Moon's 10 Gallon Journal

[moonwasaloon]

Good Afternoon,

I started this tank about 8 years ago, when I first got my Red Ear Sliders. They moved to a bigger tank, so this became a first tank! The only problem was that they scratched up the glass pretty good, but oh well.

Here goes the tank, before it was a planted tank:
(3-3-11)


The reason why I started to add plants, was to help with control nitrites in my tank, the first plant that was added was water wisteria. I got really good growth out of it, and liked the look it gave my tank.
I started posting on Monsterfishkeepers, and found about this site on that site. I became a member of this site May 2011. As a student, I couldn’t really afford good plants, to change substrate, etc. I went for low light plants, which I knew I could grow. I bought most of that at Petsmart, and they were pretty cheap, I had coupons to use. I was also given some java moss by davek, which had someJava Fern Windelov in it! I attached the Java moss to a rock, with some of the Windelov on it. I also bought some RCS and cholla wood , with some guppy grass from joon. I put some neon tetras, and two apple snails. I also got paintball co2 set.

(8-7-11)

Flora:
Moneywort
Java Fern
Java Fern Windelov
Java Moss
lucky bamboo
Guppy Grass
anubias nanawater wisteria
Amazon Sword


Fauna:
RCS
Neon Tetra x 5
Glowlight Tetra x 2
4 Oto
1 bn Pleco




After this, I got a new job, and kind of lost interest in this tank. It was more like I was too tired at the end of the day to actually to do any work in it. I was held back with the low light, I only had one t8 bulb over the tank. Then the timer on the tank broke, so I would turn the light on when I left for work, and turn it off when I came home. This was a total of about 14 hours of light! This was bad news, and turn the tank into an algae hell hole. About a month ago, my girlfriend bought me the fluval edge, which sparked my interest again!
So I kind of cleaned house with the tank. I removed the bamboo and moneywort since it was completely covered with BBA. I tried to get rid as much guppy grass as I could, this stuff will take over your tank if you don’t pay attention to it! I removed one rock, and move the rock with the java moss to the right corner and built around that.

I also added a new light with two 15 watt CFL bulbs in there.:


The tank after the cleanup:
(1-24-12)


After this, I wanted to add some new plants. My first goal was to start a carpet in there, which I found out that it is pretty hard to do so with river gravel so I had to change my substrate, and I ended up changing it to Flourish. I also bought some new plants from tbonedeluxe.
I got:
5 stems sunset
1 Crypt.wendtii red
3 stems Myrio.matto
3 stems stargrass
1 tiger lotus

I also bought my first ferts too! I got them from Da Plant Man.
I got:

• K2SO4 - Potassium Sulfate
• Plantex CSM+B
• KH2PO4 - Potassium Phosphate
• Iron Chelate
• KNO3 - Potassium nitrate

This is what the tank currently looks like:

(1-31-12)

Flora:
Java Fern
Java Fern Windelov
Java Moss
anubias nanawater wisteria
Amazon Sword
5 stems sunset
1 Crypt.wendtii red
3 stems Myrio.matto
3 stems stargrass
1 tiger lotus

Fauna:
RCS
Neon Tetra x 4
Glowlight Tetra x 1
2 Oto




Future of the Tank:
I still haven’t gotten any kind of carpet plant, but I believe I will go with glosso. I am waiting for the plants to grow in, before I move anything around but I do want to get some more plants for my background. I also would like to add another type of Shrimp, probably going with green.
Any suggestions?

[Fishies_in_Philly]

greens will interbreed with cherries. :-( i've got some Nesaea triflora that might look good in it that you can have. if you want any water sprite, i have narrow and broad leaf. i also have an apogenton that just doesn't seem to like my tank as much as the others. oh, and i have a sword that i just can't do a darned thing with. it's short and growing amazingly slow. if you want a different shrimp, you can check out the malawa shrimp. they won't interbreed with cherries, but also not quite as colorful. mine started like ghost shrimp. almost clear, but as they grew, they started gaining stripes, both white and brown. i'm just waiting for them to breed now so they can get their own tank.

[moonwasaloon]

Green shrimp aren't neos, their real name is Caridina Babaulti Green so they won't interbreed.

I believe there are Green Neos but heard they are quite rare?

When my plants grow in, and I need to do a trim, we need to do some trading!

[Fishies_in_Philly]

duh....my bad. blame it on the old brain....lol i probably got confused about an article i was reading on neocardina breeds. as far as the plants i listed, if you want 'em, come and get 'em. consider it an raok.....lol

[diwu13]

Before adding another type of shrimp you should kick those fish out :P! What is your TDS, pH, gH, kH of the tank?

[moonwasaloon]

I don't know have TDS meter or gh/kh test kit yet! =/

But ph is at 7.2.

I'm not really worried about the TDS/gh/kh since I don't plan on keeping any high end shrimp because of how hot my summers get, my tank can get up to the mid 80's.

[diwu13]

Most of the shrimp that won't breed with cherries require low pH, TDS, kH, and gH :\. That might be an issue. Greens and Tigers are probably your best bet, but I don't know if they would survive that well either.

You could just get amano's?

[moonwasaloon]

Yeah, and I know that Tigers love cold water, so can't go with them. That's why I'm going with Greens, which I read that they can be rather hardy.

[moonwasaloon]

New Pics!

I got somethings from h4n:

Glosso (hope it takes)
Ludwigia Hybrid Red
Blyxa japonica
and some Netires!

Complete tank:



Right side:


The Myrio.matto has grown really well!



Glosso with Netires (the Netires has a Barnacle on it!)

[diwu13]

Haha how many nerites did you get? That barnacle is huge! It'll probably die in a couple of days though.

[moonwasaloon]

I got four,

apparently it isn't uncommon for them to get barnacles!

[diwu13]

Yea the wild caught ones might have those haha. Just goes to show they do survive in saltwater too

[moonwasaloon]

I'm in a tough spot right now.

Do I go invert only? Or Fish only?

I think i'm going to go fish only since, because I would want to get some yellow shrimp or something. Something better than RCS, and at this point, it's going to be impossible to remove all of them.

[diwu13]

Invert only!!

[Fishies_in_Philly]

Originally Posted by diwu13

Invert only!!

i'm an invert guy like Di, but i still think you should go fish. mainly because i want your rcs to introduce new blood into my colony.....LOL

seriously, i told you why earlier. but remember, it's your tank, not ours :-) use the force young moon and it will not let you down!! LOL