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,