Dry fertilizers

Well, I finally broke down and ordered a package of dry fertilizer - for my phosphates! I still have a bit of Seachem Nitrate left, but I'm thinking that now that I have pressurized CO2, and if I keep on top of my maintenance and feeding, I shouldn't need to dose N with my livestock levels. I do need K, but I'm dosing that with a K+traces Brightwell product that's worked for me so far, so why fix what's not broken? The green spot algae is getting a bit annoying on the slower-growing plants, so I'd like to knock it down a bit with some added P, and dry ferts are really the most economical. A pound of the stuff should last me approximately forever, I'm hoping.

My angelfish is doing quite well - I'm really pleased with him, which is great for an impulse buy. I don't have a good track record with those, which is why I usually pass on sales unless I've been planning to buy a particular kind of fish for a while already! On the other hand, the two little fry I got from the store I'm probably going to take back - they're way too aggressive with each other, and one of them came out in stripes! Not a rusty by any means. If only I didn't have to special order real mbuna around here, not even the local fish shop is willing to get me good quality fish, I have to order them myself!

But I did find some good prices, shipping included... so here goes another round of shipped fish!

Weekly cleaning

The new arrangement has had a bit of time to settle in - I pulled another few leaves off the ozelot sword there on the left to let a bit more light down onto the crypts underneath. They're not really thick enough to please me, probably due to a combination of too little light, and too little nutrients in the substrate. I added some Flourish root tabs, though, so I'm hoping that they'll grow in a bit more.

I actually harvested a java fern from the far left side and placed it above a root tab in the cichlid tank - the saulosi gave it a few exploratory nibbles but didn't immediately tear it to shreds, so there may be hope that it will be spared the nibbling that's taking a toll on the Amazon sword in that tank! I did find some aragonite coarse-grained sand, and have added a few cupfuls to the cichlid tanks. I'm not used to living in a place with such soft water yet - hardly any scale forms on the equipment compared to what happens at my parents' house. The aragonite is a pain to clean - it's too cold to take a bucket out back and wash the sand out with a hose - but adding it cupful by cupful is probably helping keep the water clear. Even after a dozen rinses, the stuff is still really dusty, but a cupful's-worth doesn't cloud the water for long. At some point I'll have to test the pH and see if it rose!

I haven't added any aragonite to the filter of the planted tank yet; I'd prefer to have dolomite but I'm not sure if any of the garden centers will have a suitable grade in stock. I did end up moving the second nerite snail from the planted tank to the fry grow-out tank.

Snail first aid

I've had two nerite snails in my planted tank for quite some time now, but unfortunately the soft, slightly acidic water has taken its toll on the poor things. My zebra nerite in particular has suffered shell erosion; I hadn't realized how bad it was until I got a good look a couple days ago. So tonight I pulled her out of the tank and applied some superglue to the eroded portions of her shell.

I'll be transferring her to my cichlid fry grow-out tank; the pH in that tank is 7.8, rather than the 6.4 of the planted aquarium. So although there isn't a difference in the GH between those two tanks, at least the water won't be eating away at what's left of the shell.

My other nerite hasn't been in as long, and doesn't seem to be in as bad a shape, so I'm going to see if I can't find a good calcium supplement for my tanks. The Amazon sword is definitely suffering what looks like calcium deficiency, so I don't think bumping the GH up a bit will hurt. (Famous last words. I can hear the algae laughing already!) I need some extra substrate for my main cichlid tank, which means a nice calcium carbonate sand and a few filter bags should take care of all the tanks at once.

Housekeeping and new additions

I don't normally do major aquarium cleanings during the workweek (average time to clean all four tanks: four hours) but since I'm coming off the holidays/midterms crunch there was still a lot to do. The planted tank got a long-overdue filter cleaning, and my bag of Purigen is recharging in its 1:1 bleach and water solution. Predictably now the water flow from the filter is much larger! I also did a major trim - I was getting tired of the layout, some of the plants were outgrowing their spots, etc. For the first time I "mowed" the cardinal plants! Once everything settles in a bit I'll take another photo. I actually removed all but one stem of the Hygrophila difformis - I want the newer stems to fill in the middle instead, and the fast-growing water sprite tends to shade them quite rapidly.

I had ordered and Eheim automatic feeder for the cichlid tank - not sure if I've got it set up quite the way I want it yet, and I need to do some tinkering to make sure food isn't being left on the lip of the tank rim. Of course, now that the fish are being fed every day I'm going to have to be a bit more punctual about their water changes! With the larger tank, it simply takes time, but I think I may do a series of 20-minute WCs bi-weekly for a while. I still have to do the testing, but I suspect nitrates are pretty high in there, and constant feeding is going to mean more nitrate production. I'm also hoping to find some Vallisneria for this tank, since the Amazon sword is not exactly biotope compliant.

In my search of the local chain pet stores, I didn't find any Vals, but I did find what looks like two tiny rusties in the mixed mbuna tank at one shop. They're the perfect size to go in my fry-grow-out tank with the baby acei after they've gone through quarantine. Despite having three of the same chain store in the area, I couldn't find any more than those two! They're on sale for a good price, so I'm hoping to go back and get at least three more at the end of the week when the stores get more livestock delivered. I was also surprised to see them selling fish labeled Cynotilapia afra! If only I didn't already have saulosi, I would have snapped them up right away. But they're blue-barred, and I have enough trouble without courting more by combining two different blue-barred species in the same tank. Some of the afra subgroups are so beautiful... of course, I have substantial doubts as to whether those fish even are afra, since no one at a big box can be trusted to order the right fish from reputable dealers. Oh well. No guarantees on purity when dealing with chain stores, after all. Hopefully I can resist temptation. It would be easier if I could actually get more saulosi locally!

Fish have grudges too

African cichlids have a lot of personality. An excess of it, in fact - the alpha fish of any one species may take a very particular dislike to another individual fish and harass that fish to death. And these aren't even predatory fish! (Ironically, the predatory African cichlids tend to be more easygoing fish, although of course if they spot any fish small enough to fit into their mouths, the little one is history!)

I've had to remove and rehome an acei due to a grudge, and it's looking like I'll have to do the same for one of my cherry red zebras. The dominant fish of the trio simply cannot stand one of the two others at all; I've already had to remove it to quarantine to recover once, and rearranging the rockscape and reintroducing the gamma fish didn't go well. The poor thing hung in the corner and tried to become invisible, which of course didn't work. Within a week its fins have been shredded, again. But as I had already disassembled the quarantine tank for now, I've isolated the poor thing inside a net box in the main tank, where the bully fish can't get to it, and I can give it food without the other fish taking it away. (They're all very frustrated by this.)

The prospect of having to rehome this fish is upsetting, because they were quite expensive to buy; one of the major downfalls of keeping African cichlids. Unfortunately at the time there weren't any juveniles available, so I had to buy adults, which are far more expensive. But the probability of somehow making these fish get along together is pretty much zero. If only I could get them to breed for me, and save some fry, I wouldn't mind it at all! But so far only the acei have been breeding.

Angelfish!

Oh dear, I've done it now - I stopped by the LCS (local chain store) and saw that they had a tank full of juvie angelfish for sale, and there was this one extremely cute black-and-white marbled fish in there... so I bought it! I can think of several reasons why I probably shouldn't have (I have a lot of fish already, I have neon tetras, angelfish get bigger than I was going to limit my fish in this tank to, adult-size-wise) but the cuteness swayed me. This is why it's a bad idea to apply the retail therapy urge to pet stores. I should go buy shoes instead, but they're always more expensive and I can never find any good ones. So it's a new fish! I'm already suffering a bit of designer regret, as the black on this fish will assuredly make it blend in to the background in my tank, but I'm hoping the white marbling will give it enough pop to really make a statement. I should have gone for one of the white ones instead, but they just didn't look as adorable as this one. I have him in quarantine for the next month in anticipation of whatever outbreak of hideous disease this fish is no doubt carrying (actually the tanks there looked pretty good; the store is on a "good" side of town). He seems to be taking everything in stride and doesn't look stressed at all, which is an excellent sign. I might let him off after three weeks if he doesn't start showing any symptoms of parasites or ich.

His body (minus finnage) is about the size of a quarter - way too small to eat any of my precious neons and otos. Hopefully by the time he's grown big enough, he'll be so used to eating pellet food with the rest of the fish that it won't ever occur to him that a neon tetra is a nice snack!

In cichlid news, I have one of the cherry red zebras also in quarantine to recover from excessive fin damage. I'm hoping to bulk her up as well - only the dominant one has put on enough weight after the transfer. I'm hoping to find some more saulosi, so this fish will stay out for a while in anticipation of going back in with a larger group.

I'm afraid I'm too tired/lazy to post pics tonight, and in any case the QT isn't a pretty tank.

Puddles

Last night I got bit by the meddling bug again after reading through a thread discussion on flow, and decided to switch my 75g XP3's position back to paired intake/output. Unfortunately the hoses now sport a Hydor ETH heater, and getting them to play nicely under the tank was difficult. So difficult, it turns out, that I woke up this morning to a moderately-sized puddle on my living room floor. Let's hear it for polyurethane-sealed floors! So after towel-mopping and a quick check of the canister (leak mysteriously not apparent), I went off to work, and came home to another moderately sized puddle on the floor. Now I had time to really investigate, and found that I must not have gotten the quick-release seated correctly, because water was leaking slowly out the power cord hole. Two hours and a major canister cleaning and hose adjusting later, I think I've solved that problem, but now one of the joins on my Hydor is slowly dripping. That should be a lot easier to fix, at least! I'm sure it got a little loose while I was twisting things about. The hose barbs are not very secure, unfortunately.

On the planted side, various stems have come loose after the last trimming and need to be replanted, and the crypts are doing their best to fill in as a carpet - I'm pleased about that, since they were looking terribly sparse for so long. But they seem to have grown their root systems to the point where they're happy now! I ought to give them a Flourish tab or two next time I'm armpit-deep in that tank. I think the crypt spiralis heartily approves of being moved from "under" the Amazon sword to its own spot on the back wall - I haven't seen any more leaves shed from that plant at all since the move. I need to do another drastic H. pinnatifida pruning - I hate having to cut down the large stem that Tex Gal shipped me, but I suspect it's necessary for the plant to recover from the neglect I subjected it to. I'm planning to move some things around a bit to give it its own "patch" to grow in! The ozelot sword is responding well to the harsh pruning I've been giving it - the leaves are coming in thick and fast, and it even appears to be starting a new flower spike. I harvested a baby plant off the end of the first one, although there are still three baby plants on it, those haven't grown any roots yet that I can see. They may need to be touching water before they grow roots, but I don't want to cut them from the parent plant before they've rooted - catch 22.

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!

New babies

Well, my holding female acei spit her fry - one of which swam into the pebble pile and was rescued, one more we spotted hiding near the rocks, but couldn't catch. No telling if there will be any survivors (likely not) in the main tank, unless some fry have gotten sucked into the canister filter. (Quite possible.) I've moved the baby to the 20 long, still inside the net box due to much larger sibling (Filter Baby) already living there. Normally I wouldn't try saving these fry, but I want to rehome my beta acei male (the alpha really chases him around a lot) and hope that the kids will be female so my m/f ratio will get better. 4/1 is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want!

I tried making a fish trap out of a 2L soda bottle but it caught the wrong fish, and the next fish it caught figured out how to bust out, so I need to tape it together a bit more firmly before trying again. I also bought dorky yellow pond gloves to wear during tank maintenance - my skin's been suffering from the constant immersion so this should help a lot.

One thing about aquariums is unless things are going wrong nothing much tends to happen when they're stable... I have some more fish in quarantine for the planted tank but it will be a while before they get moved over.

New plants from Texas

My first foray into hobbyist trading: I bought two new kinds of plants from a fellow Aquatic Plant Central forum user. The buy: Hygrophilia pinnatifida, and a "gold" variety of Anubias barteri nana.

Cladophora

Add this to the list of "things I wish I'd known before starting a planted tank": cladophora algae is impossible to get rid of. It's the cockroach of the planted aquarium world. You get it, your tank is doomed to have it forever.

Well, I guess this just means that for the rest of this tank's existence, I'll be adding "manually remove cladophora algae during water change" to my list of maintenance chores. The nasty stuff is even growing in the canister filter! Guess the indirect sunlight the tank gets is enough to penetrate the tinted XP3 plastic. Perhaps I should tape some black plastic to the filter to stop photosynthesizing organisms like clado from growing in there. The last thing I need is a reservoir of it!

I'm really beginning to hate Java moss. The clado hitchhiked its way into the tank on that, I think; but honestly it could have been from any number of plants, since I didn't do a dip treatment on any of them. I think when I do a new fish purchase (after my hospital tank is cleared out of the current inhabitants) I'll add a rosy barb and amano shrimp to the purchase list - both those critters will nibble on cladophora, where my oto cats, ancistrus, and nerite definitely aren't helping. I can't even get the ancistrus to eat cucumber instead of munching the Amazon swords! Small price to pay for having a cool fish, though. He hasn't done too much damage to the plants, and seems to concentrate on one leaf at a time.

I fiddled with the filter output and managed to set it so that the surface wasn't being circulated properly towards the skimmer, so this morning when I came downstairs the dwarf gourami had started building bubble nests. (Sorry for the lack of photo - I was busy this morning, and I don't think of taking pictures nearly as often as I should!) Much to their dismay I promptly fixed the outflow so that the skimmer will work properly.

On the CO2 front, I feel like my yeast isn't producing as much as it should be, but I am getting a bit of pearling on the swords so it's not as low as I feared. I've decided to get some Flourish Excel from Amazon to add carbon to the tank, which I'll deliver by spot-treating the clado as part of my control strategy. I did some mental math, and if I restrict myself to using 5mL/day (usual maintenance dose), I'll use up my on-order 500mL bottle in about three months. At $10/bottle, it will take five years of dosing at that level before the cost of the Excel will equal the start-up cost of a pressurized CO2 system. Guess who's not going pressurized anytime soon? I have no idea what the next five years will bring (kids, I hope!) but I can imagine not having a planted tank in that time. After all, I'm mostly in this for the fish, and freshwater fish don't require a lot of expensive equipment! I've set up entire aquariums for less than it would cost for a pressurized CO2 system.

The plants are really beginning to fill in - trim-and-replant on the H difformis is the main contributor. I have a few new plants on their way from another hobbyist that I'll need to find space for - another stem plant (H pinnatifada) and another variety of Anubias. I'll probably uproot some of the difformis in the middle for the pinnatifada, possibly moving the driftwood there forward as well for some more background space. Not sure yet where the Anubias gold will go; I'm also keeping half an eye out for another piece of driftwood for the right side of the tank, which would make a good perch for another Anubias.

Current photo, showing the bristlenose's complete disdain for the cucumber:


At least the otos, nerite, and one of the panda cories appreciates it. Even the blue rams will nibble on the cucumber now and then. Maybe the pleco likes it after it's spent a couple days in the tank; if the pattern holds true by tomorrow nothing but the rind and a few floating bits will be left. But I never see him eating it!

Keeping an eye on things

The parasites in the planted tank seem to be gone - but I dosed again just to be sure. The antibiotic food treatment for the other tank will take a lot longer to show results, I suspect. Ironically, removing the largest of the subdominant male acei from the cichlid tank seems to have reduced aggression quite a bit - and my one female is holding again after quite a long time without breeding. I'm a little worried that I may have some parasites in the cichlid tank as well, from the behavior of one of the cherry red zebras; I'll be keeping a close watch on them try to figure out exactly what's distressing the one that's keeping her fins clamped.

Finally, a pic of the cichlids without that ridiculous purple light (properly disposed of at the county dump's HHW recycling facility):


The holding female acei is the purple-with-yellow-fins fish low in the foreground - she seems most comfortable in that spot, which is odd for a holding female. Perhaps all the better hiding spots are taken! The red fish are not quite so red in person, but otherwise the colors are fairly true. All the fish in this tank but the bristlenose pleco are visible in the photo.

Medication works!

I am happy to report that applications of the appropriate medication to both tanks have caused lessening of symptoms in all my fish - the panda cories are much livelier and no longer have visible parasites attached to their fins! The Parasite Guard made my water green for a few hours but that seems to have mostly dissipated. I'm still planning a second dose according to package directions, don't want to end up breeding any resistant colonies of pests. :P I'm also not going to try dosing my K+traces while I'm medicating, I don't know enough to know whether or not they might react together!

I'm finding it interesting that my H. difformis is growing so much differently for me now than when I had a lone T12 bulb above this tank. (Big surprise, right? LOL) Before, it was growing like a tree (see earlier posts), now it thinks it's a ground cover:


I also have a picture of the algae that's mildly bothering me:


Also no problems with the driftwood from the Cozy Clownfish shop, whether that's because it's a piece marketed for aquariums or because I boiled it before putting it in, I'm just glad I don't have to add "strange things growing on newly added driftwood" to my list of concerns.

Why you should quarantine

So: one panda cory died - symptoms varied but quite possibly due to internal parasites. The other panda cories seem to have flukes, an external parasite - and it took me a long, long time to figure that out. Unfortunately Googling "fish disease" is not terribly helpful. "fish parasite" was even less helpful. But I have figured out a product to purchase - which I'm going to have to use on the whole tank, since my QT tank currently has occupants, and I want to make sure all the fish are treated just in case. In the 75 gallon, I'm dealing with an outbreak of septicemia, which I'm treating with antibiotic-laced food. The likely causes in both cases? Addition of non-quarantined new fish. New lesson: do not buy stock from Centreville Aquarium, it's more trouble than it's worth. I've bought a lot of fish from PetSmart that have been healthier than what I've gotten from CA; every "live" thing I've bought from there has given me nothing but endless trouble. The cichlids are a special case; perhaps I should have done more water changes for them right after I added the new fish (strangely, none of them are showing any symptoms of illness) but I figured using Stability would give my already-established bio filter the boost it needed to handle the new load without trouble.

Note to self: quarantine. Every. Time. I wouldn't be having this trouble if I'd grabbed a couple of Tupperware boxes to use as extra quarantine tanks, I certainly have the extra HOB filters for it! I'm quite upset at myself, because I certainly knew better. At least for the cories, this would have solved my problems. I don't think I could have safely quarantined the 7 new cichlids - I don't have THAT many spare filters lying around, and I'd worry that the stress of being stuck in overcrowded boxes after having been shipped from FL would do irreparable damage.

Thankfully so far the infected fish numbers are quite small; three acei and the cories in the 55. Hopefully with increased water changes and the appropriate medication, I won't have any more losses than just the one panda corydoras. I have invested in another net box to help isolate fish; currently the baby acei is protected in one, and an albino corydoras with swim bladder trouble is in another. I'm hoping to get the sick cory to eat some of the antibiotic food. Unfortunately it wants to float.

Blue rams breeding!

Proof that your animal husbandry is up to snuff: finicky species start breeding for you. Without you doing anything special to make it happen!



The female in front of the breeding stone - eggs are visible on the stone below her.

Rearranging hardscape

I also took off the HOB(!) and moved the CO2 diffuser to the other side of the tank so that the bubble stream would be caught in the XP3's output current. The plants also got some trimming!