Lots going on in our household; we moved back to Michigan in July after taking a new position with my company. Oh, and we had our first child back in April. We learned today that she has to have cranial surgery to fix some plates that have fused prematurely, and that's been quite a hard pill to swallow. So I decided to calm down tonight by working on my tank and putting a journal post together while my wife looks over the surgery papers and information.
Flourite, Fluval 305, lights need replacing. Currently using Excel until I make it to Airgas this week. Plants include alternanthera reineckii, crypt wendtii, bacopa, an amazon sword, and anubias nana.
October 21, 2012
November 2, 2012
December 3, 2012
Trimmed and "scaped" today. I'll have a picture Friday.
All are cell phone pictures, unfortunately. Higher quality photos with my camera in future updates.
I dose an excessive amount of iron twice a week. It goes against my typically regimented dosing mindset, but I literally just open the bottle and pour about a half-second worth of Seachem Iron in. The new growth was very yellowed and thin prior to adding so much iron; since then it's been coming in nice and green for the rest of the plants, and red for the AR.
We had hard, mineral-rich water in TN. Here, we have much softer water from the Great Lakes.
Went to the local Airgas to swap out cylinders today. They gave me a few extra o-rings, and a tank that feels ridiculously full compared to the shortchanged cylinders we got down south. Slapped on the SuMo regulator and a Fluval diffuser.
Next step is adding some dwarf hairgrass and an army of otos and corys.
Back to the hospital tomorrow for another appointment, but my wife and I are looking forward to this one because it means Fudrucker's for dinner on the way home!
I had a bunch of reineckii a while back and nothing I did would get them going. Everything else just went crazy but that reineckii, which I really wanted to thrive, languished. Major disappointment. You say you're piledriving iron eh? Interesting. I have a lb of 13% here I could try, but I just relied on the iron in CSM+B for supplementing.
Are you aware of Wet's calculators page? I use it and on there it's telling me that to get .5 ppm of Fe I need to dose just a hair over 1g of CSM+B for my 40b. Now you're saying to supplement more Fe in addition. Can you give me an idea of what you target your levels to?
As far as Fe goes, I don't have any target level. Are the plants vivid? No? Guess I'll dose a bit more early in the week and see if things rebound by the Friday dose. I think a lot of us get hung up on numbers instead of the visible signs that our plants are healthy.
Yea I hear you. It's just without some sort of baseline it's impossible to know just how far off the mark you're getting. That bush is long gone now, but in the future I'd like to get another and see how she goes.
Friggity friggin frack. Had a bad leak somewhere, went through all 5 lbs of CO2 in 2 days. Back to AirGas on Monday I suppose to get a new bottle so I can leakcheck.
Got a call from the hospital, and the surgery is now scheduled for early April. That seems so far away. I'm a lot less stressed about it now that I've had a week for it to sink in.
For those who want to know what the surgery is, read on. Not recommended for super squeamish.
My daughter has a fused suture, which is holding back one side of her forehead. The procedure to fix this is fairly straightforward. The surgeon will make a wave line incision through the scalp. The skin will be pulled forward off her head to expose the bone below. The skull will be cut, and the suture reopened. A bit of the bone will be cut out and used to remold the forehead out so that it will be symmetrical. Everything that gets cut gets held back in place with a neat sugar polymer plate (I wasn't paying too much attention at what exactly it's made of as my wife was bawling and I was about to pass out hearing the procedure). The skin is then put back in to place and stitched up. The skin will be healed in roughly 3 weeks, and the bone will be healed in 3-4 months. (I get queasy every time I have explained that. Doubt that will change). I made the mistake of Googling this. I came as close to blacking out and hitting my office desk as one can.
END OF DESCRIPTION
If anyone has a child with craniosynystosis/plagiocephaly, I would be interested to hear your experiences.
In tank related news, I've found the leak in my CO2 rig. The nipple is similar to the Milwaukee rig, where it has the raised face flange. The seal washers just didn't work with that, so I'm picking up a new nipple and changing it out. Growth is fantastic still.
AirGas was out of 5lb cylinders, so I got a 2.5 loaner from them for free. Leakchecking revealed a leak at the connection, so I muscled the wrench a bit more, and got a little better (now it's only a miniscule leak, which could be due to the cylinder being absolutely freezing cold).
The nipple on the regulator (Sumo Premier) has a raised face flange, as I mentioned above. Inspecting it closer revealed that the raised face is actually a built in filter holder. I'll post pictures tomorrow when I get the 5lb tank and switch over. I just took the filter holder out, leaving the filter screen in the cavity, held in place by the seal washer. Anybody else have a regulator with this filter thing built in like that?
5lb cylinder obtained. CO2 is on, no leaks. Diffuser is stubborn though, requiring about 10 BPS to push anything through. Might be time to put in a reactor.
Waiting on my paycheck next week before adding the next set of plants. Any suggestions? Thinking some myrio and myrio red are in order, as well as Limno aromatica.
Another shot, with some cat and baby jumper in the way. The hood was made with a bunch of 1x6 that was in the house when we moved in. Have some issues with the lid warping, might have to build a new one if it continues even after painting and sealing everything.
The sword is starting to get blackened edges, as is one of the anubias plants. Going to cut the light down by an hour and a half starting tomorrow (because it kinda looks like the beginning of BBA). Need to raise the light up off the tank a few more inches, going to have a diffuser under it as well.
No updated pictures, because, ya know, it's only been one day. However, here's a picture of our daughter's favorite toy:
Got her from a woman who rescues pits in Nashville back when we lived down south.
Haven't got that much growth in four months. But I don't have C02 in my planted Discus tank.
Hope all goes well with your daughters surgery. The great thing about kids is how quickly they bounce back. They put us parents through hell but look at you as if nothing happened.
As she grows, doubt there will be any noticeable scars. After this past week you just got to hug 'em. All the best.
1.) Nice looking tank. I think the 40 breeder dimension are just about perfect for learning how to aquascape well. Good choice there.
2.) I grew up in Midland (MHS, '93) and get back there just about every summer - for the life of me, I can't think of any place in that town that sells decent aquarium equipment or livestock, let alone honest-to-goodness aquatic plants. Where are you shopping?
Thanks guys! Grendel, the tank and stand came from a local shop in TN when we lived there. The plants in the current iteration of this tank all came from Petsmart, of all places. Cohoons used to have some neat fish, but they shut that down a while back, and I'm not sure even the grain elevator runs anymore. There's a place out in Saginaw across 675 that occasionally has good stuff, but lately since we've had to go down to Ann Arbor for my daughter more we've been stopping at Pruess' Pets in Lansing.
Next paycheck comes around in about 24 hours, planning on ordering some plants online/SnS. Limno aromatica, myrio, cabomba, some crypts and some rotala red/macandra are on the list. Blyxa japonica might be as well to replace the sword or one bunch of the crypt wendtii.
Hi danakin. Those are some beautiful healthy plants you have growing there. I look forward to when they aren't all the same height and your scape takes a more three dimensional shape!
I love the looks of your family. Gorgeous dog cat and kid! I know nothing about that surgery, but it sounds reasonably non-threatening since they mess around with bones and not nerves or the brain itself. I totally approve the therapy you have chosen for yourself. Pets (including planted tanks) are terrific stress reducers. I set up my first office tank when stress at work was getting to be too much. Keep the tank challenges at a low level and everything will be fine.
What type of lights are you running and photoperiod?
Tank looks great.
Regarding fresh CO2 cylinders that are Ice Cold...My personal preference is to just let them sit (somewhere safe, like against the wall in an unused closet) for 24 hours until they reach room temperature. This way, I don't worry about the metal shrinking or expanding after I establish a good seal to my regulator the next night.
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