Andrew's 2nd tank - planted spec 2 tank - boraras maculatus & wild tigers arrived :D

[horsedude]

cool nice to hear your shrimp are kinda ok, thanks to this tank journal i have begged my parents to let me get a shrimp tank and they let me , i got it today. its only a 3 gallon but i will be fine for a few cherry shrimp for now
good luck

[TheRiverRat]

Sweet set-up. Looking to do something similar, just got a 3 gallon pico going to be my first small tank. Quick ? Where do you get your manzanita branches?

[horsedude]

Any updates?

[andrewss]

welp, the CRS's have been declining... im at 4 now... and the copepods are quite apparent in the tank now... the fish coming will probably affect their numbers lol. I need to keep it cleaner or something. The amanos are heathy and active, the remaining crs seem like the robust so that is good.

I think I am stabilizing the tank more and more but I worry when the warm weather hits it might have issues there.

That said I have 5 boraras maculatus coming on wednesday for the tank (which I think is a bit small but has a ton of coverage on the surface with the greater duckweed and whatnot so they should feel pretty safe.

Oh and 5 wild tigers... maybe they will be more robust?

[andrewss]

Hey guys, got the new guys in the tank about a week ago... everyone seems to be doing fine. I got 7 dwarf spotted rasboras (boraras maculatus) - thanks to msjinkzd for that! And I also got like 3 adult wild tiger shrimps and about 3 juvenile ones. Everyone looks great and after a week of being in the tank they all seem comfortable.

The one problem is I don't want die off to happen with either of these cool fish/shrimp. I think an obvious problem right now is PH - my PH is blue (7.6) out of the tap and I even did high range PH test and it came out orange (7.8) - and out of this tank it is basically the same... clearly blue without and green. I know these little rasboras like way low PH. I am shooting for 6.6 or so in PH.

I have put adler cones in every day or so now for a few days - the tank now has 4 cones in it. I test then add one then test again and so forth. I don't want anything to change too fast of course. What do you guys think about adler cones for PH? So far my addition of 4 cones has seemingly changed nothing. They have long sunk to the bottom - do they take a long time to actually affect water parameters? Well I have these cones on hand so I have been going this route... I dont want to over do it but maybe you can share some thoughts on this? Maybe about quantity or what not.

What other ways would you recommend lowering PH???

Well, here are some photos

[andrewss]

so I am leaning towards ordering some indian almond leaf... what do you guys think?

[blink]

Peat would probably work better than indian almond, but you'd have to tear up the tank to put it down under the substrate.

I always try to get inhabitants that suit my water, rather than making my water suit the inhabitants, it's MUCH easier.

If you are bound and determined to play with PH I'd look at using reverse osmosis water. The PH should be around 7.0, and if you do feel the need to buffer the water will change PH much more readily because it's not full of ions and minerals.

[andrewss]

Yeah, seems like you are correct but I guess it seems like captive bred fishes are said to be tolerant of PH changes... I probably need to also look at my KH/GH again... anyway I will add some leaves with the hope those whimsical "healing" claims are correct - but the tannins will suit me - I like the idea of leaf litter and a more biotype kind of look for this tank and the fishes - blackwater is a cool look imo. RO water is a great idea for "tuning" its parameters but I am not going to go that way lol =\

But yeah... we'll see what happens I guess

Thanks for the reply and input

[horsedude]

awesome your tank is looking great at the moment, I like the idea about the black water tank and I do also like bio type tanks more than the refined perfect ionised tanks, how do you clean your leaves to make them safe??
good luck and keeping the updates coming