[andrewss]

Looks great! Well done!!

Thank you

I like it was well!

May I offer a suggestion.....move the light closer to front of aquarium and
It won’t show as big of a dark area in the front.

DougN

Yeah that has gotten more exaggerated as the ferns have grown out, really ought to do that soon!

Hi andrewss, tank is looking great!!

If I may also offer a suggestion.. I'm not sure if it was your intention, but the smaller detail rocks in the foreground are spaced too evenly apart. IMO this makes it look unnatural. If you bunch up some of the bigger rocks and smaller fragments, it should look more natural. An example is shown below, in the centermost sandy area:

Good idea, yeah those rocks get knocked about quite a bit during WC and all that, will try to arrange them a bit more like that actually next time thanks for the input.




So, not much of an update for the scape or plants (really really need to trim and spot treat algae). More on that later.

However last week, or was it the week before last... lol I had another GBR spawn, the first one in a while that survived the first night after laying. So my male became really aggro to everyone in the tank after this one and especially to the GBR female, he never let her come close to the nest. Anyway a few days later the fry started to swim a bit free and I called a local breeder over to take the fry home to grow them out since I dont really want to myself nor have the spare tank for that. To do so we had to net the male to get to the eggs and right when the female sees him out of the tank before we know it she darted to the nest and started eating the babies! She ate probably nearly half the fry before I could net her out.

Luckily there were still quite a few fry left, the breeder got like 50-75 or so fry in the end. Yesterday he sent me a little update, the are lookin good and newly placed in a 30L cube tank to grow out some more! Curious to see how they look in the next weeks!

 

[Discusluv]

Thank you



Yeah that has gotten more exaggerated as the ferns have grown out, really ought to do that soon!



Good idea, yeah those rocks get knocked about quite a bit during WC and all that, will try to arrange them a bit more like that actually next time thanks for the input.




So, not much of an update for the scape or plants (really really need to trim and spot treat algae). More on that later.

However last week, or was it the week before last... lol I had another GBR spawn, the first one in a while that survived the first night after laying. So my male became really aggro to everyone in the tank after this one and especially to the GBR female, he never let her come close to the nest. Anyway a few days later the fry started to swim a bit free and I called a local breeder over to take the fry home to grow them out since I dont really want to myself nor have the spare tank for that. To do so we had to net the male to get to the eggs and right when the female sees him out of the tank before we know it she darted to the nest and started eating the babies! She ate probably nearly half the fry before I could net her out.

Luckily there were still quite a few fry left, the breeder got like 50-75 or so fry in the end. Yesterday he sent me a little update, the are lookin good and newly placed in a 30L cube tank to grow out some more! Curious to see how they look in the next weeks!

Lol! Excellent! despite that murderous mother there were still quite a few babies left for the breeder to raise. Looks like a healthy bunch! Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[andrewss]

Hey everyone, so another little update today, a few days ago I finally decided to get some Oto's for cleaning, I actually really like Oto's as well but I didnt go with them earlier because I was concerned about the tank already being on the heavily stocked side but I couldnt help but go for them due to the persistent algae. They have been in about a week and it seems like it has had some effect already which is promising. I only added 5 but that definitely has my tanked in overstocked territory however I think due to my pretty strict cleaning routine it ought to be ok. Doing at least 2x WC weekly for 19L of a 80L tank which has a lot of substrate and hardscape in it so actual fill quantity must decently under the 80L dimensions I guess. Anyway lets see how it goes!

Here are some recent photos of the tank at full light (in my max ~30-30% cycle) and then ramping down later in the day - I prefer the tank in lower light for photos and viewing. I recently removed some plants and trimmed up a bit, still think I ought to trim the trident fern back a bit more but its hard to commit to where I should. I fully removed the congo fern as well it was just being too much of a light hog and the leaves kept getting bigger and bigger. The die off from a couple months back has kinda stopped but some of the buces are really still not doing so well, some better than others and some pretty plagued by algae however the Otos have been snacking away so maybe they will benefit from that.

A couple full tank videos as well to see them in action a bit!

Thanks for stopping by!

^ did the slow drip tech for acclimating the 5 Otos

 

[andrewss]

And here is a small post to highlight the persistent algae problem, the hardscape has a decent amount of BBA on it I guess, but I am not sure what these compact vivid green tufts growing are... they actually arent the most unsightly things compared to the BBA looking stuff right by it just by virtue of the nasty color of BBA and so on. I guess on the trident ferns over the last few months a kind of green spot algae has taken hold though its not sooo bad and I find the stuff that grows on the edges worse, which might be a mild staghorn growing but I am not so certain. The buce in the one photo is one of the hardest hit single plants in the tank, I might start doing H202 baths on easy to treat rock mounted plants like that one soon.

Thanks for looking and if anyone has input about the types of algae I am dealing with and any personal experience on them it would be much appreciated

 

[Asteroid]

Good to see you back with an update! Overall tanks looks very nice.

I think the pics of your java fern and buce clearly demonstrate that algae can and does attack "Healthy Plants" At least slow growers anyway, because other than the algae those do look healthy.

What is your current light, water change, filter media specifics.

 

[andrewss]

Good to see you back with an update! Overall tanks looks very nice.

I think the pics of your java fern and buce clearly demonstrate that algae can and does attack "Healthy Plants" At least slow growers anyway, because other than the algae those do look healthy.

What is your current light, water change, filter media specifics.

@Asteroid hi! yeah, perhaps that is the case, a lot of it is the curse of slow growers perhaps. Thinking also being so close to a high sunlight window in the summer really hurt my chances as well.

Light is pretty short now, I'll try to update a shot of the cycle but its about a 7-8hr cycle but it ramps up and down really slow, like the first hour is like 5-10% then the last two is the same so its like 4 or 4.5 hrs of decent light: RGBW all maxing at like 20-30% respectively... I'll get a screenshot up soon though!

Filter is just the stock sponges but anyway a bottle of matrix replaced the standard beads/rocks and I have purigen in there religiously now for like 6+ months. I recently upped the filter head to the size up but kept the canister the same since it only fit in the stand that way. I clean the filter and lines quite frequently as well though.

So my to-do is: have another look and post screens of my light cycle AND I need to do a round of water tests because I haven't had the test kit out in a while and really havent been checking up on it lately despite quite an increase in plant growth... I still do similar ferts.