Scott's Planted Aquarium

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Plant growth continues, but is becoming erratic.  Some plants, like the bacopa just to the left of the pennywort, and the pennywort itself are still growing at a tremendous rate.  The other bacopa to the right of the pennywort isn't growing as fast, but is still showing some activity.  The red "Mystery Plant" on the far right is expanding rapidly, throwing out multiple leaves and the existing leaves are getting very large.  I'm really starting to wish I had a better digital camera, because these pictures really aren't doing the tank justice at all...  Of course - you can't see what a scourge the algae has become, either...  The little banana plants are putting out great big leaves, too. 

On the other hand, the sword on the far left is still "in stasis" apparently - the Java Fern (between the two 'rocks' on the left) isn't doing much, the Wisteria behind the stump has ground to a halt, and the stuff I added behind the 'rock' on the right hasn't done much of anything since I planted it.   The frilly thing on the far right also seems to be just sitting there.  All these plants seems to be healthy - except for the little brown holes in their leaves that my reading tells me are a result of the high nitrate levels.  They just aren't growing.  I picked up some Jungle Labs Fertilizer and Water Conditioner at the pet store tonight.  That contains potassium and iron as well as some water conditioners that may help things.  I'm using plant fertilizer that provides some potassium and nitrogen (which may be part of my Nitrate problem) and I've got Laterite (a type of iron-bearing clay gravel) mixed into my gravel bed - but I think that I'm not getting enough Iron into the water for the plants. So - I plan to try this stuff.  The bottle I've got will treat the tank four times;  I'll add some after each of the next four water changes I do.  Hopefully, this will perk up the plants enough for them to start drawing down the nitrates naturally.  Between that, and the water changes - maybe I'll be able to get the nitrate problem under control.   Sounds good in theory, anyway.

The little angelfish I added last week are happily scooting around the aquarium - picking at the brown algae, picking at the gravel for tidbits, checking everything out.  They seem to be growing bigger - but they were awfully small to start with, and should be growing fast at this stage.  They're showing absolutely gorgeous color.  One of them is a classic vertically striped angel, and his stripes are just inky black - generally a sign that the fish is happy in it's environment.  The mottled and marbled angels are also showing very striking color. so everyone seems to be very happy.  The gold barbs are positively glowing with color - I'm very glad I decided to try a small group of them.  If I could just get the tank stabilized biologically, I'd like to add one more small group of fish - preferably some cardinal tetras.  Cardinals are smaller fish - but they are very brighly colored, and they love to hide out amongst the leaves of plants - great fish for a planted aquarium.   I'd also like to add about four more clown loaches.  Clown loaches are part of the tank cleaning crew (along with the Otocinculus, Plecostomi, and Coridoras), and they tend to be happier in a small group of four to ten fish.

Adding the Bio-Wheel Pro 60 last week seemed to help the tank's haziness somewhat, which tells me that I was probably correct;  I have exceeded the biological capacity of the filters I had installed.   I was able to talk a local pet store out of another identical Bio-Wheel Pro 60 at a pretty good discount tonight (I still couldn't really afford it, but did it anyway.   Oh well - Peanut Butter Sandwiches for a while, I guess.) and I'll install that tomorrow, after I pick up a t-junction for the hoses.  I'll run both of the Pro 60s off the H.O.T. Magnum 250, and I'll take out the old Whisper WDF 4000, which I think was just simply overmatched.  The HOT Magnum should be able to provide enough water flow to run the two BWP60s without problems.  Right now, it's running a small splitter that dumps about half it's outflow to the tank directly, and the other half to the existing BWP60.   I'll just take the splitter off and run all the outflow into the BWP60s.  That will also cut down on the current in the tank.

I've been very pleased with the Bio-Wheel Pro 60 over all - they don't create nearly as much surface agitation as I was afraid they would.   Remember that surface agitation is "bad" for a planted tank, because it removes CO2 from the water.  I'm planning to get a few pieces of loose filter foam and stick them into the fronts of the BWP60s, which should pretty much stop even what little surface agitation is being created. 

Things got moved around the tank to put in the BWP60 - and I'll have to move more things around this weekend.  Having that overflow siphon that goes down the basement drain has made making all these water changes much easier.   I can't believe what a difference that makes.   For anything less than about a 30% change, I just haul buckets of water from the kitchen sink.  Being able to just pour the water in without having to haul equal amounts of water away has been very handy indeed.

For those who may be curious - I thought I'd take a full picture of the big aquarium.  This shows the stained glass display above it.   The stained glass belongs to my roommate - it was given to him as a gift last fall.   This winter I contrapted a lit shadowbox for it, and we hung it above the big aquarium.

Here's a closeup of the Stained Glass.  Again - I really, really wish I had a better digital camera, as this depressingly cruddy image just does not do this piece justice.  This piece is available online.

And - just to show that I'm not the only one with a fish fixation - here's a picture of my roommate's tank.  It's an old 55 gallon that we dredged out of my basement so he could mess around with it.  With my help, he set it up as a coldwater goldfish tank, and it's doing pretty well.  The water is crystal clear.  He's got about eight good-sized fish in it, and a couple of apple snails who are fighting valiantly against the algae in his tank.  He's also kind of a tank clutterhound, hence the plastic plants and other accoutrements.

I had never done goldfish before - so it's been an interesting tank to have around. 

* Notes on my comments about fish from Wal-Mart:  I have nothing against Wal-Mart in particular - and I can't say that my experience with Wal-Mart fish is typical.  But - generally - any fish I have purchased from a Wal-Mart store has proven to be in poor health however pretty they may look, and many die soon after I aquire them - in some cases infecting one or more of the other fish in my tank with something-or-other.  (Yes, that's my fault for not quarantining the fish before introducing them to my main tank.)  I do not attribute this to any specific problem with Wal-Mart per se - I just think that they have too many people who have too many duties to really keep good care of their fish stock.   There's usually one or two employees who have some fishkeeping experience who will tend to gravitate to the tropical fish displays and attempt to provide some sort of ongoing care, as well as providing advice to customers as much as they can.  And Wal-Mart managers, as often as not, will even try to support those employees efforts - allowing those employees more time in that department, and so forth.  But in any given Wal-Mart these employees are usually one or two out of 50 to 200 or more people, and there's only so much they can do.  Stocking standard require that the tanks be kept loaded up to their absolute capacity, and the various employees regular duties mean that any dead fish aren't always taken out before they begin to pollute the system.  Even with the very large, very sophisticated central filtration systems used in the tank displays, the tanks suffer from a very high mortality rate, which cannot be good for overall water quality.  And, since all the tanks tend to be on a centralized filtration system, a problem in one tank can easily lead ot problems in the other tanks, no matter how heavily filtered and sterlized the water may be.  Anyway - that's why I tend to view Wal-Mart as just not a good place to buy fish.  Fish stuff - maybe.   Fish, generally not.  Although, even I will occasionally be blinded by a particularly good price, or a particularly pretty fish - and I'll try again.  After all - any fish I purchase from Wal-Mart that survives more than about 10 days is probably fine - and I'd like to think that my relatively large, clean tank is a better environment than the fish came from...

Mid-Week Update 2/25/05

Ich!  Argh!  I can't believe it!

Somebody brought in some Ich.  How crappy is that? As I tend to do, I immediately hit the internet and started reading.  I found lots and lots of stuff, including this, various versions of this; also this, and this, and a whole lot of others. As a result, I spent most of the day on Sunday fighting with the fishtanks.   Dredged up an old 37 Gallon "Show" tank and set it up in the den.   Dumped a bunch of water from the big tank into it, along with a few bits of clutter, and started netting fish.  THAT was frustrating - chasing those little bitty Otos as they zipped through the plants and so on.  The three-spot Gourami was the worst - dang fish evidently had some sort of psychic power to know what I was planning with the net.  The really frustrating part was the last fish - a very tiny plecostomus.  He got away.  I searched that blasted 125 gallon tank for three days trying to find him.  Then when I was feeding the 37, if found him in there.   Somehow, I had netted and moved him without realizing it - probably with another fish.  What a mess.

Ich is a parasite called Ichthyophthirius multifilis.  It attaches to a fish, burrowing into the scales and skin and forms a cyst.  This is what you see - the little white 'sand' or 'salt' grains on the fish's fins and body.  Normal, healthy fish usually aren't very susceptible, but stressed fish, such as those in a new, partially cycled tank suffering from very high nitrates, are susceptible.  After about four days as a cyst, the Ich parasite breaks loose, floats to the bottom, and makes another little shell-cyst, and multiplies inside it.  After about one day, that cyst breaks open, and hundreds of little parasite come flooding out and start wandering around looking for fish to infect.  And thus it starts over.   If this new group of young parasites can't find a fish to settle on inside of about 72 hours, they die.  They are also very temperature-dependant;  if the temperatature is higher, the whole cycle goes faster.  If the temp is lower, it goes more slowly.

Anyway - the problem with Ich is the treatment:   There's lots of treatments available, but if the treatment is safe for the plants - it'll kill your scale-less fish (such as the clown loaches).  If it's safe for the Loaches - it'll damage the plants!  So - I have adopted a two-tank plan.  All the livestock and the WDF 4000 filter have been moved to the 37 Gallon aquarium, and are being treated with a loach-safe medication.  I have also raised the temperature in that tank from my standard 78°F to 82°F, to speed up the healing process, and I added a small amount of aquarium salt. Amazingly, the WDF is handling the 37G tank beautifully, and that tank is clear and clean.  The fish are handling the process just fine, and most of the Ich is disappearing nicely.  

Based on the Ich lifecycle, I have decided to simply keep all animal livestock out of the 125G tank for at least seven days.   By that time, all the encysted Ich should have hatched, swum around, and died for lack of hosts, leaving the tank clear.   At the same time, since there are no fish in the big tank, I've been taking the opportunity to do some truly awesome water changes (~80%/day), and I have finally gotten the Nitrate levels down to normal.  Now I get to start doing water changes on the 37G to get Its nitrate level down as well.  Then, at the end of this whole process - both tanks should be clear of Ich, and I should be able to nicely move the fish back to the big aquarium with minimum fuss - and we'll be all set.  In theory, anyway.  We'll have to see how well it actually goes.  After all those water changes, the brown algae has pretty much stopped - but it's been replaced by huge swathes of green algae - and I can't do anything about it!  I can't put my algae crew back into the tank yet!   I'm going ot have to wait a few more days - and then I'll probably drop the Otos and the Plecos in and let them work for a while.  I may also hunt around the LFS (Local Fish Shops) for some Ghost Shrimp, but I don't think anyone has any right now - it's the wrong time of year for those...

Fun Stuff!   New Plants!

I received my State of Missouri refund check, which was just enough to purchase the "Easy Life Aquatic Habitat" plant collection from Arizona Aquatic Gardens.   I'm really excited about this - it's an excellent selection of low-light accepting easy-to-grow plants.  I also added several bunches of "Tropic Sunset Hygrophilia" (Hygrophila rosanervis).   It's going to take a couple weeks to arrive - but it should be really cool when it gets here - and I'm going to get to have a great weekend getting it all into the tank.   I purchased a smaller collection, because I've already got a bunch of plants and didn't want to run out of room, and because I wanted to be able to pick and choose a couple more 'spotlight' plants before it's all done.

Arizona Aquatic Gardens reserves the right to substitute plants based on availablility (they'll notify me first), but even so - here's a list of everything that should be coming in:

Acorus Pusilus	Cryptocorne walkeri	Didplis diandra
Java fern	Nymphaea Stellata	Rotala Indica
Anacharis	Didiplis diandra	Zephyranthes candida
Sagittaria subulata	Hygrophila rosanervis*	All of these guys are very undemanding, forgiving plants.  They don't need massive amounts of light, and they will tolerate my extremely hard water quite well.  There is more color than these pictures really show - Several of the plants will have golden or red highlights or underleaf coloration.   The kit includes various numbers of each of these plants, depending on size and intended location (foreground, midground, background), so I should have lots of options in how to lay it all out... Also - my latin is probably not particularly accurate on these name, since there doesn't seem to be any real consensus in the websites. *The Hygrophila is not part of the regular selection, I special-ordered several of these in addition to the regular collection.
Echinodorus  Ozelot	Limnophilia sessiliflora

The thirteen pictures above shamelessly stolen from Arizona Aquatic Gardens website.
I hope they don't mind,  I am plugging their wares, after all...

Here's a really bad picture of the 37Gallon "Hospice" tank...

This was taken from the end of the tank, because the whole tank is stuffed into a corner behind some other stuff, and I can't actually get in front of the tank to take a picture.  I had to put this together in a hurry, after all.  The stuff in the bottom is really just a pile of old plastic plants to give the fish some sense of security.  There's only just barely enough gravel to cover the bottom of the tank, and I threw in a big airstone because there really is a lot of fish in this tank for it's size.  Oh well - it should keep them happy and healthy for another few days, and then I'll start transitioning them back into the big tank.

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