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Parva Beach - Where Corydoras Holiday

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Generous trim of the mosses and tidy up this weekend. Sadly I lost two of the Cory Napoenis, one jumper dead on the floor and the other I suspect being the one I rescued from having jumped onto the floor.....eek open topped tanks! The two left then seemed rather sullen which I concluded was down to lack of company so I nipped out to the relatively nearby Pets At Home and picked up 3 "Peppered Corydoras" and now all five of them seem very happy messing around together and hanging by the beach plus the ottocinclus seem to like mixing it up with them as well which has all gone towards giving the tank a more playful feel..

The Parva is now starting to make a bit more of a showing but it is well known for being slooooooow.... In the background is some new Crypt. Nevilli/willisi courtesy of my preferred plant supplier Aqua Essentials who lured me to order with a discount so while I was at it I bought some Easycarbon out of curiosity because I keep reading positive reports on it. This tank and sump excluding hardscape add up to about 80ltr so for now I'm adding a light dose of 1ml per day in the evenings compared to the 1ml per 50ltr recommendation. The BBA is already nearly gone and so this should only help finish it off.
 
Sorry to hear of the losses - hope you can find more of the C Napoenis sometime, were they just a lucky find or had the shop actually ordered them in?

The background looks stunning (I've just plain black :oops: )
 
alto said:
Sorry to hear of the losses - hope you can find more of the C Napoenis sometime, were they just a lucky find or had the shop actually ordered them in?

The background looks stunning (I've just plain black :oops: )
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The C Napoenis came from Maidenhead Aquatics Truro. marked up as C.Manus but the manager thought that was wrong. There may yet be some left...

The background is actually just the white wall behind the tank but there is also a thin flexi strip of LED lights (ebay) stuck to the very top back of the tank which creates a pleasing effect reflecting off the wall. I still love a classic black background though.
 
Nice and crisp scape! well done.

I've never seen an outflow in the bottom of the tank like that although I've thought about it to give my carpets the first dibs on CO2. Never been game enough to try because I don't have a sump but a canister.
 
rebel said:
Nice and crisp scape! well done.

I've never seen an outflow in the bottom of the tank like that although I've thought about it to give my carpets the first dibs on CO2. Never been game enough to try because I don't have a sump but a canister.
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Thanks! Yes it seems to work well for the glosso at least and guarantees a good deep input of fresh CO2 for that and other lower plants as you say. Part of my hope for the low level inflow was that the Corys would spend a fair bit of time swimming into the stream...as it happens they don't do that very much. I'm sure it could work equally well with a canister filter but just requires a bit more effort with priming it. There is a 5mm anti syphon hole just below the water surface on my set up with a short length of clear co2 hose inserted in it to save overflowing the sump in a power outage and also to create some surface circulation.
 
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So a little update. I decided to uproot the glosso on the beach and set about giving the pava a better chance to grow in, so now it can actually be seen!
I've also added more inhabitants. There are now 8 cory napoensis and 3 peppered plus 12 black phantoms and an indeterminate number of shrimp and ottos. The corys have set about redistributing the aquasoil amazonia and whilst I could rake it back to sand I've grown to quite like the effect as is. They are also giving the remaining glosso around the wood a bit of hassle and causing some up-rooting but so be it. I've noticed some Monte Carlo growing as well that must have been left over from the previous scape and I'll see how that develops.

More livestock means more food, more waste maybe ammonia and less need for additional ferts so I've slipped back into the fert method that has served me well for many years. Simply adding KNO3 and traces as and when I feel the need by observing plant growth, algae and surface films. Currently this means a generous pinch of KNO3 post weekend 50% water change and around 20ml of EI Trace mix mid week. I like a lean approach, it seems to work better for me. Surface film is minimal to none for about 5 days of the week but adding traces always seems to increase the film which collects as a white scum in the overflow box, so be it.
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It's been awhile since I posted an update so here we go. Certainly the Parva part of things hasn't really taken off which just highlights the dangers of naming a scape after a plant! I've let the the stem plants grow back in and am now considering how to further adjust the scape more to my liking.

I recently increased the lighting intensity and this does seem to have helped a little with some stronger new growth but still I really don't think the corydoras snuffling around in it are really helping very much either.



A relatively new addition is a small Tunze powerhead sited in the back left hand corner to help with water flow through that densely planted area. It's remarkable how calm it seems in this tank considering how much water is actually circulating. The sump pump is rated to 2000lph and even allowing for the restriction of the CO2 reactor is still outputting around half that and the Tunze is set on full at a supposed 300lph. Algae wise the one continuing minor issue is a certain amount of BBA on the struggling Parva and some old growth Anubias. Reducing traces has certainly improved things (increasing traces didn't) I'm half tempted to put some of the rosy barbs from my Lazy Asian scape in there to munch on it but I doubt the Phantoms would be too happy about that...

The huge nest of Riccia will be getting ousted before long but I'm still just wondering how much further it can grow before it floats away on it's own, or lifts up the wood....

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Alexander Belchenko said:
Nice tank!

What is the name of green delicate stem plant on the last picture?
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Thanks Alexander,

The plant was purchased as Rotala Wallichi but I think it is actually Rotala Nanjenshan.
 
Beautiful stem growth, the red on that rotundifolia is impressive! I was tempted to take some wallichi recently, however took rotala green instead. Yours looks brilliant!
 
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