just could not get more of those roots to stay under ... and if I tried too hard the bloody thing would just make a break for the surface again. I'm hoping the roots will grow longer and anchor things better over time (and any new plants from runners figure things out for themselves). Fingers crossed, it's not like I've just added a bunch of creatures famous for churning up substrate or anything is it?
Oh.
Ah well, at least I’ve removed that HOB filter, with that blasting away the bottom of the tank (the outflow was near the front too) the Helanthium wouldn’t have lasted 5 seconds.
After all that, time for a treat, and another trip to a store recommended on this forum, Wholesale Tropicals in Bethnal Green. Wowsers, another great discovery, and this one is actually reasonably local to me. For me personally it loses a couple of points for in having no information other than scientific name and price on the tanks (no indication of size, difficulty, behaviour, parameters, etc), so I guess they’re targeting more experienced aquarists … either that or they just really like being asked lots of stupid questions. But the selection of plants and fish was incredible, so I will definitely be back, many times.
So, at this point, the tank was definitely what some might call “cycled” others might call “in active plant growth”, not exactly matured/seasoned, but I felt it was ready for some more inhabitants. By this point I had read hundreds of articles and forum posts, and watched countless youtube videos about potential additional fish for a community tank, but over the past week or two a lot of those had been pushed out of my mind by an exciting alternative option. One that would hopefully add another link in the food chain, one that has a relatively low bio-load, one that might even breed (if the guppies and hydra don’t get the offspring first).
Well, hello there little guy (or gal)
I was actually after Cherry Reds, but they were out of stock, so they offered me a discount on half a dozen Bloody Marys instead. “This one’s pregnant” he noticed as he fished the last one out, bonus.
Possibly I should have held out for the Cherry Reds and come back another day. My fault, I didn’t realise Bloody Mary’s were a different lineage rather than just a higher grade, so if I want to bump up the population now I need to stick with (slightly more expensive, slightly harder to find) Bloody Mary’s or risk ending up with a colony of brown shrimp. “But why up the population?” you may wonder, “six is plenty to begin with and one is about to have a few dozen babies”. Well …
Sadly the berried/pregnant one never actually made it into the tank. Obviously in a more delicate state, the shock of transport and acclimatisation (too fast or too slow, I actually suspect the latter) was too much for her. So, 40 days in and my first “fish” death. Much sooner than I would have hoped. It was only a tiny one, but it’s pretty gutting isn’t it? Did I mention the differing colours and patterns of the guppies have enabled our son to give them all individual names? Are we going to regret that in the long run? Eventually, inevitably, yes. I just hope it’s in a year or two, rather than in a month or two (though one thing I’ve noticed looking around various shops is that our guppies are mostly pretty big compared to others, I don’t think they exactly have their whole lives still ahead of them
.)And as for the other five shrimp, well, they’re still alive … I think. But 90% of the time when you’re looking at the tank you wouldn’t bloody know it. “Come Son, sit by the tank and play the new game ‘where’s shrimpy’, hours of gameplay, only occasional reward” “No thanks Dad, I’d rather play Lego Superheroes”.
I know some people would say this was inevitable with Poecilia “what’s that? whatever it is, I think I’ll try and eat it” reticulata and Neocaridina “kinda small, kinda tasty, kinda nervous” davidi, but actually from the start neither species seemed particularly bothered with or by the other. It’s just that the shrimp are really good at hiding, and, well, really small. Even if they’re just happily sitting and munching up some biofilm, unless they’re right at the front, they are generally impossible to spot. Sit close and stare, stare really hard, stare really hard for a really long time, you might just see one. I’d be convinced that a bunch of them had just died out of sight and there was only one left, but once in a blue moon you might see two at the same time. Hopefully they’ll come out of their shells at some point.
Boom. Boom.
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