my little eden

[bluestems]

A lot has happened in my little eden since the last update. But, first, a few pictures that my husband took... what a difference a quality camera makes!



fts with some danios darting in the back, and one of the khulis (nearly impossible to catch them sitting still these days). The khuli's have put on some weight in just the month that they've been in their new home.



one of the danio males



Jeff, the lone rasbora maculata survivor (more on that below)



the other danio male; plus a good shot of one of the new algaes that recently popped up in the tank.


So, the good news is that since the last update, all the bga is gone from the tank! I finally found the right balance of water circulation, light, co2 and nutrients that it just suddenly began to shrink on its own and literally melted away within a few days. (I manually removed the larger clumps).

All was great during most of December. Then, last week the local tap water had a super fishy smell, and at the same time, at least two or three new algae appeared in the tank: a brush algae on the rocks and a stringy algae plus what I think is a staghorn algae. All the water parameters were normal. I tried manually removing as much of the algae as possible every other day, and did kick up a bit of substrate in the process but changed ~30% of the water each time.

Then, I found four of my rasboras behind the tank, all in a small pile together. Since water parameters were still good, and the shrimp all looked fine (the amanos were still very clear, not cloudy nor molting, looking stressed, etc) I assumed that one of the rasboras must have accidentially launched out of the tank while surfing the current, and since they do so usually in a school, three others followed.

A couple days later however, and four more of my rasboras are missing. I found one dead at the bottom of the tank, the others I couldn't find. Now I'm worried. Water parameters are still good and the other fish, and shrimp seem unaffected. Meanwhile, the algae has really gotten out of control. I bumped up the co2, a bit too much, as one of the shrimps launched out of the tank a few hours later. I readjusted, put in an airstone, and got her back in. She's doing fine now. The next day though, I'm down to one lone rasbora.

I ruled out many possibilities of what could be wrong, and ended up deciding to do a couple 20% water changes over several days with RO water. So far, everyone is doing great, including the lone rassy. I'm not sure if the tap water had something in it that the rasboras were impacted by, that didn't impact the shrimp is surprising. But, so far all is well, even the algaes are looking like they're slowing growth quite a bit.

Here are some additional photos, with my crappy camera phone but they danios didn't seem to want to come out for my husband.





one of the bee shrimp on the new broadleaf pogostemon.



two danio males schooling with two of the females



Jeff, the lone rasbora has been adopted by the danios




a bit blurry, but a rare picture of all of the danios with jeff (the fifth danio is the dark shadow just under and to the back of the bee shrimp on the broadleaf stem plant.

Originally Posted by callisto9

Thanks for the update! I love the pics. Those danios are so cute. Sorry to hear you lost some fish.

I want some kuhlis for my tank, but all I've seen are the boring black ones. I'm also worried about them on Eco Complete.

Looks great Sherry! Pics are super.

Thanks, Erin. I'm pretty bummed about the sudden death of the rassys, especially since I really have no idea why... water parameters were good through the entire episode and the shrimp all did fine and are still fine (I think of the shrimp as the canary in the coal mine of fish tanks). The only thing that was different was the fishy smell in the tap water, and the sudden algae bloom. Since using the RO water, all is well again, so I suspect there must have been something in the tap water that week that didn't show up in the usually water tests.

I'm not a big fan myself of any other loaches except the brown khulis, and I've heard they do not usually ship well. Hopefully a lfs will get some in for you. Is Eco Complete sharp edged? You might be able to cap it with some small grained gravel, almost but not quite sand. The Wet Spot in Portland uses s.g. gravel to cap their aquasoil normal size without the gravel sinking through the soil.

[callisto9]

It's scary to hear that city water could do that!

Yes, Eco Complete is sharp-edged. However, several people have said they have kuhlis with it and they do just fine. I'm not sure yet if I'll get them or not.

I have heard the same about them not shipping well, too.

[bluestems]

I'm not positive it was the water, but it's the only change I'm made so far and all is doing well. We're in an unincorporated area here with a lot of rain and vegetation that could potentially cause an extra something to get in the water supply. It's probably not harmful over the long term, but for my tank, it seemed to be fatal to the rassys, imho. No idea why it wouldn't have impacted the other fish or the shrimp... or maybe I'm just completely wrong about the cause.

I am glad that the danios have adopted jeff, the lone rasbora survivor. I was worried about adding any new fish until I knew for certain the cause, but may not since they are getting along so well.

Good luck with the khulis if you decide to get them.

[bluestems]

The red-rooted floaters are in bloom

[callisto9]

How pretty! I like those.

[ophiophagus]

Nice tank I like it. But I REALLY like those danios. This is the first time I've seen them. I'm starting a new tank around this size soon and I think I will definitely be getting a school of those.

[bluestems]

Originally Posted by callisto9

How pretty! I like those.

I really love these little blooms! They are super tiny, only about 1-2mm in diameter.

[bluestems]

Originally Posted by ophiophagus

Nice tank I like it. But I REALLY like those danios. This is the first time I've seen them. I'm starting a new tank around this size soon and I think I will definitely be getting a school of those.

Thanks! The danios are super shy. They are out a lot more since the more active inhabitants are no longer in the tank. However, they only seem to shoal in pairs and tend to be territorial.

I thought they would work in my tank given it's length, but for the two males, I think they needed a bit more separation. A male/female combo might be a good for a similar tank size.

[ophiophagus]

Cool thanks for the advise

[ses601]

VERY nice flowers you have there!

[bluestems]

Originally Posted by ses601

VERY nice flowers you have there!

thanks so much!

Originally Posted by ophiophagus

Cool thanks for the advise

yw If we lived closer, I'd offer one of the pairs to you. Hoping to re-home them a larger, more densely planted tank.

Good luck with your new tank! ps- I really love the little nano cube that you've done. You did an amazing job scaling it to look bigger than it is. How do the pygmy gouramis do with the shrimp?

[AirstoND]

Do the red rooted floaters have scented flowers?

[bluestems]

Originally Posted by AirstoND

Do the red rooted floaters have scented flowers?

No , just pretty to look at.

[bluestems]

I've discovered the co2 regulator was not maintaining a constant bps at the increased setting. Unfortunately, I discovered this after coming home to my indicator being light yellow and having lost a couple of my danios and my bee shrimp. One Amano, the largest, was outside the tank, still barely alive. I placed her back in the tank and she's since made a recovery. Amazing.

I've since lowered the co2 back to 1bps and all has been well for a week now. It also seems possible that the swing from high co2 to being aerated over night could have caused stress that led to the fish deaths too. So, I've decided to keep the co2 on 24/7 at the lower 1bps.

My lfs had in some Rasbora maculatas (not usually seen in lfs here!) so I decided to go ahead and reintroduce seven maculatas into my tank. I'll be monitoring the co2 more closely and may just turn it off, and switch to Excel dosing if it's still not regulating consistently. I also added six cherry shrimp.

The good news is that the lone surviving rasbora was immediately interested in the new rassys, he even began schooling with them while they were still acclimating in their bag. Everyone is in the tank now, and the cherries are already about the tank during their business. It's so nice to see playful rasboras in my tank again.

[bluestems]

I did a major trim in the tank today. It's been a while since the tank as been this open and the fish took advantage of the space to surf the current and play in the co2 bubbles...

check out the video here.