Two faced tank

[LMuhlen]

I don't have pictures, but there is always something to write about.

Overall, the tank is improving well. It is possibly at its best moment. The reduction in phosphates did not promote the growth of GSA as I feared might happen and the suspicions of chlorosis that I had are no longer present. Possibly the lower phosphates levels improved the iron availability, or the increased Mn dosing did the trick.

This week I did another massive trimming session. I removed meters of wallichii. And to think it all started with a single small sideshoot that survived. In the middle of it all, I found a stem with many branches that had more green/yellow leaves and I think it might be a stem of didiplis that might have also survived from when a colleague gave me some stems a good while ago and I assumed they all died.

The floating plants are getting out of hand. Every week I remove almost all of it, and by the end of the week at least half of the tank is covered. I established that I would leave 4 units of the larger species that I have, but now I reduced it to only 3. During the week, the mother plants produce a lot of daughters and even some granddaughters... This time I've also been merciless with the red root ones, I was being soft on them because they were new, but no more! Only 4 of them will be kept after each maintenance.

The Oldenlandia salzmannii were also banned. There just isn't enough space for plants that I don't like so much. L. inclinata verticillata also only gets to have 2 stems, they are too large and grow too fast.

L. inclinata green is still looking crappy, but still growing fast. It may be improving a little... I'll keep it a while longer before giving up on it. I trimmed it heavily as well this week.

The L. glandulosa got its first trim. I removed the base and replanted the tops. It took a long time and many replantings until it managed to stay there... I think it is in the plecos' highway and I found it floating every morning.

It is curious, but it looks like reducing the ferts made the plants grow even more... My macros batch is going to end soon and I'll remix it even leaner. Still not sure how lean, I'm open to suggestions. Right now it is as follows:

Macro mix, front loaded, weekly:
K - 3 ppm
PO4 - 2.5 ppm
NO3 - 3.13 ppm (0.71 ppm N)

N (Urea) - 2,09 ppm weekly, dosed daily.

I was planning to slowly reduce CO2 as well, and maybe it happened naturally as my needle valve is of the cheap kind and it looks to have lost some flow. I won't mess with it now.

A while ago I added some Bloody Mary shrimps from my shrimp tank, a couple per week, to see how they managed. I added 7 total, but recently I hadn't seen any of them and I feared they all died. During maintenance, however, I found 2 of them, so it is very possible that they are all alive, but hiding. I just bought some Malawa from Sulawesi shrimps and if they do well in my shrimp tank, I'll move some to the main tank as well. Right now, the Bloody Mary experiment is on hold until the colony grows a bit more.

There have been a slight growth of BBA, especially on hardscape. Like I said before, I added a new SAE after I gave away the 3 adults that I had. I sometimes see it battling the BBA... In any case, I'm doing better at cleaning the canister and if I ever get more time, I plan on doing something to clean the substrate a bit. But a few weeks ago I put together a little DIY thingy to turn off the filter for 5 minutes when I press a button positioned in a really accessible place. It has worked great, I was having issues with a lot of the fish food being sucked by the surface skimmer, and since using this device I notice that during my weekly pre-filter maintenance, it is considerably cleaner.

 

[OllieTY]

I put together a little DIY thingy to turn off the filter for 5 minutes when I press a button positioned in a really accessible place. It has worked great, I was having issues with a lot of the fish food being sucked by the surface skimmer, and since using this device I notice that during my weekly pre-filter maintenance, it is considerably cleaner.

I have dreamed of having something like this for many years. Any chance of some sort of guide or advice on how to make something like this?

 

[LMuhlen]

I have dreamed of having something like this for many years. Any chance of some sort of guide or advice on how to make something like this?

Well, the DIY part may be an exaggeration, it was an electronic board thingy that I bought ready. I just did the button part myself, as well as hiding it inside a plastic box which I drilled. And all the wiring...

 

[OllieTY]

I always imagined a filter power cable having something similar to this. A small inline box with a button on, that you can press to pause the filter for 5 minutes to allow for feeding! A very nice idea!

 

[ScareCrow]

@OllieTY This was a very pleasing discovery when using WiFi plugs. You can switch it off from your phone, then set it to restart whenever you want and it will switch back on automatically. I use it every time I feed. It's also easy to setup a schedule in combination with an auto feeder. For example I set the auto feeder to feed at 09:00. At 09:01 I schedule the WiFi plug to switch off the filter and then set another schedule to switch the filter on at 09:30. Stops any food making its way into the filter and I never have to remember to switch it back on.

 

[LMuhlen]

@OllieTY This was a very pleasing discovery when using WiFi plugs. You can switch it off from your phone, then set it to restart whenever you want and it will switch back on automatically. I use it every time I feed. It's also easy to setup a schedule in combination with an auto feeder. For example I set the auto feeder to feed at 09:00. At 09:01 I schedule the WiFi plug to switch off the filter and then set another schedule to switch the filter on at 09:30. Stops any food making its way into the filter and I never have to remember to switch it back on.

When I started researching for this button thing, I got many suggestions to use smart plugs. But I don't want to have to use my phone every time I feed the fishes and the functionality isn't so good with a slightly variable feeding routine. Since I don't use auto feeders, the fishes get food at varying times. The good old real life button, on the other hand, makes it as easy as possible.

A few images:
Suspected Didiplis diandra

Painful to look at L. inclinata green

Lobelia is much bushier nowadays

 

[LMuhlen]

It occured to me that I could look pictures of the Didiplis online and they look nothing like my plant, so... now I don't know what it is.

 

[LMuhlen]

This weekend I performed another very inspired trimming section. Many pinnatifidas and even some anubias were removed. I can now see some parts of the hardscape once again.

Comparing images online, it looks like the plant that was given to me as a Didiplis is actually a Rotala nanjenshan. Whatever the case, after a few months it is now thriving and was incorporated into the layout.

I noticed that it's been a while since I last had to clean the glass. Even though there are some GSA on the glass, it hasn't reached my threshold. So far I consider the reduction of the phosphate dosing to be a success. Next week I'll make a new macros batch and I'll reduce it a little more.

During the water change, I took a picture of my sad bush of Alternathera mini. It is growing slow and steady, and it is very compact. But the leaves are awfully twisted, curled, small... They have been in the tank for many months now and have never evolved past this stage... If anyone has any suggestions, I welcome them.

 

[Hufsa]

During the water change, I took a picture of my sad bush of Alternathera mini. It is growing slow and steady, and it is very compact. But the leaves are awfully twisted, curled, small... They have been in the tank for many months now and have never evolved past this stage... If anyone has any suggestions, I welcome them.

The Alternanthera are said to be picky about traces. Not properly balanced or too high is usually their complaint, but I dont have first hand experience with this plant family.
The people I have seen mention it are all very skilled plant growers, so personally thats where I would start looking if you want your Alternanthera to improve. But as always, keep a firm eye on the holistic view, the tank as a whole system.

 

[_Maq_]

Alternathera mini. It is growing slow and steady, and it is very compact. But the leaves are awfully twisted, curled, small...

This occured in one of my experiments, and I had good reasons to suspect high ratio of potassium v. calcium (1:1). In another tank, where I kept my favourite ratio (1:10) the twisting did not appear.

 

[LMuhlen]

The Alternanthera are said to be picky about traces. Not properly balanced or too high is usually their complaint, but I dont have first hand experience with this plant family.
The people I have seen mention it are all very skilled plant growers, so personally thats where I would start looking if you want your Alternanthera to improve. But as always, keep a firm eye on the holistic view, the tank as a whole system.

Reading plants isn't really my strong suit and micros are a particularly nasty black box to me. This last year I went from dosing the suppliers' recommended micro dosage to not dosing anything except iron, to the current dose, which is 1/6th of what this particular supplier recommends (but that adds proportionally a lot of Mn and Zn) and extra B... Each strategy lasted at least a couple months each and the Alternantheras never showed any particular reaction to anything... But since it is indeed a mini plant, I don't plan to remove it any time soon, so maybe at some point I hit its sweet spot and trigger some decent growth.

This occured in one of my experiments, and I had good reasons to suspect high ratio of potassium v. calcium (1:1). In another tank, where I kept my favourite ratio (1:10) the twisting did not appear.

Originally I used to add a lot of potassium, at some point it was 16ppm if my memory works. A while ago, I reduced it drastically and it is now at 3ppm. Considering my estimated calcium dose of ~6ppm (compared to the entire tank volume), the mass ratio would be 1:2. However, since I use tap water, the actual values could be much different... It is very soft water, at least.

The current dose is as follows. Since I'm about to revisit it for the new batches, suggestions are much welcome.

Macro mix, front loaded, weekly:
K - 3 ppm
PO4 - 2.5 ppm
NO3 - 3.13 ppm (0.71 ppm N)

N (Urea) - 2,09 ppm weekly, dosed daily.

Frontload, weekly, referenced at the changed water volume (50%):
Mg - 3.36 ppm
Ca - 11.84 ppm (assuming that the 3dGH I measure from tap water is calcium)

Micros mix, front loaded, weekly:
Fe - 0.025 ppm
Mn - 0.138 ppm
B - 0.003 ppm
Zn - 0.118 ppm
Cu - 0.003 ppm
Mo - 0.008 ppm

B - 0.09 ppm weekly, front loaded.

Fe EDDHA, roughly 0.1 ppm weekly, front loaded.

Fe gluconate, 0.27 ppm weekly, divided in 3 doses.

 

[_Maq_]

What strikes me at first glance is high phosphates. How did you arrive at that?
I fully admit that phosphorus is prone to losses in poorly soluble compounds. Still, your water is in the soft range, acidic, I suppose...

 

[LMuhlen]

What strikes me at first glance is high phosphates. How did you arrive at that?
I fully admit that phosphorus is prone to losses in poorly soluble compounds. Still, your water is in the soft range, acidic, I suppose...

It was a possibly uninformed attempt at containing a surge of green and black spot algae on the anubias at the first months of this layout. For the longest time it was at 4ppm, but for the last 2 months or so, I reduced it to 2.5ppm and now I plan to bring it further down, aiming at eventually getting it back to a more standard concentration. If no one objects, the next batch will be for 1.5ppm.

 

[JohnCooke]

I've read through all of this thread, and l'm grateful you took the time to chronicle your experiences. Many thanks! It's what makes this Forum so pleasing. Your problem-solving approach does create a slightly misleading air of glass half-full, when in fact the pics of your tank show an enviable display that so many of us can only dream about. Still, that's possibly the inevitable nature of a thoughtful approach to keeping a planted tank going.

Very envious of your local water; here in southern England, because of intensive, rather chemically-based agriculture, my tap water nitrates never fall below 35ppm. As for our high phosphates, the last time I tested for them, the sample climbed out of the test tube and demanded to be returned to the factory where it first saw the light of day.

Still, it suits giant vallis.

Very impressed too, that you can involuntarily breed Corydoras Sterbai. Over here, such Corydoras have become very expensive!

Let me end with a question. I may have read your thread too quickly to be accurate about this, but I can't recall any mention of Octoclinus algae eaters. Did I miss this? Or do you not want to use them? Over here in the UK we often rely on them a good deal, and they have good availability.

 

[LMuhlen]

I've read through all of this thread, and l'm grateful you took the time to chronicle your experiences. Many thanks! It's what makes this Forum so pleasing. Your problem-solving approach does create a slightly misleading air of glass half-full, when in fact the pics of your tank show an enviable display that so many of us can only dream about. Still, that's possibly the inevitable nature of a thoughtful approach to keeping a planted tank going.

Very envious of your local water; here in southern England, because of intensive, rather chemically-based agriculture, my tap water nitrates never fall below 35ppm. As for our high phosphates, the last time I tested for them, the sample climbed out of the test tube and demanded to be returned to the factory where it first saw the light of day.

Still, it suits giant vallis.

Very impressed too, that you can involuntarily breed Corydoras Sterbai. Over here, such Corydoras have become very expensive!

Let me end with a question. I may have read your thread too quickly to be accurate about this, but I can't recall any mention of Octoclinus algae eaters. Did I miss this? Or do you not want to use them? Over here in the UK we often rely on them a good deal, and they have good availability.

Thank you for the kind words! It is true that despite me finding problems that I want to improve, I'm very happy with this tank. It is my best attempt at a planted tank ever. If I had to elect a single thing that I'd like fixed, it would be those nasty black spot algae on my anubias. But since I don't know what the problem is, I'm trying to fix issues with other plants hoping that whatever is wrong with the anubias gets solved as well.

The same can be said for the local water, of course it makes everything easier to have soft water available from the tap, but I still can find something to be worried about. Local regulations are questionable and there is very little transparency. I don't get to have a nice water quality report and when unknown problems with the plants happen, especially the ones that have been ongoing since the beginning, I end up suspecting the water. Do we have fertilizer spills I'm unaware of? Or even worse, maybe there are pesticides, herbicides or any other agricultural products... Our drinking water is filtered through activated carbon and recently with an ozone gizmo as well, but the filter's capacity is too low for tank water changes.

Regarding otocinclus, we do get them here and I do have a few in the tank! They are actually pretty cheap here, I think they are all collected from nature, which is true for most local fishes. They are usually a hit or miss fish, either they die in a few days or weeks, or they live a very long time. Mine usually stay hidden most of the time, but when I rebuilt the layout last year, I was plesently surprised to find 3 of the 4 that I had added 2 years before that. Recently I got some cashback to spend in my LFS and I ended up getting a paratocinclus haroldoi, which is very pretty. I see it every now and then, it looks healthy.

 

[LMuhlen]

A couple of fish news.

Despite making my tank suicide-proof for jumping fishes, or so I thought, I recently lost 2 hatchet fishes only 10 days apart. They both managed to jump inside the surface skimmer... The first one was dead, stuck in the filter's inlet tube, but the second managed to find its way all the way to the canister's prefilter. I found it during regular filter maintenance still alive, but it died later that day. Still, I'm not planning on changing anything, I think it was just really bad luck. I could try to make the surface skimmer jump-proof as well, although that would make maintenance a bit harder. Any opinions?

Second item is a bit more exciting. Ever since my return to the hobby in 2019, I read about the Andinoacara pulcher, or blue acara, and wanted to keep them. Apparently they are a rather common fish abroad, but despite me inquiring all around, I never saw it even once around here. I got information that they hadn't been imported since at least 2019 and even then it was just a handful of fishes for the entire country...

Yesterday it showed up at an importer's list, and I had only until today to make reservations. In the past, I considered making my tank designed to keep them as the main fishes, but since I lost hope of ever getting them, I gave up and made this layout which I realize is not ideal for them... But since I don't know if I'll ever get another chance, I ordered 5 of them. They are supposedly young, at 4~4.5cm only. I don't know if they are wild caught patterned or the electric blue color, but the later is more likely, since it was listed as neon blue acara. The LFS through which I'm buying them said he'll try to get males and females, but there is a possibility that they are too young to know and also that only males are made available. We'll see... I'll get the this Friday and they'll spend some time in the quarantine.

It worries me that there isn't really a lot of open waters for them to be in my tank and that they are supposedly avid diggers. I've had reports that they aren't particularly aggressive, but also that they are... If things go well, when I remake this layout, possibly one year from now, I'll design it with the pulchers in mind as the stars of the tank.

 

[LMuhlen]

The good, the bad and the in-between...

This was the second weekend maintenance after further reducing ferts. I don't have the new values here with me right now, but I'll post them whenever I remember and I'm at home. All in all, GSA is much more controlled. I don't remember when was the last time I cleaned the glass. I'll probably have to do it soon, even without noticeable algae. In my experience, when this happened a long time ago, eventually some non-algae biofilm forms on the glass very slowly and is not noticeable, but when I cleaned with a razor I could see it being removed and got that feeling of seeing the tank better than before. Also, I believe this biofilm probably reduces light reflection on glass, making it weaker near the substrate.

I bought 5 of those blue acara (Andinoacara pulcher) that I mentioned before. They were sent to quarantine and almost immediately burst into a very strong ich infection. I added an air compressor and raised the temperature to ~32ºC (or so the glass thermometer says) like I did in similar situations before and waited. I've had a good success rate treating ich in quarantine like this before, so I wasn't overly worried. The LFS told me that the fish that remained there also developed ich. As it happens, the day I noticed the white spots reduce significantly when checking in the morning, was the day that I returned home from work to find the temperature at 27ºC. The thermostat bugged and wouldn't turn on... I fiddled with it and eventually it started working again. The next day, the ich infection came back with full force. It seems to have happened in the most unfortunate time in the ich cycle, the temperature lowered just when the parasites were ready to set on the fish again. One of the fishes died a few days later.

The remaining 4 fishes look well, they eat as if there were no tomorrow, but so did the one that died. Today I noticed the infection to have greatly reduced in all of them, so hopefully things will progress this time.

Having said that, they are of the "electric blue" variety, very pretty. They look like ramirezi, since they are still small. I'm very excited with them. The LFS guy said that they may be hybrids and possibly not fertile, but they only know of a few people who have kept them in the past, like I said they are very rare in Brazil, for some reason.

On the plants side, these last 2 weekends I didn't have a lot of time for the trimming section that I was due, so I did half and half. Things were slightly out of control with the stem plants, I probably shouldn't have let it reach that point. The last plant to be trimmed was the wallichii and, out of curiosity, after pulling most of the stems out, replanting the tops and discarding the rest, I measured the discarded bits. I ended up discading 5.3m of wallichii, which to me sounded like a lot.

There is something concerning me. I noticed that during these last 2~3 weeks, the nymphaea constantly lost leaves, I would find a floating leaf with the stem melted maybe every 3 days. Normally I have to trim a lot of leaves during maintenance, so the plant is still looking fine overall, very dense. It is even looking prettier, the leaves are not growing as large as before, which is a good thing for the layout. I was working under the assumption that the bush is made of many plants and maybe one of them was dying for some reason, while the others were fine.

But then I started finding some half leaves of the crypto balansae floating around. Again, the balansae has returned to being too large for this tank, after moving them a while back, so it is not a problem to have it lose some leaves.

Then during maintenance this Sunday, I noticed that the Echinodorus parviflorus is in a bad shape, and this took me by surprise. This plant had been slow and steadily growing and was a perfect example of a plant that gave me nothing to worry about all this time. I mentioned that a while ago it started sending out those flower stems, four in total, and put out a bunch of plantlets. Some of them I gave to a few colleagues and I trimmed 2 of the stems. Now all the central leaves, the newest generation, melted. The plant is looking like my partially bald head. The older leaves look OK, but it looks like the plant will die soon if it doesn't put out healthy new leaves.

Adding up these 3 issues, all with some of the largest plants in the tank, now I'm worried that something is wrong. Maybe the flower stems were the first sign that something was wrong with the parviflorus? Or maybe they took too much of the plant's resources? Maybe the plants didn't like the leaner regime? If it were only the parviflorus, I could blame the overgrown stem plants shaddowing it a bit when I postponed trimming them, but the other plants don't have this problem.

We also had a bit of a massive heat wave around here, but the tank temperature never raised above 28ºC, which has always been a normal scenario around here.

And to make justice for the otos and the haroldoi, here is a couple of pictures that I managed to take.

 

[LMuhlen]

I forgot to mention that the trident microssorum crashed again... I had established that I would often dedicate some time on water changes to clean the roots and see it this would prevent the crashes, but I confess that I haven't been very diligent, so I can't say if this procedure relates to the crashing at all... anyways, I cleaned the roots last week and I'll try to keep them clean. At least, it has always grown back after the previous crashes, so I'm not too worried.

 

[LMuhlen]

New macros regime, not so new now that it's been 1 month, that I forgot to update.

K - 2.5 ppm (down from 3 ppm)
NO3 - 3 ppm
PO4 - 1.5 ppm (down from 2.5 ppm)
Urea - 2.84 ppm
Total N - 2 ppm (down from 2.8 ppm)

The Echinodorus parviflorus has a new leaf, hopefully it grows normally and it stops melting.

Blue acara quarantine is going poorly... For some reason, they aren't recovering from ich and one more died, I'm down to 3... I started a more aggressive treatment with salt, methylene blue and malachite green, as per the LFS instructions, keeping the temperature at 31ºC.

 

[LMuhlen]

Quarantine took a turn for the better. The ich seems to be gone after the treatment and I already reduced the temperature to close to the main tank temperature over the last 3 days. I'll keep them there for at least 10 more days, but I intent to not add any more salt and slowly reduce its concentration with the regular water changes.

The quarantine tank itself, on the other hand, is looking awful. It is a tank that doubles as a plant infirmary / storage / experimentation. If I'm being honest, the plants weren't all that great even before this quarantine, but after this season at temperature at 31~33°C, plus the salt at 2g/L, plus the medication which included some sort of copper salt, a few days without light or at reduced light and with the yeast CO2 basically forgotten since everything had gone to sheit anyways... plants are at an all time low. I'm considering building a proper quarantine now, or giving up on the plants...

Inspired by recent posts in this forum, considering this is a small cichlid imported from who knows where and that they look like they have a slightly flattened tummy, I decided to add a single dose of levamisole HCl to the treatment and observe, before moving them to the main tank. I ordered a small 30ml dose meant for injection on cattle, which I imagine will work fine. The delivery was more expensive than the medicine itself and it should arrive in 10 days. Considering the recommended dosage of 2ppm of levamisole (without the HCl, which adds ~20% weight) and that the one I bought is a 7.5% solution, my 40L tank should need roughly 1.2ml only. Confirm?


Back to the main tank, yesterday some switch clicked in my head and I decided that the tank is too crowded with plants. I've gone through a long self-analysis session asking myself why do I insist in collecting the plants that I have and trying to keep them going even if I don't want them anymore, thinking about the future uses I may have. Most of my plants are so cheap and so readily available in the local market that there just isn't a point in sacrificing my tanks just to keep a sample of each one of them. There is a point to be had in the sense that I found that some plants were somewhat hard to adapt to my tank conditions, but even then... not worth the effort to keep them.

At a first moment, this means that I got rid of the L. inclinata green. If was still looking kind of bad, had no place in the layout and had the terrible habit of sprinting to the surface and cluttering it. I noticed that some of the side shoots near the surface were looking good, so maybe it just needs more light than what my system provides. Gone. I also decided to completely remove the bolbitis. It has turned into a monster. This should happen during the next maintenance. I really like the plant, but it is cluttering half the tank and also throwing out emmersed shoots all the time. When I moved the balansaes to the center, they sort of took the role of covering that area, keeping it more shaded. With both plants in there, there is more plant than water in that region. The mysterious Rotala najenshan, which appeared uninvited and was dormant for a long time, is also going to the trash can. Now that it is happy, it is growing too much. Again, uninvited.

After these changes, I'll reevaluate.