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Toast's dirt 20g long, update 7-20, cory fry! (56k)

9K views 37 replies 16 participants last post by  toastedtoast 
#1 · (Edited)
Update 7/22/12




Original Post

Over the past year I've been fooling around with a low-tech dirt 10g, testing plants and farming algae as I waffled over how I wanted to set up my first attempt at a planted display tank. I've been stuck in a loop of reading forums and planning for a while now, but the gift of a de-rimmed 20g long from a friend provided the impetus I needed to actually get moving.

The goal for my 10g was "keep plants alive underwater", and as that's been a (qualified) success, I'm going to try and take this tank one step further and attempt some organization beyond a random mix of whatever manages to stay alive.


With that out of the way, here's the setup I'll be starting with:

Equipment:
Standard 20g long tank (30x30x75cm)
3x13W CFL bulbs in hanging shop lights (only 2 generally turned on)
Eheim 2213
pressurized co2
Dirt substrate with fluorite cap

Flora:
Lilaeopsis mauritiana
Anubias nana (regular+petite)
Narrow leaf java fern
Echinodorus quadricostatus
Vallisneria nana
Sunset hygro

Fauna:
TBD


The tank:



Setting up the substrate contours:


Filled with dirt (+ a couple sticks I was using to get a feel for the proper slope)


The substrate arrangement actually changed quite a bit from this, but I forgot to take a photo--it will be obvious later

Lilaeopsis planted


What little standing water is visible in this image was removed, the tank was saran-wrapped and the lilaeopsis was left to grow as a dry-start for 6 weeks.

6 weeks later, time to add the rest of the plants and some water


The victims--E. quadricostatus and the anubias are cuttings from my other tank, the others are from the LFS. Not really sure if I want the hygro, but I needed one more plant to get 25% off the lot so it was basically free. If nothing else it can help at the start and I'll rip it out later


Anubias attached


Java fern


Everything else, using a small brick to hold the wood in place for now.


Filled with a mixture of water and fluorite dust
 
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#32 · (Edited)
It's been ages since I've updated this thread, but one thing leads to another and I keep forgetting to post photos. Thanks Fishboy and Hilde for your comments and reminding me to get my act together.

Now that the tank's been flooded 6 months or so everything has started to settle down and grow without too much fuss. Algae continues to some extent, but I think I'm holding my own. Lately a lot of my aquarium time has been occupied with breeding the pygmy cories so the pruning etc on my 20g has suffered a bit.

Starting with cories in my 10g:

Last time I posted I was having trouble with predation by ostracods after putting eggs in my vacant 10g walstad-style tank. I eventually overcame this by suspending a metal coffee filter in the top of the tank and placing the eggs in there. The mesh was too small to allow the ostracods to get in, and once fry are freeswimming they seem immune to predation and can be released into the main part of the tank.

Here's a freeswimming fry in my 10g, probably about 2 wks old



Slightly older fry:


And young adult


I apologize for the quality of these images, the fry are so small and fast moving that it's hard to get a sharp photo in the very low light of my 10g tank.

Since this rearing tank was a little dull with only the immature cories, and I was keeping the small fry split off anyway I decided to add this little guy for some colour:


He's been a great addition, as he doesn't seem to bother fry longer then a couple of mm, he completely wiped out the ostracods and is happy to eat the same microworms that I feed the growing cories.

my breeding scheme seems to be fairly successful at this point and I've raised some 15 fish so far. I think I could do a lot more as there are still tons of eggs appearing in my main tank, but it's time consuming to take care of the little ones and not so exciting now that I've managed to rear a few batches.
 
#33 ·
Sorry for the tangent on cory breeding, I'll get back to photos of the 20L that's the point of this thread.

This photo was taken march 24th, you can see the plants are growing in and I've added some Trigonostigma hengeli in addition to the cories and chilis. At this point I was having a major issue with BBA and the tank is looking pretty bad


May 27th: Still more growth, and I've added some pennywort near the surface. Also tried a couple stems of s. rapens I got from a friend, but my light is too low and it's not doing well. The tank is looking pretty terrible at this point, and I didn't invest the time that I should have. BBA is improving but I had an outbreak of some kind of brown cotteny algae or diatoms, not sure which, that has started to choke out the moss on my centre driftwood.


I left my camera at the lab today so I can't take any updated photos, but I'll try to remember it tomorrow. As you'll see when I take new photos, the pennywort is out of control and needs a serious prune but I think things are finally balancing out a bit.
 
#35 · (Edited)
Thanks! That's by far my favorite part of the layout as well.

I've finally gotten around to taking a current photo, and as I didn't manage to clean the glass first this is pretty much how it normally looks.



I've added a korelia-knockoff powerhead in the back left corner, and while there are still some problem areas it seems to have helped my algae situation immensely (touch wood).

Now that I have plants actually growing, I'm starting to think about how I can change things to make the tank more aesthetically pleasing. The first step should probably be a curtain around the utility shelf I'm using as a stand, but aside from that there are a couple of areas that I'm not happy with atm.



The sunset hygros I have in the centre fore/midground are a placeholder that I've never gotten around to replacing, and it's seems past time already. A small bushy plant might be cool, (anubias? windelov fern?) or maybe even more wood or some kind of small boulder. Any suggestions would be awesome, as would any input on small, bushy plants.

In the upper left I really like the *idea* of pennywort near the surface but in practice it seems to get tangled and unsightly without a lot of grooming. For the moment it's another area where I can't decide how I want to proceed and in the meantime the lazy path prevails.

As always, I appreciate any suggestions though I feel vaguely guilty about soliciting them since my limited experience hampers my ability to reciprocate.
 
#36 ·
Apologies for the shameless bumping, but while I have the camera at home here are a couple fish snapshots.



Between their cute whiskers, funny antics and general awesomeness pygmy cories are by far my favourite fish. They seem to spend most of their time hovering around mid water or sleeping on plants and I rarely see them on the bottom unless it's feeding time.



They're very social and school much more tightly then anything else in my tank.

At the moment most of my colour is coming from Espei's rasboras


I have mixed feelings about these guys, they're really colourful but are a bit larger then I think is ideal for this setup and I have them in a smaller group then they should be.
 
#38 ·
Sorry for abandoning this thread, and my other one on the 6g in my office. Last winter I got called into my boss's office, and she let me know that both she and my job were moving to Chicago (from Toronto) and I was welcome to join if I wanted to. I liquidated all my plants / fish over the GTA Aquaria forum and packed everything in.

My new landlord doesn't allow fish, and at work my new desk is too close to a window to grow much besides algae so for now all my gear is packed away. Hopefully I can get something going again though, I miss having fish at work.
 
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