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My Aquairum Story

850 views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  bruceborges 
#1 ·
My Fellow Aquarists,


I would like to share something with you, please feel free to comment or criticize as you wish I will not take any offence.


This is a picture of my aquarium in 2012, it stayed like this for about a year then things went down hill, to put it simply, I got lazy, I started to lapse in my plant trimming. And then my solenoid failed and I did not repair it the Spiral Val completely took over, there was an algae boom and I let it happen.


I kept the tank going, fed the fish etc, but stopped dosing, very soon I had a bog with some fish in it.


I looked exactly the opposite of what it does in the pictures. Only the Java Moss, Amazon Sword and A. Crispus survived.




Then about 4 months ago I decided to bring the tank back to life, without making any major changes to the equipment or structure of the tank.


I started by overdosing Excel to kill of the algae, a first water change of 50%, then regular weekly 30% water changes, resumed my dosing of Iron and Potassium ever 2 and 3 days respectively, using the tweezers to pick out algae. Tried to syphon out excess detritus from the bottom when ever I could, switched my second light fixture on. Changed my solenoid and injected CO2. Then I started to buy new plants and fish, I did not change the substrate and I am still using the old sand and substrate. And the tank has substantially recovered. What was very surprising was I noticed some green in the sand a few days ago what I thought was algae that I scrapped off the glass during my routine maintenance I tried to syphon it out and it would not come off, on looking closely it looks like HC, what is very surprising that it has been dormant for about 2 years in the tank only to sprout out again when the conditions turned favorable. Well it could also be regular baby tears I will know in a couple of weeks. Believe me the HC and baby tears were the first plants to die off.


I will post pictures of the recovered tank in another post on this string, please let me know what you think and which version of the tank looks better? The new version is still a work in progress.
 

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#2 · (Edited)
These are pictures of/from the recovered tank, what do you think? It is still a work in progress and still fighting the algae, winning slightly.

I have changed the fish, taken our the Cardinals, though I love them I wanted fish with more personality, so I got some Cloud Mountain Minnows and shrimp, the Amanos are from my old set up. Will add a couple of SAE and Ottos to the mix after a couple of weeks.
 

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#3 ·
First of all shame on you for letting that very nice tank go to hell,second we have all been there especially with working raising a family or life kicking our butts.Glad to see you are back to it,I like both set ups the first being the best but the second coming along.What size tank is that and good luck...
 
#4 ·
I like being able to see wood and rocks - otherwise, what's the point of them? And I'm not a big fan of moss, which always looks messy to me. So having moss cover something, like driftwood, frustrates me. Rather than the moss, I'd like to see stem plants in the back right, with the wood poking out from them. Something more like the original tank, but without the moss swirling around.

That said, I really like the foregrounds - both of them. They're two different styles, and both very nice IMO. If I had to choose, while I really like HC, I think i prefer the second foreground. Lots of different stuff going on, and all of it stands out as part of a larger picture.
 
#5 ·
You're not the only one! Glad to see the bounce back on the tank. On mine, I killed off all my swords, crypts, dwarf sag, hairgrass, and all these other beautiful plants. Only wisteria, anubias nana, and water sprite survived. Barely. It took me moving to a new place to get me to jump back on everything. Now life is running smoothly again. Great work!
 
#6 ·
personally, I was hoping to see photo's of the bog!
 
#7 ·
Thanks for the comments guys, really appreciate all of them, wish I had taken a picture of the bog for comparison.

I agree, I like this foreground better than the last one, I planted the HC in the wrong place the last time, I am waiting for this HC to pic up and I will take it off the sand to keep the sand white. And the driftwood being more obvious looks better.

I am waiting to fill out the corner on the left, will go to Hong Kong's famous (or infamous) golden fish street tomorrow and pick out some plant for that part, any suggestions?

The tank is 110 liters about 30 gal.

There is still some problem with the CO2 release mechanism, this morning it would not release any CO2, so I need to look into fixing that again (3rd time in the last 2 months).

I would really like to put some clown killifish to the mix again, what do you all think? And perhaps 2 - 3 threadfin rainbow fish.
 
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