Shrimps!

A week or so ago I added three amano shrimp to this tank, but didn't see carapace nor antenna of them afterward, so I was thinking that they got eaten by the other tank denizens. Today I was pleasantly surprised to find two of them chilling on the filter outtake after a water change! I'm happy to know that at least those two made it, and it gives me hope that the third is hanging around somewhere I just can't see, too.

The other piece of news about this tank is that I'm thinking I'll make an effort to more consistently clean the filter sponges. Planted tanks are huge waste producers, and I don't have the "full system" - sand doesn't do much for you in waste-recycling capacity. I may have to pick up some laterite and seed the substrate with it as an informal experiment.

On the cichlid front, I managed to use the fish trap to catch the socolofi! The clever little nuisance was so wary of going in to get the tasty treat that I had to leave it in the tank overnight, and he even managed to escape the first time I went to grab it! But then I managed to get it out with him in it, so now he and the bullied acei are ready to be rehomed. Hopefully the community will be better for those two fishes' absence - the male saulosi has already colored up quite strongly! That particular fish was just too aggressive and territorial for my setup. Now I just need some more saulosi females, I need some more yellow to balance out all the orange from the red zebras.

Pleco grotto

This corner never comes out well in full tank shots, since it's shadowed by the ozelot. I picked up this nice piece of driftwood from my LFS, to give my starlight bristlenose someplace to sleep! This keeps him from trying to dig his own spot somewhere I don't want him to. A lot of other fish like to swim through the tunnel when they can! The craggy surface proved the perfect place to glue down some java fern - eventually the wood should be nearly completely cloaked by the leaves. They would probably grow a lot faster if I pruned the ozelot back more often!

DIY lid

So on my 20L fry grow-out tank, I mounted the HOB filter on the side, rather than on the back of the tank. The main reason for doing it this way is to encourage a tank-long flow pattern; the full length of the 20L water column wouldn't be stirred very well by a single back-mounted HOB. And since this tank is on the bottom of my 55 stand, it's far easier to access the filter if it's on the side rather than the back. But that means that all the commercial tank tops won't fit - they're all configured for back-mounted hardware. Enter the wisdom of the internet: the DIY side-opening lid, constructed from a piece of plastic molding and your choice of clear flat stuff from Lowe's. I ended up going with acrylic - I would have preferred polycarbonate (Lexan) but that stuff's more expensive, and unfortunately it looked like Lowe's was out of a lot of their stock options when I went shopping, so in order to "waste" the least amount of material when I got the panels cut, I was pretty much stuck with the Duraplex. It's a little thinner than would be optimal, I suspect, but as long as I don't try to rest things on it, it should hold just fine. For added stability one could glue down the tracks, but that also means you'll have a hard time getting the thing off if you need to, so that's right out.


Oh yeah, I also added a thin layer of sand and some rock hiding places, since the fry are from two different batches and the little ones need hiding places from the big one! Half an hour after install, you can see the lid trapping humidity - hopefully this will drastically cut down on water loss through evaporation this winter.


Now all I have to do is figure out a background for this tank...

Pruning

Did some pruning this week, while doing water changes on the 75 and the 10g quarantine. I ended up taking out one on the Amazon sword plants and putting it in the 75! That tank gets a little indirect sunlight from north-facing windows, and it has a T8 and a T12 for lighting. I gave the transplanted sword a good pruning and tucked a Flourish root tab under it, but that's all the TLC it will be getting. I'm hoping that as the only plant in a tank full of fish, there'll be enough nutrients with just the root tab to sustain it. Since African cichlids are diggers, it's not practical to plant a tank with them. Everyone liked the new look - the large plant softens the barren look of the rock "reef" and makes the colors really pop. Barring a few exploratory nibbles it looks like the fish will coexist pretty well!

While trying to adjust to a new work schedule, I ended up not adding the fertilizer to the planted tank. Most of the plants did okay, but not the H. pinnatifida (large serrated leaves, center background) - major potassium deficiency showed up. Hopefully properly dosing the tank in the morning will help it come back! I don't want to lose this plant, since I got it from another aquatic gardener. In the meantime, the java fern was busy reproducing, so I'm hoping the little plantlets will eventually grow into a huge, awesome mass for me.

Three acei fry now live in the 20 long underneath the planted tank - with a 13" base, it's a perfect size to go under the 55g on the same stand. That gives me more options, since the 10g is too small to comfortably grow out those fish, and I need the 10g for quarantine! Although the second-largest acei male is still there - I may trade him in to a nearby store (only one that gives you anything for trade-ins, although I really wish the closer store would give something for trade-ins, their quality is a lot better!). He's a lovely fish, but the Tank Boss really hates him. Bossfish is fairly timid when observed by people - but he comes out just to harass this smaller fish if they're together in the same tank. It's a shame, but they just don't get along. Tiny McTinyfish is actually at least two and a half inches now - pretty big! I think he's about three years old - slow grower due to competition for food from his parents, no doubt.

Speaking of cichlids and personalities, my German blue ram male divorced the female to pair up with the golden morph female! I dislike this outcome, since I want to eventually have two pairs, one the classic color and one the gold morph. I tried getting another gold ram, but he was a new fish at the store and didn't thrive - a few weeks later I found him floating. Last week I spotted another one - I may end up going for that one and, if I can catch the female, quarantining them together to see if she might not prefer a male her own color. This sort of thing is why experts recommend buying juvies and letting them pair up naturally, but I haven't seen a source locally. What's even more a shame, is that the German blue female gets a washed-out look to her colors when nearby the male now - she had such beautiful color before. Definitely need to adjust things there.

The baby plants on the ozelot sword plant's flower stalk haven't put roots out yet, but when they do I'm thinking of selling them to other hobbyists, and maybe seeing if I can't keep one as a houseplant! As far as I know, the Echidnodorus species can live both immersed and emmersed, thanks to the seasonal flooding of the Amazon river. The plant is definitely oversized for my aquarium - a 200+ gallon would be more to scale, or an outdoor pond during the summer!

The dwarf gouramis are fighting with each other again - I suspect the pruning and rearranging has altered the desirability of the tank territories and now they're duking it out for the best spot.

Apologies!

Well, things got busy at work and I didn't have much time or enthusiasm for updating. The tanks themselves got neglected for a while, too. Things didn't go too badly - more algae as expected, but not plague levels. The Amazon swords started developing white patches in addition to algae breakouts, and the Hygrophilia pinnatifida really suffered from potassium deficiency. The water sprite got some pinholes as well but not to the same extent. The E. "ozelot" actually grew a flower stalk and has started putting out baby emmersed plants on it. When I finally did get around to the maintenance on the planted tank, I ended up pruning about a gallon-bucket's worth of greenery out of the tank. More needs to be taken out too, though I'm not sure yet how much.

The fish seem to be doing okay - the checkerboard barbs are especially frisky tonight. I suspect the female may be ready to spawn, from the way the two males are acting. The local fish shop actually has some checkerboard barbs for sale, but I decided not to get any, though I'll keep the three I have.

I've also installed two Hydor ETH inline heaters on my two big tanks - surprisingly easy to do and I'm pleased with them so far. No leaks!