Hi all,
Recently I made a thread on a small 10 litre cube I acquired, with the hopes of somewhat planting it; and perhaps adding some shrimp.
Well needless to say, I had to break the whole thing down last night; and am trying to retrospectively analyse where I went wrong.
To summarise, I layered the bottom of the cube with tropica plant substrate, then a gradient slope of Maui quartz sand.
In the middle was some manzanita wood, with tied on mini Nana anubias, Java moss, and some marsilea carpet plant at the bottom. At the back of the plant was a single staurogyne rubescens (SP?) And a cryptocoryne wisii (SP?)
Anyway, I'd had a small sponge cycling in my other tank, which was inserted after 2 weeks, along with a catappa leaf for some shrimp. Liquid ferts were added once. I'm well aware of cycling Aquariums, but had perhaps foolishly assumed I'd get away with the sponge and leaf, due to adding only 3 red cherries.
After a couple of weeks, I noticed a distinct smell from the tank; as well as a single dead cherry, the others were slow and sluggish.
I noted that the tank received a lot of heat from a nearby radiator, and strong sunlight from the window; which may have had a detrimental effect.
No food was added, just the catappa leaf!
Well that's me back to square one. My rough plan now is to do an anubias only tank, see if I can keep it fresh before considering any live shrimp etc again.
That or I'll try the 20litre cube for more error margin.
Thoughts welcome, trying to learn from this one. Pic below, (originally dwarf hairgrass)
Recently I made a thread on a small 10 litre cube I acquired, with the hopes of somewhat planting it; and perhaps adding some shrimp.
Well needless to say, I had to break the whole thing down last night; and am trying to retrospectively analyse where I went wrong.
To summarise, I layered the bottom of the cube with tropica plant substrate, then a gradient slope of Maui quartz sand.
In the middle was some manzanita wood, with tied on mini Nana anubias, Java moss, and some marsilea carpet plant at the bottom. At the back of the plant was a single staurogyne rubescens (SP?) And a cryptocoryne wisii (SP?)
Anyway, I'd had a small sponge cycling in my other tank, which was inserted after 2 weeks, along with a catappa leaf for some shrimp. Liquid ferts were added once. I'm well aware of cycling Aquariums, but had perhaps foolishly assumed I'd get away with the sponge and leaf, due to adding only 3 red cherries.
After a couple of weeks, I noticed a distinct smell from the tank; as well as a single dead cherry, the others were slow and sluggish.
I noted that the tank received a lot of heat from a nearby radiator, and strong sunlight from the window; which may have had a detrimental effect.
No food was added, just the catappa leaf!
Well that's me back to square one. My rough plan now is to do an anubias only tank, see if I can keep it fresh before considering any live shrimp etc again.
That or I'll try the 20litre cube for more error margin.
Thoughts welcome, trying to learn from this one. Pic below, (originally dwarf hairgrass)
