56g Column Journal

[Rokuzachi]

Changes to the tank;

- Removed one C. guntheri due to aggression
- Removed the huge Apon. because the brittle leaves were making a nitratey mess
- Found a tiny sprig of Hornwort in my other tank and moved it over, growing well now
- Added a large Red Melon Sword which my substrate can't quite accomodate at its current depth
- Added two 'Banana plants'
- Added Hydrotriche hottoniiflora (had no idea what I was buying )
- Added Rotala indica (yet again, had no idea what I was buying)
- Added a Crypt. petchii

Good news;
- Water quality is better than ever, and less maintenance required than ever before too!
- Banana plants are thriving and very bright green
- Windelov fern is making a nice recovery and throwing plantlets all over the place, though the mother plant doesn't seem to actually grow much at all
- Doubled the lighting output and started a big fertilizer regiment
- Both SCP now eat NLS Thera +A!
- Managed to rescue my old petchii from an algae infestation

Bad news;
- E. najas is dying out slowly, unable to keep it growing like it used to
- I now have an angry 4" C. guentheri occupying my quarantine tank because absoutely no one wants these fish, even for free
- I continue to have poor luck with snails, and the same one still lives on
- My algae control crew keeps dying out (snails) so the tank is looking a bit grungy
- Hoplo cats enjoy eating plant roots when they see them, which makes it very hard to grow Watersprite up top. Thinking about abandoning that endeavor
- The livestock has been especially hard on the plants lately since I cut back on feeding. I catch all of them at some point trying to uproot a plant or take a bite out of one
- Plant-count is way down due to ^

The Future;
- Adding a school of 6 Rosy Barbs this weekend if things work out
- Adding one of the more misunderstood fish in the coming weeks; Red Jewel Cichlid
- Adding some Rootmedic products to my fertilizer regiment
- Considering the replacement of my AC110 with another canister that has a spray bar. Tempted to get an FX5 to carry over to my big tank next year

At this rate I'm gonna turn my tank red! Which is fine, cause red is an awesome color. Red and gold on a backdrop of green and red plants looks good in my head, so we'll see.

Video tiems!

5 Minutes of my 56g Aquarium - YouTube

 

[Rokuzachi]

Looks like I'm going to be rethinking my livestock in the near future. Gunther's mouthbrooders just aren't working out.

I was told that they don't exhibit inter species aggression, boy was that misleading. It came and went in pretty violent spurts. A week would go by with a tank full of happy fish, and then suddenly they're beating my SCPs senseless and knocking scales off of them. I even saw the smaller Gunther's attack one of the Hoplo cats while it was nosing around in the sand for food.

I removed the big Gunther's and a LFS took him, but now the small one is just as bad as the big one was. He not only took chunks out of my SCPs but he tried to chase down my 2" bristlenose pleco.

It's a shame since his coloration is coming in so nicely, but I'm not going to let a single fish harass everything in the tank. For now he's in a holding tank with a bunch of plants, and I'm going to re-scape the 56g and try putting him back in a week or two. Don't think it'll help, but I figure he gets one last chance. In a way I'm not too upset that I might have to give him away, because not only is he aggressive, but he hides if he sees movement outside the tank, doesn't come out when the lights are on, and only emerges from his cave to eat food he sees or to chase other fish. So... I really don't see him much during my daytime hours. Bleh.

I still have no fish casualties at least!

On a more positive note, here's 6 of my 8 Rosy barbs. Well, I'm pretty sure one is an Odessa barb that got mixed in. And he may have to go too.

Little Rosy Barbs - YouTube

 

[Rokuzachi]

I've only had the Barbs for a week, but they're growing like weeds. And so are my plants!

My 56 has a little less than 2wpg right now and I started dosing the bottle-recommended amount of Flourish Excel daily, regular Flourish 3x weekly and Flourish potassium every other day.

I can go work a 12-hour shift, come back, and my H. hottoniiflora and R. rotundifola have noticeably grown, including the occasional offshoot. My diatom problem has persisted for well over a month now, and I'm going to test my tap water for silicates in the near future because not only am I tired of the brown grunge, but I'm tired of my SO complaining about the tank looking 'gross'.

I thought I saw a couple of Ich spots on a Hoplo last week (it's hard to tell, because they dig in the sand a lot so bits stick to their slime), so I bought a 200w Fluval heater and restocked my salt. The temp right now is 84, on its way to 86, and there's a little more than 1tsp/2gal of salt in the tank right now. I started raising the temp/adding salt last Wednesday.

The spots are gone now, but I still don't know if they were actually Ich, or if they were the more shiny bits of sand from my substrate sticking to the fish. Either way, at most I saw 4 spots on one fish before I went into treatment mode.

I'm also happy to report that with my current stocking level, my tank only generates 10-20ppm of Nitrate per week that current amount of plants doesn't eat. I'm going to add more 12-14" rotundifola stems when I've grown them out in my 10g, to combat the growth of the livestock (the smallest of which are visible larger after 1 week of daily NLS Thera +A).

More pics/video soon.

Edit: I'm also looking for a ground cover plant that enjoys sand and doesn't mind being jostled around a bit. Any suggestions?

 

[Rokuzachi]

Never figured Rosy Barbs for jumpers, but I've lost three of my 9 that way. I've put the glass canopy back on to prevent further incidents of this, but I'm pretty bummed because two of the jumpers were the largest of the school, and the most colorful. I also don't have the QT-space right now to replace the three.

 

[Rokuzachi]

My AC110 threw another impeller shaft over the weekend. Good thing I had another spare... this Fluorite sand is just too fine. tons of it gets into the AC despite having the intake tube as short as possible. Decided to extract the bio media, clean it, replace the shaft and hand it off to a friend who was setting up a 29g.

Then what did I do? Well... take a look.

On a tank that's only 30" wide, no less.