75gal Planted Tank Journal *Updated W/PICS 11/16*

[Torpedobarb]

Originally Posted by Raul-7

Great plant growth.

I noticed you have a Chinese Algae Eater (golden sucker-mouthed catfish), you might want to get rid of it now before it develops a taste for external fish mucous. The Rams are easy targets since they're slow-moving in comparison to the rest of your fish.

not sure what you mean? a disease?

[Torpedobarb]

[ColeMan]

chinese algae eaters are notorious for feasting on the slime coats of larger, slower fish...

[Torpedobarb]

the red tiger lotus in the last pic is growing nicely too.. was only 2 leaves when I planted it saturday..

the first pic is with flash to see how many of the little dwarf hairgrasses I planted.

I have two new gbr's and 2 new torpedo barbs.. nice show fish in the tank! love em

[Torpedobarb]

one more pic!

[Raul-7]

Originally Posted by pwrmacG4

not sure what you mean? a disease?

Not quite, Chinese Algae Eaters are notorious for being parasites in aquarium communities with rather docile fish. When they're young they may eat some algae, but as they grow older they begin to develop a taste for fish mucous (it the slimy layer that acts as a protective membrane around almost all fish). As it feeds off the membrane this makes the host more susceptible to infections and hence it will slowly kill off your population of fish. Eventually you will notice it trying to latch onto the sides of your fish and in my case I never realized what it was trying to do until it was too late.

The only community you can safely keep them in are with semi-aggressive fish like loaches, freshwater sharks and tiger barbs.

My recommendation would be to return it and replace it with a couple of Oto's.

[Torpedobarb]

thanks for the help of the algae eater.. guess I will have to return him! I didn't know what you meant by fish mucus.. slime coat.. yes. I just never heard it called fish mucus. I have had a few fish die for no apparent reason... 2 angles. they could of died because I didn't acclimate them for long enough.. I know now.

[Torpedobarb]

the first pic with the flash is to try to light up the tank so you can see how many of the dwarf hairgrass I planted

[BiscuitSlayer]

pwrmacG4 -

Man, I love those redline sharks. I wish I could set up a ginormous tank with a school of about 100 of them. The only thing is they get so big. Very nice fish though. Nice blue ram as well.

[BiscuitSlayer]

A couple of things pwrmacG4. You might not want to add any more fish for now. It looks like you have quite a few right now. If you do get some ottos, you probably want to get about 3 to 5 because they like to school together.

The other thing is that when your lights and CO2 are running, you probably want to cut the airstones off. You don't want that running at the same time as the CO2 because it will saturate the water column with O2 and make CO2 saturation much more difficult. The airstone would be a good thing to run at night though.

[IC3D]

IMO, you're overstocked, stay checking that water cause it might be good now, but it might change then you'll loose your pretty fish and plants. Happened to me in my 90g planted. So watch out. Fair warning.

[BiscuitSlayer]

Originally Posted by IC3D

IMO, you're overstocked, stay checking that water cause it might be good now, but it might change then you'll loose your pretty fish and plants. Happened to me in my 90g planted. So watch out. Fair warning.

I think there is a difference between heavily stocked and overstocked and a lot of it has to do with filtration and plant mass. With good filtration, and plants sucking up excess nutrients it helps when the bioload is high.

I would be less inclined to add fish though. I'll be the first to admit that I like large schools of fish, especially at feeding time.

[Torpedobarb]

I do have quite a few fish.. I know that.. but I also am running 2 rena xp3's on this 75gal. I would say that is quite a bit of filtration for that size tank. I took the algae eater out and added 5 ottos.. I did get 2 replacement torpedo barbs.. they replaced the one last night and again today. they forgot about the one last night.. so I got 2.. so I now have 4 of them.. awesome fish.. I test my water daily and no ammonia, or nitrites. I also check about 2 hrs after I feed them too.

I learned the hard way with cycling a tank with fish on my 29gal tank.. most of the fish lived through but died after from the stress during. I do water changes weekly (20 gallons) I only feed them every other day. that helps too and they can handle it.

[Torpedobarb]

here are some more update pics.. I got the glosso planted today..

[BiscuitSlayer]

You might run into some problems with the glosso planted like that. It might tend to get kind of lengthy and not grow horizontal. Here is a decent site on how you would plant something like glosso:

http://www.ne-aquaticplants.com/node/115

You might just want to see how it does, but I have a feeling you might have to do it the hard way.

Your tank is looking spectacular for being as new as it is. You are going to have one nice looking show tank pretty soon when things fill in a little. I think it will happen when things settle in a little and start to explode. I give it 3 to 4 weeks.