ADA 60F : The valley iwagumi

[VarunA]

Hi everyone,

As before, here is a journal that is pretty late (scape has been setup since November 2022). The tank has gone though a lot of changes since the start. As always, it isn't as easy as you would imagine it to be. You would see that my early vision was to have a nice clean layer of bright sand along with lots of hair grass at the back. However, the tank didn't do very well. I lost a lot of the fish and to mitigate some of the health issues in the livestock, I made multiple changes at once. Hence, it isn't necessarily obvious which change tipped the point from imbalance to balance. Regardless, I think the tweaked parameters were all important for my plants + livestock.

Tank: ADA 60F (used)
Cabinet: custom build bought used
light: ADA aqua sky 601 with mirror -> Twistar 600SA --> Ecotech radion XR15FW pro gen 3 (or 4)
Filter: Eheim 2215 fully cycled from my ADA 60p setup
CO2: 5lb CO2 with GLA regulator
Heater : Archea slim 10watt (died unceremoniously) --> Hydor inline 200watt heater
Stones: lava rock + pieces of ADA Koke stone
Substrate: Fluorite black , caribsea big grain sand

The build started with an intention to clear out my 60p that was already long in the tooth (nearly 4y+. It was setup in 2018). I bought the 60F used since I like the form factor and knew that they were discontinuing that size. I used it as a farm tank for my carnivorous plants. When the time came to set it up, I finally cleaned it out and the true beauty of this tank and its size was revealed. The old owner of the tank was fantastic with the tank and took great care of it. There were hardly any scratches (which couldn't be said for my 60p which had deep scratches and gashes at the soil line (due to me using a credit card to clean the algae off the glass and rubbing sand on the glass)) and it looked almost brand new.

Cleaned up

This is the scape I came up with. I got some help from the folks on the TAC on discord. I really liked how the lava stone looked so natural. Considering the stone was almost a sphere, it just sat in/settled perfectly to make it look super natural and dynamic. I love the look in the mirror.

Live stock was added pretty much right away. I moved the filter from my 60p which was at this time bare-bottom with some rock and mosses leftover from the old scape. As a result, the filter should have been the major component with bacteria. So the moment I moved the filter over, I moved the fish over into the tank. This is the first looks of the fish in the tank. While I love the light and mirror unit, asian rummynose are very skittish and paranoid. To prevent loosing them from jumping, I decided to switch back to my old twinstar 600SA with a dimmer extension that turns on the light gently.

I'll continue with the further phases of this tank below.

 

[VarunA]

Phase 2: An algae nightmare

At this time I entered my first Aquascaping contest in Canada and ended up making a scape with petrified wood. At the end of the contest, we were allowed to take all the hardscape and plants home. I put all those plants in the tank.

However, at this point, I started noticing that the rocks were covered with algae, and I was facing tons of stag horn algae. My fish also started dying. I found a few had jumped out. Most weren't really eating much and some started starving. I also noticed some with camallanus worms poking out of their anus. It is hard to get medications in Canada, so I couldn't really do much for them. At this time I also bought my most expensive fish ever: Otocinculus cocoma. However, all 3 literally died within the span of a week.

I do my regular water changes, but I couldn't get the algae under control. At this time I went away for a week for work. When I came back, it was a disaster.

Crap loads of stag horn algae + oil film

This is the result of a major cleaning

 

[VarunA]

Phase 3: the mend

One of the things in response to the rasbora croaking was measuring the pH and hardness. I realized my 60p had mini landscape rock which raises hardness and pH considerably. With tap water that is already at a pH of 8, the landscape rock increases it further to 8.5+. The rummynose rasbora clearly seemed to do well in that tank, so I removed the main stone and replaced it with two of my old mini landscape rock from the old scape.

In spite of all the cleaning and maintenance, and lowering the light levels by switching to a controllable XR15FW fixture, I couldn't get over the algae issues. At this point, I realized the submersible heater I had been using has completely died. I had been losing fish and staghorn algae was just coming back. At one point above, the rock on the right was completely covered with BBA and stag horn. It is the most disgusting tough crinkly thick hair algae ever. I tried to spray the rock with H202 and it seemed to help kill the algae once the conditions were on the mend.

At the same time, I decided to buy an inline heater to minimize the equipment in the tank. It would save space in the tank and also would be more reliable. This was the start of a transformation. In hindsight, it was a "DUH!!!" moment. The tank had been sitting at 15-16 in winter...clearly not optimal for tropical fish and plants. I set the hydor heater to 68-69F. Almost within a week, things were changing. The rock started clearing and staghorn was still there, but tank started to lean towards a balance.

 

[VarunA]

This brings us to now.

The hydor heater is amazing and keeps the tank spot on at 69F. I added more fish. I finally found the real SAE (with the anal blotch) and now added seranwrap and plexiglass to try to prevent them from jumping. I added some more green neons to make the 2 I had for a couple of years more outgoing. The dynamic of the tank is so much better. The fish are much more active. The tiger badis are doing great and I lucked out with a red melon badis that arrived as a bycatch. I love the Dario genus...these fish have such a fantastic personality and I hope that I can keep them long term. In the past they always die with disease due to malnutrition associated with lack of a diverse diet.

So with that all, here are some shots I took recently. Also yes...the floating plants are helping with keeping the tank well balanced. I also added an air-stone that comes on at night to keep the tank oxygenated given the higher load of livestock. I am also pretty regular with greater than 50% water changes weekly to keep it in good shape. I realize this tank is severely overstocked, but the fish will be moved into a 90p when I get my stand and set that tank up.

 

[VarunA]

Just an update. Here is the tank after my vacation to Japan. I had moved all the fish into my 90P except the 6 tiger badis. My dad had accidentally fed this tank with dry food while I was away (instead of just the half cube of frozen food).

There was nearly 1 gal of water lost to evaporation over 16 days.

Water topped up day before water change

Note the rotting food and tons of freshwater limpets that have plagued this tank for a long time.

Here is the tank after a through clean and water change.

PS: also got a brand new camera/lens. Loving the crispness of the images.