Death and Cards

The cardinal school in the 29 seems very happy now. I admit I have not counted them to see if everybody lived through the transition. I do feel the tank needs a loach. I've contemplated bringing down the burmese loach, but then he'd lost half of his real estate and the lonely clown would be even lonelier. I don't know what to do upstairs.

In the 55, I found the last congo tetra dead. No tail fin. Obviously the dream team of Bart and Hitler took her out. Poor fish. I think only loaches will be speedy enough to escape, and if not, the loaches can go downstairs. It'll be tight, but they'll live. I do have an outbreak of snails in the 29 that needs work. 

Bart is holding his own against Hilter. Perhaps they remember each other. Perhaps one is male and one female. Perhaps they need a school of tiny dither fish. I don't know. I'm more worried about the yardwork at the moment.

RIP Small Angel

The new, tiny angel (Bart? Did we name him Bart?) didn't last very long. Yesterday I found him dead, tangled up in the rotala. He was missing the tips of a few fins, but I don't know if that happened before or after he died. He was so tiny that I'm not sure he was much threat to Hitler. $4, down the toilet.

The smaller angel, from downstairs (he needs a name; perhaps he shall be Bart, now) is doing fine. He's holding his own and staying out of the way. The tiny one stayed hidden; perhaps stress did him in.

I guess it'll be a 2-angel tank, for the time being. I wouldn't mind a school of dither fish. Rummy nose seem to be sensitive. I love cardinals, but I have them downstairs. I'll have to ponder. I like color.

RIP....Not.

Now that I'm actually looking at the fish in the 29 - for the first time in months - I see that big bitch Bruce the black skirt tetra is gone. Farewell, asshat. You were a real jerk.

The residents of the 29 now include: 4 black skirts, roughly 6 cardinals, the only surviving guppy, and the stunted marbled angel.

Time to beef it up. We need a cardinal school.

November Renovation Again

Since it's the end of November, perhaps it's time I get back into my favorite winter hobby. Because, what would Christmas be without reduced funds because I spent them all on rummy nose tetras?

I'm glad to be getting back into it, though I doubt I'll jump in with the gusto I did last year. (She says.) I'm a little frustrated with the 55, because all of the beautiful, tall plants were munched by the angelfish. Hilter is bad for aquascaping. I need to do a little research, or perhaps try some wisteria again or something. Anything. 

I did a medium prune. I decided it was time to take out that blasted riccia. Curse that stuff. It's messy and it clogged my siphon. I pulled out most of it. It was covering the tops of the lovely Ohio River driftwood I bought last year. The piece on the right is particularly lovely. So I pulled most of the riccia out, trimmed the crypts, and thinned out the scummy-looking anubias leaves. The tiger lotus had two pads removed too. There's also a melon sword (I think) that got a few snips. I left the scarfy-looking rotala, simply because the new angel, Bart, needs a place to hide from Hitler.

Along those lines, I've decided that, when Bart's quarantine is over, the marbled angel in the 29 will go into the 55. He's never grown, and I can find no explanation for why this may be. Except, possibly, that he's stunted. Yikes. So he can go in with the other 2. We'll see how it goes. That'll open up space for just a few more cardinals in the 29. I need more color.

I scraped algae, too, and scrubbed the heaters and cleaned the filter. Then I siphoned and vac'd. Damn riccia made it tough.

anubias, clean and tidy...ish

kempt crypt

tiger lotus haircut

Hitler, wary, with Bart in the background

All trimmed up.

The new betta has been named...wait for it....Nemo. Truly original. I personally like "Rusty", but Ben keeps asking for "Nemo". Sigh. 

Today I took out the riccia I'd transplanted from the 55. It's just asking for a mess. Instead I put in some java moss from the 29. I tested the water and got nothing. Good. And I put in a root tab amongst the dwarf hair grass. And a shot of Excel.

Then, since my hands were dried out and my fingertips pruny, I went down to the 29. It was a royal mess.

If anything, it's a delightful argument for the dirted tank/eco-complete. I haven't had CO2 or Excel in there for 6 months. Look at it. The crypt in the foreground is nuts, and the java ferns and java moss were so entangled that I had to go in with scissors and just start hacking.

hot mess

By the time I was done pruning both the 55 and the 29, I had an entire bucket of leaves. I always feel a little guilty throwing out perfectly good java moss, but what am I going to do with it? Seriously? If I start injecting CO2 again, which I intend to do, I'll have another green hairball on my hands in no time.

And here's how it ended up. I moved things around a bit, with the exception of the crypts, of course. Scraped more algae and did a siphon 'n vac. Didn't have the energy for a filter cleanup.

Add caption

A good day's work!

Redemption

After being directly responsible for the death of a poor little betta, and for the sadness on Andy's face, I braved the 24-degree temps to go to Petco. There were so many little bettas in the store, and I wanted to take them all home.

My favorite betta is the delta tail. Rhaegar was a delta tail. They had no delta tails, but they had a double delta tail. So I chose him. He's lovely. Red and purple and blue. 

Of course, whenever I see ghost shrimp, I have to get a few. Especially $0.49 ghost scrimp. I got three. Thus far, the betta has been curious and the scrimp have been mad. I put in a bit more riccia from the 55-gallon so that they have a place to hide. I've never kept scrimp alive for very long.

Speaking of no luck, I saw a prepackaged bag of dwarf hair grass for $3. I already know from research I could never keep it alive. I've wanted it for years. I'll have to start up the CO2 to keep it alive. What the heck. I bought a new crypt too. You can see it in the background, behind the dhg.

Dwarf hair grass

I also took a chance and got Hilter a partner. A little veiled angel. Black and white. I don't even know if he's the right species. Or how big he'll get. Hitler has eyeballed him with interest but so far, no aggression. So far. 

Back?

It's been over 9 months since I checked in. I suck. I did what I always do, and that's dive into a hobby and then dump it after 4 months. 

The tanks got messy, and I maintained, but didn't put that much effort into them.  All of my panda corydoras downstairs in the 29 died. One night in the 6.6 the filter went off and I didn't realize for quite a while. My mini cories died. Eventually, beautiful Rhaegar died. By this time I was utterly sick of having 4 tanks (what was I thinking?) and moved Jerkface to the 6.6. He was very happy there, and I was very happy to get that 5 gallon out of the window. Jerkface's tank, though, started growing hair algae, and most of the time was a jungly mess with miserable visibility.

The big tank, too, went downhill. The rams died. Of course they did. Rams are too tough. I quit them. I kept the silver angel in the big tank and put his counterpart downstairs. It ended up being a good idea because the silver guy grew huge and the black guy stayed small. Obviously the black one is a dwarf species. In the 55, the angel grew big and mean. I was distracted all summer by my new koi pond (entry to follow, maybe) and didn't notice as, one by one, the fish in the 55 began to disappear. The congo tetras were, I assume, tortured and possible killed. The male had bites on him and then he was gone one day. I had 4 and now have only one lonely female left. The guppies were demolished. My clown loaches, too, disappeared. I'm down to one clown. And the pakistani loach is still there. He seems fine. I don't know if the angel's wrath brought down the inhabitants of the tank, or if there was another problem I was too busy to notice while I played with my koi. Whatever happened, it's now a pretty sad sight.

The plants aren't quite thriving, but they're well established. Tiger lotus have grown well. The wisteria and the rotala were eaten by the angel (who we call Hitler for obvious reasons). He's left the smaller plants alone, thankfully. Things need pruned and divided, and the tank needs an overhaul, too. 

Also, I was pretty good about making monthly CO2 for a while, and then I slacked off. I had a CO2 fail with the final batch in the 29, and none of the tanks have had active CO2 in several months. Again, I suck.

And in the tradition of sucking extra hard, last night as I went to bed, I heard a grinding noise from Jerkface's 6.6. The filter had stopped working properly. Some water was getting through, but there was obviously something clogging the impeller. I tinkered with it and couldn't get it going. Finally I picked up the filter, drained it and held it to the light.

And there was poor little Jerkface, or rather, what remained of him. He'd been sucked into the impeller and chopped to bits. Alive. I think it's the second-worst thing I've ever done, next to putting that nasty botia in the freezer. Thing is, I'd taken off the filter guard because it kept sucking up the sand substrate. The last filter died when it was clogged and then all the mini cories died too. I didn't think this had enough suction to suck up a fish, nor did I think this was even a possibility. When I poked around, I saw that the sweet little guy had been building a bubble next by the outflow, working his little fishy heart out. And then wham. Sucked in and dismembered. Wretchedly.

This morning I woke up with the conviction to revive the tank. It had gone to hell. Algae was rampant. The walls were green and the hair algae was like medusa. I kept the filter material safe in tank water and gutted the rest. The white sand? Had to go. Horrible idea. It looked dirty and disgusting. I'll never choose white sand again. I have a bag of fluorite in the basement, which I rinsed and put in, after a good scrub down. (And let me add that the Petco 6.6's reputation for being easily scratched is true. It doesn't look great.) I filled it up and discarded the swords that were covered in hair algae. I tried doing a bleach dip on them, but was unsuccessful. The red sword could be salvaged. I pinched off all but the remaining 3 leaves. From the 55 I brought two java ferns, a handful of Christmas moss (I think...I've forgotten already what species it actually is; I'll have to read the blog) (pitiful), and a tiny tiger lotus. 

Today is obscenely cold, even for January. It's well below freezing. It's not the best day to go get a new fish, but this week promises to be hectic with Thanksgiving, and I don't want to take the kids. Actually, I tried to get Andy out of his pj's to come pick a new betta, but despite his mild sorrow, he can't be bothered to dress. I can't decide if I'm going to go up there or not. I'm thinking that when I do, I'll also get an angel buddy for Hitler. 

I've neglected the tanks, as I am prone to do. I dive in for 4 months over the winter and then move on to summer gardening and such. Reviving them is fun, but please, somebody, smack me if I ever try to create another tank. I almost didn't redo Jerkface's tank, but Shawn likes it so much and it's quite easy to maintain. I guess we'll see how it goes. I'll try to do an entry on the 29 downstairs, too. It, above all, seems to be thriving despite the neglect.

Edited to add: Ricci fluitans. It's riccia.

Disaster and Disarray

I haven't blogged in a long time. And things haven't been great, either. The main reason I haven't blogged is because everybody has been sick for ages. Today Andy is barfing.

I'm battling ich again. In the big tank. I turned the heat down after about 12 days because the cabomba was looking brown and awful. I know it can't take that kind of heat for too long. And then a few days - maybe a week - later, the spots returned on the loaches. So, oh well. Back up with the heat. It's frustrating.

Meanwhile, my second ram died. The very pretty, very spunky one who was my favorite. I can't remember if I blogged when the first of the three died. Stinks. So I'm left with one and I don't hold out much hope. That's the last time I ever flush $60 down the toilet (literally) again. I might try Bolivian Rams someday, but for now I'm going to stick with angelfish. I'll bring the marbled angel back upstairs as soon as the ich is gone. 

Meanwhile, in terms of plants...I took the sword out of the 29. It was enormous. As you can see in the photo above, I put it next to the smaller sword in the 55. I also took out the melon sword from the 55 and put it in the 6.6. The java moss in the 29 got pretty gross with algae, so I tossed it. And lastly, the tiger lotus bulbs I ordered produced pretty little red leaves. The two I ordered as seedlings didn't fare as well. The upstairs plant died and the downstairs plant looks green. 

In the 29 last month I lost one of my pandas. Damn! Everybody else in there seems healthy, though. The guppy has grown up to be a male. I'll take out one of the 55g guppies and bring him downstairs so I have two in each tank. That is, when the ich is gone. 

Bummers, all.

Ich appeared Wednesday.

I should have done a pwc on the tank on Thursday. The spots were less on the loaches, which means the trophonts were dropping off into the tank. But Ben was so sick and we were at the doctor and the dentist...

This morning I did a 30% water change an vacuumed thoroughly. The spots are gone from the loaches. I'll keep the heat at 86 for another 2 weeks.

Fingers crossed.

Also, I found a dead panda cory this morning. I'm so bummed.

Lastly, my nano diffuser came in the mail. I worry I don't have enough pressure, or that it's too small. I guess we'll see. I really worry about trashing the impeller on my filter so I'd rather diffuse the CO2 that way.

Sh*t! Ich!

I just noticed that my loaches are covered in ich. Dammit all. I can't believe it. Nobody else has it. The angelfish are the only real suspects but they don't have it, yet.

I dosed the tank with Ich Guard, although it wasn't a full dose. Then I put in a third heater and cranked up the temp. I mean, not way up, but slowly I'll creep it.

Lastly I switched the outflow nozzle on the filter to the spray bar to add extra oxygenation to the water. Higher temps and meds will sap the oxygen levels.

If my loaches die I'll be very upset. Ify rams die, I'll be devastated.

Aquascaping x 4

Drat. I've already typed this out once and it was lost.

Okay.

Last night I had a dream I was aquascaping. When I woke up, I was inspired. After doing pwc's on every tank except the 55 (my water bill was $70 this month), I started yanking out the wisteria. I'm tired of it. It's great for cycling a tank and for getting started, especially if you've got low light. But I've got medium-high light, so it grows into a jungle. I've moved past wisteria. In Jerkface's tank I removed the narrow-leafed variety and left the wide-leafed one...

Meanwhile, the 55 looks pretty good. I ripped out the large-leafed wisteria, and moved the cabomba to the far left. I also took out the small melon sword I had on the far right, and I swapped it for the large anubias in the 6.6 that was growing out of the tank. Also, this morning, I took a large amount of Java moss out of the 29 and I spread it all over the driftwood on the far left. It was getting rowdy downstairs.

I continued my herbicide of the hygrophilia difformis downstairs in the 29. It was looking jungly and I want that tank to be well-mannered. I wish the cabomba on the left would stand up in a nice grove, rather than flopping over. I can't figure that out. Why does it do that?

Oh, and there's a panda.

Here is the melon sword that was in the 55g. I moved it to the 6.6 and gave it a root tab. Snelly Snail promptly sat on it, and I hope a little CO2 will beef it up.

The photo is blown out, but here's the 6.6, too. It needs something, but I don't care that much. In this tank I left the wide-leafed wisteria and removed the narrow-leafed variety, as I did in Jerkface's tank.

January Update

Things have slowed down a bit now that I have all of my tanks up and running. I've been doing faithful weekly partial water changes on every tank, and every tank has levels where they should be. Each tank gets Flourish Comp and Flourish Iron on as regular a basis as I can remember. The CO2 I mixed up a few weeks ago is still bubbling in the 29 and in the 6.6. Also, I moved 3 of the snails to the 6.6 to combat the proliferation of algae in there, and they've been doing a good job. I'm now starting to notice algae in the 29.

Anyway, here's what's going on.

The red tiger lotus in the 55 is growing. That's one of the baby plants I got from the guy in NY. Of the four bulbs I got from Thailand, 2 have flowered.

This is a panoramic photo of the 55. It didn't turn out well. The wisteria is pretty jungly, and I've been trying to thin it out and let the cabomba take over.

The Ohio River driftwood, with growing riccia fluitans and surrounding rotala rotundifolia.

The angelfish have been eating my Amazon Sword.

In terms of fish, the Black Skirts have been moved downstairs to the 29 to join their tiny little schoolmates. They've settled in well.

The two angelfish were in the 55g. There's more room up there for an angelfish. As time passed, they were spending more and more time together. I didn't see any evidence of formal pairing off, but they were getting chummy. Which was fine, until I found one of my ($30) rams dying. I didn't see any bites on the ram's body. It could have been anything. However, with that ram's death, the other two rams began bickering. I think I've got two males. And at the same time, the marbled angel started bickering with at least one of the rams. There was some chasing. I was so upset that I lost my ram that I decided to separate the angels before aggression began to fire up and somebody else died. Namely, a $30 ram. I felt kind of bad about separating the angelfish, but I don't think they care. I'll have to keep an eye on Mr. Marbles down in the 29 so he doesn't get too large. If I have to, I'll move him back up.

So, the stock in the 55g:
4 clowns
1 burmese loach
4 congo tetras
2 balloon rams
3 guppies
1 angelfish

And in the 29g:
6 corydoras
8 cardinal tetras
5 black skirts
1 angelfish

I'm an idiot.

It's not "camboba".

It's ca-bomba. Cabomba.

I went to college. Why can't I read?

Inca Snail

Yesterday, despite the insane cold, Ben and I made a Petco run (in his pajamas). Although they didn't have any nerites, I got four inca snails. They're part of the Apple Snail family, and they don't get too big. I put two in the 29g and two in the 6.6g. I don't think they eat hair algae, which is the problem in the 6.6g. I don't know what I'll do about that. I can shorten the light duration to 6 hours, but it seems like an awful waste of a CO2 setup.

I also got a bottle of Prime, a check valve for the 6.6 CO2 setup and 3 airstones. For whatever. I had $15 in PALS coupons so I only paid $4.71 for everything. Nice!

 

I had the following conversation with the stupid guy running the fish area at Petco:

Me: I'm looking for nerites.

LFS Guy: We have some snails, but if you really want algae control we have some of those sucker fish.

Me: Oy. Plecos.

Guy: Yeah.

Me: Yeah, I only have a 55 gallon and they get way too big.

Guy: They do get pretty big. I have a 55 gallon tank at home with a pleco that's half as long as the tank. He's in with four oscars. We're having a dollar per gallon sale if you want a 55 so you can get one. 

The 55 Thrives

I'm really happy with where the 55g has gone in the last four months since I started with plants again.

Yesterday the red tiger lotus seedling came in the mail. Last week I got 4 bulbs from Thailand, and two of them had begun to sprout, but I couldn't say how long it will take them to grow, or if they even will. For $7 I bought two little lotus babies that had 3-4 leaves each. I put the bigger one upstairs. The photos isn't very clear and the leaf, which is lovely, is facing the wrong way, but there it is.

Here's the overall 55g tank shot. I'm thinning out the wisteria on the left as quickly as I can and will hopefully let the camboba take over. Or at least let the other variety of wisteria take over. It's less raggedy-looking.

The ludwigia repens has sent up one stalk in particular that is very tall and very lovely. The tops of the leaves are still greenish but I'm seeing some red underneath as it nears the light. Also, I've added extra Flourish Iron, so maybe that'll help with the reddening process. The rotala rotundifolia certainly reddens as it nears the light, but not enough to make a big difference. That's hopefully where the tiger lotus will help me out with some color.

My red wendtii is looking nice too. I gave it a haircut in the hopes that it will grow horizontally rather than vertically.

The camboba is thriving. As they reach the top I lop them off and replant them. It takes time but it's the most sensible way to thicken my strand.

I've also been lopping-and-replanting the rotala rotundifolia. You can [sort of] see how it gets pinker at the top.

The riccia looks nice, I think, on the driftwood.

It's starting to look like a pretty decent aquascape.

One more shot of the red tiger lotus behind this anubias leaf.

DIY CO2

Bam! Done!

On New Year's Day, I didn't have a lot going on. So when I turned on the light in the 29g, I had to take a photo of this Julii Cory sleeping in the Java Moss.

Then it was time for the CO2. I've waffled on it, but when I had this empty jug of grapefruit juice, I thought it was time. The cap is bigger and the plastic is harder than a Dr. Pepper bottle. It's almost 2 liters. I used the recipe that called for 2 cups sugar, 1/2 tsp yeast and 1 tsp baking soda. But first I had to assemble the thing. It was surprisingly easy now that I'm drill-savvy. I skipped silicone because I made the hole so much smaller than the tubing. Hopefully I don't have leaks, but I won't rule out silicone if I need it.

I added a gas separator, too, in case any sludge should make its way out of the reactor, and I popped an airstone on the end in the tank. It all went really smoothly. I put the reactor into operation around 10:30. When we came back from sledding at 1:30, it was producing bubbles. I'm not quite sure how many bubbles per second it's producing, but they're steady and they're small. The airstone is positioned right under the filter intake, and some of them are going up into it. I hope that the others are small enough that they're still doing what they need to do. I'm leery about trying to put the tube right into the intake because I don't want to damage the intake's plastic. Not sure how I'd get it in there.

the mixture added, ready to go into the tank

in place,