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Hello from a guy getting back into the hobby after 30 years of "I forgot I had it"

Flukeworld

Member
Joined
6 Feb 2021
Messages
61
Location
Bulgaria
Hello dear "colleagues",

This is how we call each other who are into this hobby in my country. I am from Bulgaria, small country in eastern Europe. We are very happy to have an access to the world, which was not the case when I was a kid. As a young teenager I have live trough the USSR communism till 1989, when my country adopted the democracy..

I am starting this far, because after buying an aquarium for my kid, I recalled it was the greatest hobby I had as a kid. For around 5 years as an early teen I had 6 aquariums with around 500 livebearers. I am grateful to my father, who made this possible and helped me a lot to get what I needed and is possible at that time for the hobby.

So, nowadays I knew I got it, went to the shop, argued a bit with the sells guy, being a bit disappointed that my daughter 3rd birthday is tomorrow, but I cant put any fish in my tank present. Anyway, I got 17 litters (4.5 gallons) aqua, filter, heater, white-blue stones substrate and starter bacteria. I did not go cheap, so I am happy I got somewhere good hardware following the merchant advice. After around 9 months I still had keep the aqua and the hardware as a livebearer babies growing place.
So, after it cycled (I believe it was), somewhere on the forth day I have put 6 fish as present for my daughter's birthday. We also put together all the seа shells we have collected in last years. I got 2 plants too, сo a bit of a very "beginner" picture here to see from where to where it got in time.
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The fish was 2 swordtail helleri, 2 black mollies, 2 plattas and 1 ancitrus. After few weeks it turned out that all of them are male and just 1 molly is a female. Then she died. It had such a big affect on me - I believed I have been doing everything wright, applying everything that I knew from my childhood, including I was following everything that people told me in the shop - how to change the water, hot to clean the substrate and the filter, how to feed, adapt water and so on. After getting on the internets, looking for what could have been gone wrong - it woke up. I got so deep into this being very happy that there is so much to read, so much options, possibilities and hardware to have money for in the shops. I realized I have forgotten what it was for me to be into this aquarium science. So, I fixed it. We collected some stones with the kids from around our house, rend some with a hammer, then glued them as we liked, planned the aquascape, glued the moss - a result of my passionate internet digging and youtube wathing. So here the result:

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Well, it did not end there. I was so excited and carried away, that I started to imagine what I want as my "aqua space" in our house. My wife was not excited at all, but now she likes the result. So I started imaging, scratching and planning things, so here a photo:

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Well, I have some computer skills (I am very modest here) so I created a "project" and ordered it from a local company. It turned out, they are amazingly good.

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So the result:
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Once again I did not go cheap. Here is where it all went very deep and this is what I do/read/help where I can/think trough the day for several months now. I got into issues with time, still have a lot to fix but this is how I found this forum - for now a great source of knowledge and experience. Soon we will meet at "issues" topics :)
Here, some pictures of the current state - the small one is 9 months old, 17 litter tank, and the big one is 6 months old and 170 litters (somewhere 130 litters in real). Enjoy :)

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Thank you. It was just - how to utilize the only space I could win after arguing with my wife that "our house wont become full of tanks". Now the small one is constantly filled with around 50 babies, So
I have to gift them away constantly to avoid over population.
 
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Here is my new undergoing project. I want to utilize the space on the "shelf" which I was not sure how much it will be in the end. But overall, the upgrade is from 17 litters to 42 litters (real 36).
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As the aquarium will be much larger it will require something to put under to be able to service it.
 
An update - I had to move to a new house, so rescaping was inevitable. I had to fully empty the tank and remove all plants but at least I could keep the soil as it is. Around 30 kilos of soil including the weight of the glass it was pretty hard exercise moving the tank to the new flat. But this gave me an option for new ideas, so here some pics from the process and outcomes. Last pictures are the state now 2 months after moving.
 

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Still here and still full of passion and fire :)
Finally made the "table" by myself which came out to be a bit of an issue to order.
On other hand an year later this project is almost completed.

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I have all the tech for this one, just need to scape it. Stay tuned.

As for the old two - they are still there, healthy and thriving, pleasing my soul day after day :)

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Some update
01/2022
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In the small one I raised several generations of Endler Guppies.
Then I got bored with maintenances so I scrapped the small one and decided to try raising bucephalandra plants emersed. Basically to avoid maintaining the small one.


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Then I got into another idea - with my soft water I always had troubles raising mollies, so now I am on a project to get some fry. The grown bucephalandra went to my big CO2 aqua decoration. The small one became a home of a large pregnant molly. Trying the non CO2 method, avoiding double maintenances.
Just a note - I raised my GH from 2 to 7.7. For now things are going okay. Waiting for fry to be born :)
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Stay tuned :)
 

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Its Friday and I have some time to update the journal. I will try to have less text and more pictures, lets see :)

The big tank turned 2 years few days ago. Seems stable after I started making my own ferts. Still I never was able to avoid having BGA here and there. I blame lack of time to maintain it regularly - I have times where I skipped the water change for a week this summer making the change on 2 weeks instead of 1 but still dosing full EI. On other hand I also blame my CO2 enrichment. I realized that removing the tank cover to battle the summer temperatures and having inline diffuser makes CO2 levels unstable because of the water evaporation and spray bar getting closer to the water surface. Anyway, I am trying to keep up the water level to avoid this. It took me a while to realize its not the CO2 bottle pressure fault that my PH is not going down with 1 point. I was very close to suffocate my fish after a water change and very high CO2 injection rates.
Here on topic where we are with pics:
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2 years old, its been a while, a lot have been changed, a lot of experiments but I believe I am glad with the results. Still I have plans for updates and changes though :)

Here, the small one which I am trying to turn as lazy one (no CO2 and water changes) suffering BGA and tons of hair algae I am trying to remove each Sunday:
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You may have noticed, but there are molly fry. My plan with GH increase to 7 and KH to around 5.5 seems to work well, I have somewhere like 30 babies, which are now a month old and really love Otos food pellets :D

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Finally a full picture of this beauty to freeze the moment.
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The Incubator
Here something I have created from what was available around. The goal is to make a system with enough volume to be somewhat stable for growing live fish food, or fish fry, basically DIY hatchery. First goal is to cultivate tubifex, then I will see. Here is what I have created.

Submersible DIY filter:
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Old industry bucked with some pipes put over a 60 liter drum:
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I have a video, but here the forum is not allowing video uploads.
The final system is about 80 liters. Lets see how it will go with tubifex.
 
Not much of a news, but seems I have the time to post.

Here where I am lately:
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Doing my maintenance, pruning my plants. Learnt the way of "keep the best for you" so I have been replanting most of the stem plants at least once per month. Basically taking out everything from those long growers and then replant the tops.
I keep my fertilizing regime at full EI (doing my own ferts from salts), I keep hardening my water with 8g Magnesium Sulfate, 10g Calcium Chloride and 12g Sodium Bicarbonate per 120 liters dechlorinated water. I keep changing weekly around 70% of the water. Seems this intervention proved I got rid of wholes in the old (not so old ones) leaves and thriving livebearers giving birth instead of go to "swallow stomach syndrome" dying.

Here one veteran being with me for around 2 years and so:
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I also got a present 3 Ancistrus Dolichopterus (L183), which seems to get a long with the big (and lonely) guy:
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I am glad those don't mind my water hardening. My dream would be to find a female to this big guy and get at least 2-3 offsprins. I am putting this on my "to do" list.


Here a guppy which I find interesting. I have several Endler Guppy generations and all the females are soo boring. BUT, I have this one which I am planning to reproduce hoping for different type of gray color females:
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In general I am experimenting with my light. I have new lamp for a month or two (Fluval plant 3 - 46w) which I find amazing and much better than Zetlight. I have my Montecarlo finally growing and seems all other plants react visibly into the good scale. I am getting rid of long warm-up and cool-downs lightning times lowering the light period overall from 12 hours (6 strong light) to 7 hours - 6 hours strong light, 1 hour nighty neglecting light. This as a one month test. I just want to see the effect, as I never could get rid of BGA on hardscape or slow-growers for 2+ years.
I blame the soil (28 liters of Dennerle Aquascaper Soil + Dennerle 9+1), but you never know. I am getting to this conclusion because my small (34lt) aqua has Seachem Flourite and Dennerle 10+1 (lol) and never had ammonia issues. Had mostly hair algae but it has no CO2 which could be the reason. Still, I belive the soil keeps leaching ammonia for 2 years and its not getting better with all organic matter and roots decaying there. Also I am trying slowly to go to 100% white/yellow light intensity on the Fluval light, as it seems it makes big effect on places where I had issues previously (montecarlo, mosses, Alternanthera Reineckii).

As for the platies project - it is amazing how colorful those guys can be, having few generations and I here all the rainbow from just gray and red parents:


I am going to keep all Platies with strange and interesting colors separate, so to see where I can go with selective breeding. Seems for the time being Platy is my favorite fish.
 
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