Unkillable's 1 gallon bowl (updated 10/10/12)

Nice

Thank you!

I'm going to fish out the rouge bits of solid that escaped while I was planting tonight, and add a few shrimp towards the end of the week, everything seems to be growing now so now that the risk of melting is gone it should be safe.

Will start with a breeding pair and see how it goes

That's a beautiful bowl

looks nice second time around!

now if the shrimp dont work out right away, dont give up. give the bowl a month and then try adding shrimp again.

Thanks guys, it's one of those things that looked simple, and probably should have been but turned out to be a fair bit of work lol

Newman said:

looks nice second time around!

now if the shrimp dont work out right away, dont give up. give to bowl a month and then try adding shrimp again.

Click to expand...

Thanks Newman, as a veteran of these I will definately keep what what you say in mind.

I'm also experimenting with a cube in natural light, but it's not working outtoo well, will let the bowl grow in a bit more and see what does well in the small environment and then take cuttings from the main tank.

Looks great--will be fun seeing how it matures.

I just started set up on a mini-bowl myself with dirt/sand cap. Will be interesting to see how the plants respond compared to the non-nutrient bearing fluorite I usually use. If it sets off much higher growth rates, I suspect the regular plants I'm used to using will have to replaced by smaller varieties.

With the plants definately go for slower or shorter growers. Version 1 had wisteria in it when I was thinking of plants that would out compete algae, in my main sand only tank it would gain about 2 inches a month, which I figured was easy to keep up with trimming wise. In soil it gained roughly that in 4 days. I only planted short off cuts that came up about half way up the bowl. By the end of the week it was breaching the rim.

Also as you go avoid the stupid mistakes I made, such as using a turkey baster to retrieve floaters, and forgetting to prime it out of the water. Or the one I made a few nights ago changing the water, I used an air hose to refill the water to avoid blasting the sand cap, got distracted watching tv and pointed it straight down, yet another soil fountain lol.

Knowing that there may be losses, rather than add the adults as I was planning I popped 5 juvenile (10mm ish) cherries in there last night. Had 2 losses and one isn't looking his best, so did a 50% water change this morning, will do another tonight and reassess it tomorrow.

The plants after doing well for the past couple of weeks have taken a slight turn. The star grass is browning a little, and the pearl weed has decided that staying planted is not for them. Moss is doing well though, as is the dwarf sag and the one that looks like a pea plant (can't remember what it is)

Unkillable Cat said:

Knowing that there may be losses, rather than add the adults as I was planning I popped 5 juvenile (10mm ish) cherries in there last night. Had 2 losses and one isn't looking his best, so did a 50% water change this morning, will do another tonight and reassess it tomorrow.

The plants after doing well for the past couple of weeks have taken a slight turn. The star grass is browning a little, and the pearl weed has decided that staying planted is not for them. Moss is doing well though, as is the dwarf sag and the one that looks like a pea plant (can't remember what it is)

Click to expand...

Do you test your water params?

It would likely reduce deaths.

SpecGrrl said:

Do you test your water params?

It would likely reduce deaths.

Click to expand...

My test kit is due for a refill, at the moment so I can only test for nitrites and ammonia, which were both showing as fine. I found a pot of test strips that came with my last order of dechlorinator (i know they border on useless) which test for Nitrate and it was showing 5 (ish) which is roughly what my tap puts out anyway.

They had a 2 hour acclimation too, all I can conclude is possible stress from being netted out of the big tank

The sickly looking shrimplet perked up over night, and checking the dead ones it looked to be failed molts. The remaining shrimp have coloured up nicely, and are active. If they keep up that way I will add a few more on monday to bring the number up to 10 until they get established.

Once they grow a little I will leave a couple of breeding pairs in there and see how it goes.

nice =D