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my little eden

52K views 213 replies 36 participants last post by  bluestems 
#1 · (Edited)
Updated 03.11.13









specs
7g Aqua Pro aquarium (50cm x 20cm x 22cm) - a nice little inexpensive find from a lfs
ADA Aquasky LED 45cm (1st gen on a pre-order pricing deal)
Eheim 2210 filter w/ Do!Aqua lily minis, with purigen & bio media
CO2 paintball canister w/[STRIKE] Aquatek mini regulator & solenoid[/STRIKE] upgraded to more reliable GLA Atomic Paintball regulator v2 w/ solenoid
Do!Aqua diffuser & bubble counter
Okho stone & mazanita wood w/ ADA aquasoil new amazonia

flora
eleocharis acicularis
hemianthus callitricoides
nymphoides sp. Tawain (added 2/13)
phyllanthus fluitans
dwarf red lily


fauna
boraras maculata x9 (10 of orig. 11 died during co2 mishap; 8 reintroduced 1/25/13)
danio erythromicron x2 (male & female pair)
[STRIKE]corydoras pygmaeus x5[/STRIKE] moved to new home
caridina multidentata x3
[STRIKE]caridina cantonensis sp. Bee x2[/STRIKE] (RIP, lost during co2 mishap)
pangio kuhlii x2


__________________________________________
Hi all, I've been surfing the boards for some time looking for inspiration on a nano Iwagumi style tank. I've found a lot to consider, and thank you all for that!

I've had many tanks in the past, from nanos to 75 gals, but this will be my first time using ADA method. After searching and patiently waiting for the soil, the setup is coming along...



With the exception of the bulky light, I love it! :biggrin: I wanted a setup like this since seeing Amano's tanks many years ago.

This is the inspiration I'm looking to base my tank on:



It's the flatirons overlooking Boulder, CO. My family and I moved to the Seattle area nearly six years ago, but I still miss the Rockies and the flatirons that I used to hike. This little tank will be sitting on the corner of my desk and it already gives me warm & fuzzy feelings as I sit here typing this. :icon_cool

My husband doesn't get it...

Here's a mock up a possible rock and soil layout. It's a little silly looking, but I think it's gives the general idea of what's in my head:



I'm still working out the plantings, but am thinking it will be mostly carpeting groundcovers with possibly a slightly taller planting coming through the valley. HC, Glossostigma elantinoides, & Riccia fluitans. I'm not sure yet on anything else. For fish, I'm considering a large skoal of ember tetras or a grouping of three types: dwarf spotted rasboras, crossbanded dwarf rasboras, and celestial pearl danios; possibly otocinclus.

But, first... I need to find the stone. The fish stores here don't really stock much in the way of nano tank sized stone, and the one ADA store in Seattle had a total of 4 pieces of seiryu stone that weren't very textured or shaped well for my idea. I've contacted the ADA shop in TX, and trying to find some bonsai shops with a good selection. If anyone has an idea of where I might pick up some seiryu or ryuo stone in the Seattle area, I would greatly appreciate knowing!

Thanks for letting me share my little project!

ps- I have approx. 2 liters of the normal Amazonian style soil left over... anyone have any power type that they'd like to trade or sell?
 
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#126 ·
Everyone is in their new home! Mr otto has colored up. :smile: (he was really pale!)

Here he is doing his shamu impression...




I had a very difficult time getting the khulis out. Finally decided to perch the net on the bucket and gently pour out the bag with the khulis into the net. It worked, expect one jumped out of the net and onto the floor! :icon_eek: After much cursing and attempting to somehow pick up this very flat worm-like khuli off the floor, he jumped from my finger tip into the net. I hope he'll be ok. :confused1:

Immediately after going into the tank, the khulis went off into the grass...



However, as I'm posting these pics, now "jumper" is not looking all that great. He has been darting around a bit, with a distinct red line running from head to tail that fades when he swims but comes back when he stops...




This really bites. I've never had a jumper before... and I'm pretty sure he has some kind of internal injury. Doubtful I can catch him again to move to a QT tank. :(
 
#127 ·
Two of my largest kuhlis have the same line. It looks scary to me even still after having them so long, but it's never turned into anything. Your kuhli should be okay...at least I hope so :( When mine first went in, they squiggled and darted too...but so fast I couldn't get a pic like you managed!

Your otto pic is the first that ever made me think ottos can be cute. I've never saw a cute otto until now.
 
#128 ·
That's good to know. It's been a while since I've had khulis, but I don't remember them having a red line. They would dart back and forth three or four times when the lights first came on in the morning, other than that, they would calmly snake through the vegetation along the bottom. :smile:

Jumper stayed in that position for some 15 minutes before going under the big rock. Hope he does make it... though I may not know for a while if he's retreated underground. I may pick up another tomorrow just in case.

I agree, I'm not big fan of ottos looks, but I've had enough algae on the glass that it was time. This otto is pretty cute... he's doing his shamu on top of the main rock, and the betta and him are looking at each other. He may be the otto that changes our opinions!
 
#135 · (Edited)
Some big changes today in the tank inhabitants. I decided it was best to rehome the cories. Although I loved their playfulness, having them with the khulis and shrimp didn't make a lot of sense. Not to mention that things were beginning to feel crowded. (maybe not to them yet as they are still all so small) As it was, I was at 103% capacity according to AqAdvisor. Although filtration is 400+%, so water parameters weren't compromised.

It was pretty bittersweet to part with them today :(, but they are going to a TPT member with a lovely, densely planted 105g tank where I think they will be very happy.

The good news is that in pulling out the large rock to net the cories today, I discovered that both of the khuli's survived the transition to the new tank and all of my shrimp are still alive. :) The bee shrimp have at least doubled in size! I took the opportunity to net and return the three non-Amano shrimps that were erroneously sold as Amanos.

Mr betta also found a new home today. He wasn't aggressive in the least with the fish, however, it was another story with the shrimp. After he tried several times to dig into their cave, I decided it was best for the shrimp and him if he found a new home.

So, my little eden inhabitants are now the original 11 rasbora maculatas, 5 danio erythromicrons, 2 growing juvie bee shrimp plus 5 Amano juvies and 2 khuli loaches. I'm still like to find a fish option for the top level of the tank, but am going to hold off for a while to let everything settle in and hopefully get the hc in fully first.
 
#137 · (Edited)
Thanks, Tara :smile: I haven't really found a good source for fish on the eastside yet. Blue Sierra in Issaquah closed and combined with the store in Renton. But, I haven't always been that impressed with the selection and the staff are limited on their knowledge. They've been good about checking their records for the specific variety of fish when I've asked, and are eager to help.


Most of my stock came from the road trip to Portland at the end of October. I've also visited the Fish Store in Seattle and thought they had a decent selection of plants. I wasn't looking for fish at the time, but did notice they had a decent variety of shrimp and nano-sized fish.


Fishaholics was a good source, but Tommy's closed shop... and I wasn't sure that was the main business to begin with. :icon_conf


Where do you like to go?
 
#138 ·
I actually haven't purchased fish locally in well over a year. I used to frequent Fishaholics for equipment but was never very impressed with their fish selection, though they did have a decent variety of shrimp. Once I moved to the eastside, I haven't really found any store that I thought the fish looked particularly healthy so, I've been buying from sellers on TPT for the most part. I was hoping that maybe you had a secret fish shop that I hadn't checked out yet. ;) A Place for Pets in Burien used to be a favorite but the drive is just too long so, I haven't been there in quite awhile either.

Thankfully I've never needed to buy plants anywhere other than in the SnS because I've always been able to find what I needed there!
 
#139 · (Edited)
Tommy/Fishaholics was good about ordering what you needed and was really patient in talking me through details. That's where my tank and a lot of my equipment came from, and he was the one who led me to getting the spotted rasboras and pygmy cories. :smile:


He closed shop though before I was ready to plant. I agree with you, it's much easier and usually very good deals right here on SnS. The majority of my plants and some of my equipment are from SnS.


And, I'm glad my cories found a good home with you! :)
 
#144 ·
Tommy/Fishaholics was good about ordering what you needed and was really patient in talking me through details. That's where my tank and a lot of my equipment came from, and he was the one who led me to getting the spotted rasboras and pygmy cories. :smile:

He closed shop though before I was ready to plant. I agree with you, it's much easier and usually very good deals right here on SnS. The majority of my plants and some of my equipment are from SnS.

And, I'm glad my cories found a good home with you! :)
I agree, Tommy was great to talk to and was very responsive with custom orders. I didn't realize that he had closed his business though, that's a shame. It still would be nice to find a decent local shop, I've had the worst luck getting rummynose tetras mailorder and could use a couple dozen more to fill out my school a little more.

Glad everything is settled down in your tank, hope to see some updated pics in the next week or so! :)
 
#140 · (Edited)
Here's a picture of the pygmy cories in their new home, courtesy of Digsy:








Although I am already missing their playfulness and surfing the current, I think they'll be much happier in their new 105g home!


It's also interesting and not something I had considered before, that the shrimp and the danios are now out and cruising around the entire tank. :smile:
 
#142 · (Edited)
I'll be happy when all the inhabitants are happy :smile: And maybe when the hc begins outgrowing the bga... Despite the bga though, the hc does seem to be filling in now, especially in two of the pockets on the stone. Yay for small victories~!


It probably wasn't the best decision to home the tank on my desk, where I can ponder what to do next way too often. :redface:
 
#146 ·
Looking forward to the update once your HC fills in! I haven't updated my journal for the 105 gallon since moving from Seattle and going low-tech and lost interest in keeping journals on here but I do enjoy looking at others! Thanks for the compliments on the smaller tanks, it was tough to give them up but I think keeping the one low-tech tank will be all I can handle for the next year. :)
 
#148 · (Edited)
I finally caught the two bees out together tonight... :smile:





One of the amanos joined the party.



Please ignore the bga. Although it's hard to tell, it is getting under control. New growth has slowed, nearly stopped and I just need to find some time to do a manual removal and cleaning.



Update: since then, the rasboras all suddenly died, but one. Here's the last pictures I took of them mid-December surfing the water current.














































RIP little guys.
 
#149 ·
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! :icon_mrgr



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. :thumbsup:



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. :icon_conf


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. :icon_frow 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. :icon_frow 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. :tongue:





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 :smile:




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. :smile:
 
#151 · (Edited)
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! :icon_mrgr



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. :thumbsup:



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. :icon_conf


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. :icon_frow 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. :icon_frow 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. :tongue:





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 :smile:




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. :smile:



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.
 
#153 · (Edited)
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. :icon_conf

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. :smile:
 
#158 · (Edited)
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.
 
#160 ·
VERY nice flowers you have there!
 
#161 ·
thanks so much!



Cool thanks for the advise
yw :smile: 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?
 
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