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My real ADA 60pxd, Scapers tank 55 and UNS60f hobby return.
- Thread starter Garuf
- Start date
Garuf
Member
Life has a funny'ol way of becoming "a bit much" without you noticing, and in all that I've managed to go from 5 down to 3 aquariums running and yet It's still managed to all go a bit sideways.
Work has been so much that I've just not had any mental bandwidth left that on leaving the workshop, I manage to shovel blahblahblahblah food into my face and sleep in an evening and really, nothing more. That isn't even hyperbole, it's amazing how little I get done. Which I am sure you can agree makes it a surprise that such a small existence can be too much.
With the 60f and the scapers, I pushed things just a bit too far and ended up crashing them both by allowing them to just get way too overgrown. The 60f is still running, in that it is an algae farm which I'm only running to keep the filter alive.
The scapers tank is in a more shameful stasis as a dumping tank until I can summon the motivation and inspiration to complete a full strip and rescape after the wood collapsed on me and I was unable to rescue it. Superglue and epoxy are both bad for longevity it seems.
The cube crashed after a big replant where everything just started to stunt out, dosing tinkering made things worse and I got taken out by unbeatable staghorn. The heatwave took tank temps into the high 30's which took out my colony of racoon tigers. They are extremely heat sensitive. The decision to shut the tank down became very easy after that.
A 45f failed to launch when in the first week after planting my light ballast failed, by the time I had a new one the tank was little more than a glass box of slurry.
The big'un has in all that actually been painless, everything grows so slowly in there that it was still rescuable, sporadic dosing and water changes had been enough tu sustain it okay and this weekend the decision was made that it should be rescued. Mainly because if I left it for many more weeks it would mean shutting it down and not just doing a day of gardening.
So after 9 hours of pruning, shuffling, swearing and resenting myself for ever planting rotala and p.gayi in there, I'm about halfway through. I've tried to rip out all of the gayi, again, and replaced the back right corner with more E.vietnam and e. japan needle leave. I've removed over half of the bolbitis by mass in plants and leaves and I can easily keep going as it's still too heavy. I have cut out 20l of plants either at the root or as trimmings, 5l in just moss alone. There still really needs to be more thinning and really I should replace the red crypts (they're meant to be pink godammit) but i've taken out so much plant mass I don't really dare keep going until I've let things settle down. I need to clean/top up/replace the sand. Clean the filter and the pipe work, wipe the glass etc.
I'm not exactly happy with the tank, I've not really been for a while, if I'm perfectly honest its actaully more that I'm not happy with myself because of plant choices not working, but it is at least stable right now and what I have is okay even if the picture doesn't match the one in my head. But as I say, I've just had no mental bandwidth left to take care of things until my hand has been forced by things going too far wrong so hopefully this gives me a little breathing room with the worst of it being done and I can do more managable small bouts of work.
It's not all gloom and doom, I counted 8 baby panda cories and the gold tetras I thought I'd lost most of during the heatwave were actually just hiding which is nice.
Work has been so much that I've just not had any mental bandwidth left that on leaving the workshop, I manage to shovel blahblahblahblah food into my face and sleep in an evening and really, nothing more. That isn't even hyperbole, it's amazing how little I get done. Which I am sure you can agree makes it a surprise that such a small existence can be too much.
With the 60f and the scapers, I pushed things just a bit too far and ended up crashing them both by allowing them to just get way too overgrown. The 60f is still running, in that it is an algae farm which I'm only running to keep the filter alive.
The scapers tank is in a more shameful stasis as a dumping tank until I can summon the motivation and inspiration to complete a full strip and rescape after the wood collapsed on me and I was unable to rescue it. Superglue and epoxy are both bad for longevity it seems.
The cube crashed after a big replant where everything just started to stunt out, dosing tinkering made things worse and I got taken out by unbeatable staghorn. The heatwave took tank temps into the high 30's which took out my colony of racoon tigers. They are extremely heat sensitive. The decision to shut the tank down became very easy after that.
A 45f failed to launch when in the first week after planting my light ballast failed, by the time I had a new one the tank was little more than a glass box of slurry.
The big'un has in all that actually been painless, everything grows so slowly in there that it was still rescuable, sporadic dosing and water changes had been enough tu sustain it okay and this weekend the decision was made that it should be rescued. Mainly because if I left it for many more weeks it would mean shutting it down and not just doing a day of gardening.
So after 9 hours of pruning, shuffling, swearing and resenting myself for ever planting rotala and p.gayi in there, I'm about halfway through. I've tried to rip out all of the gayi, again, and replaced the back right corner with more E.vietnam and e. japan needle leave. I've removed over half of the bolbitis by mass in plants and leaves and I can easily keep going as it's still too heavy. I have cut out 20l of plants either at the root or as trimmings, 5l in just moss alone. There still really needs to be more thinning and really I should replace the red crypts (they're meant to be pink godammit) but i've taken out so much plant mass I don't really dare keep going until I've let things settle down. I need to clean/top up/replace the sand. Clean the filter and the pipe work, wipe the glass etc.
I'm not exactly happy with the tank, I've not really been for a while, if I'm perfectly honest its actaully more that I'm not happy with myself because of plant choices not working, but it is at least stable right now and what I have is okay even if the picture doesn't match the one in my head. But as I say, I've just had no mental bandwidth left to take care of things until my hand has been forced by things going too far wrong so hopefully this gives me a little breathing room with the worst of it being done and I can do more managable small bouts of work.
It's not all gloom and doom, I counted 8 baby panda cories and the gold tetras I thought I'd lost most of during the heatwave were actually just hiding which is nice.
Garuf
Member
