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My first aquarium in over 30 years

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#1 ·
I'm getting back into the hobby after 30+ years, having been inspired by seeing planted tanks online. I got a 30 gallon long tank (wishing in retrospect that I got a better quality, rimless tank) which I set up the ADA way (slightly modified...in that I didn't using all the substrate additives). The substrate is Aquasoil, and I planted heavily from day one. The "trees" are manzanita driftwood: I'm using Anubias and Water Sprite to imitate the foliage, though that may change.

I'm using pressurized CO2 at about 1.5 bubbles per second over eight hours (1-9pm), which is the amount of time the lights are on (2 to 10pm). The LED TrueLumen Pro strip has a PAR rating of about 52 at the substrate level. I'm running an Eheim 2215, which for 3 weeks had only mech and a ton of activated carbon (per a great planted tank diary by Frank Wazeter, which made a lot of sense to me); then I replaced the carbon with the standard Substrat Pro biomedia. I did the standard recommended water changes for Aquasoil -- 85-90% daily for the first week, every other day for the second week, and every third day the third week. Now I'm doing 50% water changes once a week. It was a lot of water changing (whew!), but the Aquasoil was putting out ammonia for a while, which was good because it fed the cycle. Nitrates are at 5-10ppm, but then again so is my tap water (according to the test kit). The pH is staying between 6.6 and 7, and the Hydor inline heater is keeping things at 75.5 to 76 degrees. KH and GH have remained consistently 3 and 7 respectively.

I've been fertilizing since day 4 with ADA ferts, and used a little Stability with each water change. The plants have been doing pretty well, I think. The Water Sprite, the Mayaca, and the Proserpinaca palustris put out lots of new growth. The Crypt wendtii has doubled in size. (I'm actually thinking it was a wrong choice and out of scale for this tank.) The Hydrocotyle Japan and the Christmas moss are spreading nicely. The Anubias nana and coffeefolia have given me several new leaves. The other species are holding their own without much increase - the Staurogyne repens, the Monte Carlo, the Ranunculus - which, interestingly, were the tissue culture plants I used. Unfortunately, my iPad died, and along with it I lost a lot of early pics, so most of these photos are from the last 2 weeks. The Fissidens that was on the "fallen log" never took, and the Proserpinaca all died when I tried to spread it through cuttings.

I have had small snails this whole time: hitchhikers on the plants I assume. I've been picking them out but they are persistent: I guess they can survive all that ammonia and nitrites. And I consider myself extremely lucky in that I have had NO algae! I'm taking that as a sign of a good balance.

After I replaced the charcoal with the biomedia, and the Aquasoil stopped leeching ammonia, I added ammonia to 1ppm daily, had a week-long nitrite spike, then had readings of zero each day after the ammonia addition. At 6 weeks, I considered the tank cycled and got some animals! 6 Pygmy Corydoras, 7 Ember Tetras, 8 very small Neocaridina shrimp (4 blue and 4 red), and 3 Guppies. Maybe that was too much too soon, in that I lost 2 of the Corys and 3 of the Ember Tetras. No, I don't have a quarantine tank. I waited a week a got some more Embers, so that there are now 9. All fauna now seem happy and healthy, but I'm going to wait a while before adding anything else. AqAdvisor says I am only 36% stocked though. So that's where things stand after 8 weeks.

Let me know what you think!
 

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#6 ·
Thanks for your good words!

Well, I joined this forum in 2012, and have been reading a lot and gathering knowledge. So it took me 5 years to finally put water into an aquarium.

So yeah...the CO2 thing is still the most perplexing to me. There's so much conflicting information and so many opinions.... in the end I decided to start low and see what happens. So far so good (no algae, acceptable plant growth), but I have been debating an increase because I never see the plants pearling. What's your particular reasoning for a bump?

Thanks again.
 
#3 ·
Amazing work. And u have nailed the balance too. The scape looks neat.. not too cluttered neither too bare. One suggestion wud be more plants on those branches like Moss. Again I just love the scape. Excellent. [emoji4]

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#7 ·
Thanks! I'm liking it myself. :smile2:

I agree about some more greenery on the driftwood "trees." Moss was my first consideration. I was also thinking about lots of Anubias petite, but hesitated because the surfaces are more vertical than horizontal. So right now I'm letting the water sprite kind of imply foliage. I also think moss on the "trunks" (not sure what kind) would lend a kind of aged feeling.

Thanks again.

Bump:
A redonkulous imagination after 30 yrs away, bravo!

*Liked*
Haha...thanks!

I've been looking at all those aquascaping award winners for a while - particularly the ones that looked like forests - and took inspiration where I could. So far, so good for a first try. Now I just want to keep it healthy.
 
#8 ·
Thank you!

Yes, I think you're right. I've already had to thin out that Crypt quite a bit, as well as the water sprite. We'll see how it goes. I do need for some of the background plants to fill in better, because I'm not yet seeing the "forest-in-the-distance" thing that's in my head.
 
#11 ·
Thanks!

For the bigger pieces, I attached each one to a thin, flat piece of slate with a stainless steel screw, and buried the slate under the substrate. For the smaller ones, I used aquarium silicone to attach them to small rocks and buried those.

Bump:
very nice aquarium, seems you didn't actually get-away from the hobby am I right ;)
Thanks.

Well, since I haven't had an aquarium since 1985 or so ... yes I did get away. Though I have been doing a lot of reading and research over the last few years...
 
#12 · (Edited)
Update at 16 weeks (Warning: Photo heavy)

So I thought I would post a few pictures about 2 months after putting in livestock...

As far as the plants go, all is well. I don't think things look all that much different stylistically; just a lot of maturing and filling in. I have continued to fertilize daily with ADA Green Brighty 1, Special Lights, and Brighty K; and bi-weekly with ECA for iron. I'll switch to Green Brighty 2 soon, when this bottle of #1 is used up. CO2 is at 2 bubbles per second, which gives me a pH drop from 7.4 to 6.4. Lights are on for 8 hours. I think a couple of species could use more light, particularly the Hydrocotyle "Japan" (which is a little thin and leggy) and the Monte Carlo (which has diminished in area). I hesitate to increase the lighting period for fear of algae, so I'm leaving well enough alone. The Christmas moss has filled in very nicely, I think. The Anubias nana (the ones in the trees) have given me lots of new leaves and even a couple of flowers. and the A. coffeefolia seem to produce a new leaf at least every 2 weeks. And I have decided to continue using the water sprite as the "foliage" for the trees: to me the floating plants give the illusion of foliage at the treetops and beyond the water line. I trim once a week when I do water changes, especially the water sprite and the Mayaca, neither of which seem to slow down. I really like the overall look, and am not tired of it at all yet.

As for fish... 4 Corydoras habrosus, 8 Corydoras pygmaeus, 9 Ember Tetras, 8 Espei Rasboras, 10 Eyespot Rasboras. Man I love those Cories, especially the pygmaeus...the way their little bodies wiggle in the water with their fast-flapping fins. I wonder would it would be like to have a tankful of them. There's a male guppy, and a bunch of guppy young (about 1cm now). The female guppies I took back to the LFS: I felt they were too big for a tank of mostly nano fish, and were bullies. They've agreed to take any of these young, too. I guess they'll use them as feeders...maybe resell them, I don't know. If any are male, I might keep one or two. But everyone seems happy and active.

My biggest mistake was shrimp. I got 8 Neocaridinas (4 blue and 4 fire red) because I thought it would be cool to have some beautifully-colored shrimp in the tank. Well, in 8 weeks, there have been three or four batches of offspring. Not multi-generations yet - just lots of cousins. They all seem happy and healthy, too; BUT, they are all some shade of brown! I guess they cross-fertilized and I've got maybe 30 shrimp that I didn't start with of varying sizes that are all brownish. I should have begun with just one color, but I didn't know enough about shrimp to realize that. And these young shrimp reached adult size (I'm talking like 3/4-inch in 2-3 weeks. Is that normal?! Plus the original blue shrimp lost all their vibrant deep blue color and are now just a light clear blue. I should post this experience in a forum with shrimp experts to tell me what happened.

I'd love to hear your comments.
 

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#18 ·
Tank looks amazing... great job!!! How do you keep your tank so algae free and healthy??!!
Thanks. I guess I've been doing a lot of stuff right, and have had some good luck. I clean the glass with a sponge with each water change because I do seem to get a little algae there -- occasional small patches that cloud the glass. I'm thinking, though, that I've just got a really good balance going. According to AqAdvisor, the tank is 86% stocked, the CO2 and lighting are seem right, and the ADA ferts, while relatively expensive, require little thought and a few daily squirts seem to do the trick.
 
#22 ·
So this is interesting. Today I saw 4 shrimp babies that are blue! 3 are dark blue like the parents were when I bought them, and one is lighter and clearer, but still blue. They are all in this pic, and are about a quarter-inch long. I guess there has been some within-species reproducing... :)
 

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#23 ·
So it's been 5 months since I last posted about this tank, and it's nine months old now. The most obvious change is the "foliage" of the trees. In trimming the Christmas Moss from the bottom, pieces went floating around and volunteered on the wood: I've left it alone for the most part. There's still some floating water sprite for treetops, and I still have the Anubias nana within the tress and around the bases in a small way. I think the floating water sprite created a lot of shady spots on the forest floor, so some of the low-growing plants -- like the Monte Carlo and the Staurogynes repens -- have thinned out. The Ranunculus never did take off, and is now pretty much gone. Some of the other plants like the Mayaca and the Crypt are less intense than they once were, and maybe I'll think about replacing them with something else.

I added a couple stones in the rear at the end of the path to look like distant mountains to further force the perspective. It works in my mind, anyway... :)

The are now 12 Espei Rasboras, 5 Eyespot Rasboras (both species turned out to be jumpers, though I added more Espeis but not more Eyespots), 7 Ember Tetras, and 13 Green Neons. And still that one blue guppy.
My Cories...well, there are no more Habrosas, and only 5 Pygmaeus (I think). I love those little Cories, but they're so shy. I want to get more since they are a social and schooling fish, but I'm torn because they get in the tank and then hide. Maybe my substrate isn't to their liking.

As for the Neocaridina shrimp, I took out all of the red ones, and they now have their own home in a Fluval Spec five, where they are thriving. I want this tank to only have blue ones, but I'm still getting lots of brown and black ones showing up...which I cull and feed to the fish. Hopefully one day they'll all be blue, but I think the fish appreciate the treats.



 
#27 ·
Updates

I haven't updated this thread in a while, and thought some people who liked my tank might be interested.
This is what the aquarium looked like in September of 2018, about a year after the last post. The Christmas moss tree "foliage" had filled in nicely, as did the Staurogynes repens in the center foreground, as well as the Monte Carlo and Hydrocotyle japan. I lost the Anubias coffeefolia, but the other Anubias had slow, steady growth. I had removed the rocks in the background (which didn't look as much like mountains as I had thought), and took away the fallen tree in the foreground. I re-homed the Eyespot rasboras on craigslist because they got too big. I got some new Corydorus pygmaeus from a local Maryland breeder, and some mail-order Otos from BioAquatix because they said they were tank-bred and raised. All were healthy and happy until disaster struck!


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My CO2 tank went empty on a Thursday in October. On Saturday, I took it to the guy who usually filled it for me, only to find he had gone out of business. When I finally was able to get the CO2 back up and running (the new place would only exchange my tank for an ugly, old full one, not fill my shiny new tank), 8 days had passed. But I unthinkingly continued to light the aquarium and use my ADA ferts. In retrospect, I should have cut way back on the photo period, and maybe have lightened up on the fertilizer, but I didn't. You can probably guess what happened. At least three different kinds of algae broke out, as well as cyanobacteria. I battled it for several months. (I wish I had taken pictures.) I threw away all of the Christmas moss, the Monte Carlo, and the Mayaca. I heavily cut back the Hydrocotyle, the Staurogynes repens, and the Alternanthera. I pruned the Anubias of their most-affected leaves. The only two plants that weren't really affected were the water sprite - which continued to thrive (which was good because I think its strength help get me back on track by using nutrients); and the Crypt wendtii, which continued to send out runners and sprout new plants. I took out the most heavily affected rocks and wood, and scrubbed them and boiled them. The tank looked so sad. I added an AquaClear 50 HOB filter. I dosed Dr. Tim's Re-Fresh every other day, which is supposed to help with the cyanobacteria. I did 50% water changes TWICE a week (what a pain) for several months. The brown algae never came back once I disposed of the affected plants. I regularly pulled out small gobs of green hair algae, but eventually it was pretty localized and fairly easily removed by hand. I assume that the Otos are eating some, and I have some Nerite snails now, as well as 4 Amano shrimp. Gradually, it's gotten better, and I haven't seen much new stuff in about a month (except for the inevitable green stuff on the glass.)

Because I'm back on track, I allowed myself to get some new plants about three weeks ago. Some new Monte Carlo, Proserpinaca palustris, Hygrophila pinnatifida, Lilaeopsis mautitiana, and Hornwort. I broadened the sandy area. I put back the "trees" I had removed and boiled, and attached some flame moss to them with green thread; It'll be interesting to see if that works visually. I also got 12 little baby Kubotai rasboras. So with all the livestock, AqAdvisor says I'm 108% stocked. Oops. That said, I added another filter...a sponge filter that I've tucked behind the second tree from the left. So there are 3 filters for a 30 gallon tank: the Eheim 2215, the AquaClear 50, and this new sponge filter. Not overkill at all....lol. Livestock is 6 pygmy cories, 12 Otos, 6 Espei rasboras, 12 Ember tetras, 8 green neons, 12 (baby) Kubotai rasboras, 8 nerite snails, 4 (small) Amano shrimp. Ironically, I'm now adding the occasional algae wafer for the Otos and snails...just in case.

I've switched from the ADA ferts (they're getting harder to get in the US and are still crazy expensive) to the NilocG premixed Macros and Micros. With them, one pump per 10 gallons on alternate days with Sunday off is supposed to be EI dosing. I've modified that down to 2 pumps each on the alternate days, and am supplementing with iron and potassium. 50% water changes on Sundays. I'm also still using the Dr. Tim's Re-Fresh every other day, but will probably stop that soon. CO2 is running at about 7-8 bps for 8 hours, with a photo period of 9 hours (52 PAR at the substrate). (I upped the CO2 rate a little because I think the bubbles from the sponge filter were causing some off-gassing of CO2. I'm now getting a 0.8 to 1.0 drop in pH during the CO2 period. I actually removed the drop checker today because I'm confident that that aspect is good. pH=6.5 to 7.5. Ammonia=0, Nitrites=0, Nitrates=25 (using the Salifert kit: they've always been high for me: my tap water =10) KH=3, GH=7-8.

I still like this tank a lot, even with my seven-month battle. Having said that, it IS two and a half years old, and sometimes I'm a little tired of it. The fish have always been happy here, though, even through the crisis, and they've never had any diseases. It's right next to my bed, so I still love watching it for long stretches of time. Maybe next year I'll start to think about redoing it.... Here are some pics from today: let me know what you think.

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