About to Kick off the 75.

[ree123]

Thank you for the advice.

[spoot]

Cleaned the tank a bit tonight. My micro sword has been melting a bit. The crypts surprisingly have not melted at all. Started getting some staghorn algae so added a cleanup crew consisting of 6 Amano Shrimp a couple dozen MTS and 1 Nerite Snail. Finally decided on a stocking list. LFS is ordering the fish as he can find em and will hold them and QT for a couple of weeks for me. Gonna go with:

3x Pearl Gourami
10x Serpae Tetra
10x Black Phantom Tetra
10x Emperor Tetra
8x Bandit Cory
3x Clown Pleco
12x Amano Shrimp

Here are some updated pics. The water is cloudy due to me disturbing the substrate picking off dead micro sword leaves and little bits of Val that had melted off.

[charden]

Looking good! Are you getting your fish from Exotic Tropicals?

[spoot]

Yea, been doing business with them for years.

[charden]

I used to go up there alot when I would work up there. Really nice guys

[plecoman]

That's a nice looking tank! The wood and plants look awesome!

[spoot]

New pics! This is getting dial-up deadly. Anywho, lots of new growth on plants this week. As you can see, my red tiger lotus bulb has indeed took off. I'm getting some runners on the sides of my jungle val, and the micro chain sword. The salvinia natans floating is working on my bio-film a bit, and is also splitting out new plants with green roots. Crypts never did melt away and now have started growing more, and the cleaning crew has removed the bit of BBA I had on my flame moss and it's now reaching for the lights. Still waiting for it to attach to the wood and spread a bit though. I'm trying to get the flow out of my magnum to keep all of my salvinia over to the right hand side (above the black slate) and if I can get that done, I'm going to get some anubias natans on the slate asap. Still waiting for some of the fish to come in. He has a shipment of Serpae Tetras and a couple of good looking female pearl gouramis now. I dunno if I can keep going up there and seeing those while holding off much longer.

[spoot]

Here are a couple of pics I got today after adding the last of my stock. My salvinia natans up top is getting out of hand, about to have to scoop and throw some of it. Tiger Lotus went waaaay better than expected. I'm getting some lil tufts of hair algae in the substrate, these started popping up when I increased the photo period from 2x5hrs to 2x6hrs... to try to kill em off I've went back to 2x4hrs. No deaths yet, which I was really afraid of due to the instability of using fresh soil that hasn't been mineralized or stabilized. Plant growth is pretty good as you can see... the only then I'm concerned about now is the leaves on my sword aren't growing like I had hoped, and my microsword isn't spreading much at all anymore. It may be possible that the salvinia is just soaking up too many nutrients.

[bamaplants]

give you sword an iron source.. rusty old nail works great or gelatin capsules filled with red clay next to the roots.. this always helps swords.. they will grow in virtually no light if they have iron.. slight exaggeration but not too far.. LOL

[spoot]

The soil I have in there I mixed about 2lbs of red clay in with. It should have some good iron in it. If it doesn't improve I'll try the nail or get some more clay and make a ball under it.

Also, another question if you will... the red tiger lotus has now hit the surface with one leaf, and it looks like will have 2 more up there by the weekend. Should I trim those off? I know some sword, and other aquatic plants will die off the submerged leaves when they hit the surface. Definitely don't want that to happen with this guy, but I do like the look of the lily pads up there.

PS - I hate that I missed the swap meet. That was the 9yr wedding anniversary weekend though and we were on the other side of TN. Hopefully I won't be busy in Oct when the next one rolls around.

[bamaplants]

it is kinda up to you.. when the leaves hit the surface the plant will send more leaves to the surface and they will go fast.. if you want more leaves / a bushier look underwater remove the floating leaves.. if you however do not mind minimal leaves underwater as compared to the floaters leave them be... It may well bloom for you if the leaves make it to the surface and are allowed to stay.

[bamaplants]

OHH AND... the clay proportion you have is good but honestly not enough to make a sword HAPPY. a rusty nail close to the roots or some additional clay beside beneath roots will make a difference.

and by no means knocking you.. Looks very good and plants are looking good overall for sure.. Swords are just iron sponges and without it the don't get as robust as they should.

[spoot]

Thanks for the advice. Will see how things play out of the next couple of weeks and give the clay boost a shot. With the tank already having so much iron in the substrate I'm a bit worried about causing a green hair algae outbreak.

[bamaplants]

run your lights in 2 hour intervals for total duration as the same.. 2 hours on 2 hours off.. this will coincide with your plants photosynthetic cycle and allow the plants to way out compete the algae for light and available nutrients

[spoot]

Update.

No pics this week, but a video instead. Sorry for the poor quality but was taken with a Droid. Not the best camera, and I'm not the best cameraman on top of that.

I can't get the video to embed properly. Here's a link:


Recent Changes:
I'm having to start a fight with some staghorn/hair algae. I started off by removing 2 of my bulbs and going from a split 10 photo period to a straight 8. That hadn't helped and I started getting some growth on the top of my driftwood. So now I'm running a straight 6. Will see how it does after a week. If that doesn't help, then I'm gonna go with intervals. I don't like doing them because it can induce stress to the fish (or so I've read), but I also can't have a tank full of hair algae. I could tolerate the bits and pieces of it in my substrate, but now that it's getting on the wood, that's a bigger problem. It's pretty difficult to remove from it for some reason. Also I have had a few strands of staghorn hit some of my val leaves. I trimmed them off and it hasn't came back yet. Since I'm only running a Magnum 350 for filtration in the tank, I'm wondering if it may be a water current issue as well. I have an Eheim 2213 I may set up on the opposite side of the tank to try to get some more current going. Either that or I will get one of those wave maker fans and put in the back corner behind my driftwood. Whatever is causing the problem, I gotta figure it out quick, or this stuff is going to cover the wood within a few weeks time.

I decided to remove all of my flame moss. I'm horrible with mosses. I don't get them enough time, or I am putting them in there incorrectly. The bottom of the clumps where I am expecting it to attach always browns out and dies and never attaches. I may be planting them too thick initially I guess. I dunno.

A few of the longer and more established Val leaves have melted. I assume it has to do with me scaling back my lights as mentioned above. The vals are still sending out runners like crazy so I think the plants are fine as a whole. Actually the runners are getting a bit troublesome. I knew they would send off the runners, I just didn't expect this many. The crypt under my driftwood is almost completely hidden. Problem is the vals are rooted so deep any attempt to remove them is going to make a huge mess with my dirt. I may wind up having to trim them off at the substrate level and push what's left down in the substrate to light starve it. Don't know if this would be a permanent solution or not though.

The sword is still kind of "eh". While going through some of my stuff, I found some old API root tabs. I took 2 of them and pushed them down in the root system to give at least a little bit of iron. I have some clay here, and I honestly don't know why I haven't balled it and put in the roots as BamaPlants suggested. Laziness? Not wanting to get clay all over my hands again? Easily distracted? Probably all of the above. Rest assured, if in one more month the sword hasn't produced much more I'm going to do the clay or a nail.

The tiger lotus, as you can see in the video, is very impressive. I wound up trimming off the runners that hit the surface though. They kept getting tangled and twisted in each other and flipping the leaves over upside down. I decided I like the bushy look more, and the huge leaves growing down close to the bottom also. I was not expecting much out of this plant when I saw that %*#@ bulb I got from my order since I had bad luck with them in the past. Now I wish I had placed it somewhere else. Too late for that nonsense with as massive as it is. There's a root from it I can see on the glass a good 6" from where the bulb was, so I can only imagine the root system under that thing. I had a nice lil stack of slate behind where the bulb is that is completely hidden now. Next water change I'm considering removing it and getting a larger crypt to put back there. I may leave the spot empty in hopes my crypt wendtiis grow in the area since they are sending off runners as well.

I cannot keep the salvinia under control without huge removals every week. I have already gave away a pair of one gallon bags full of the stuff. After a weeks time it will cover 60% of the surface of my tank. The only problem I have with it covering that much area is it makes the tank look slightly dirty with the light shining through it, and the roots get picked at by my tetras and wind up floating around all over the place, which is another reason I'm considering adding more filtration.

The tank is almost fully stocked. I say almost because I had a few losses this week. I got the last 6 of my black emperors and 3 of them didn't make it 24 hours. Not sure what happened. I dripped them for 5 hours the same as I do all my new arrivals, they were eating that night with the rest of the gang, but the next AM they were dead. I have one large male that seems to be the boss of the tank, it may be possible he bullied them, but I don't think he could have killed all 3 in one night. The bodies also didn't appear to be banged up. Other than that, one of my Gouramis has a problem with her swim bladder, or is injured in some way I can't figure out. She cannot orient her self and swim correctly. Constantly falling over on her side, or belly up and flipping back over. This is something else that happened very suddenly. I fed the fish at 1630, left for work with all of them eating at 1645, and my wife called at 1845 to tell me what was going on with her. The wife netted her and put her in my drip bucket for the night, and that AM I set her up in a 10G with some aquarium salt. It's been 6 days and she's not showing improvement. As mucha s I hate it, I may have to euthanize her. She still eats when and if she can get to the food, but is constantly struggling to right herself. The only other cause I can fathom is instead of she, it's an immature he and my mature male chased him into the glass or caused injury some other way. This one had been getting chased a bit, but nothing major from what I could tell. Maybe it went major between the time I left and Melanie noticed the problem? I dunno. All the other fish appear to be doing fine with the exception of my serpaes being shy when they aren't feeding. I'm going to increase the size of the school to see if that helps.

Current Stocking:
9 Serpae Tetra
9 Black Emeperor Tetra
8 Bandit Cories
2 Pearl Gouramis
3 Clown Plecos
10 Amano Shrimp

Stocking Changes Planned:
3-6 More Serpae Tetras
May replace the 3 Emps that I lost. Doubtful. School seems good @ 9.
Will not be replacing the Pearl. The 2 I have in the tank get along fine and don't want to mess that up.