125 gallon build log

[neilanh]

Thanks Much!

I'm not really happy with it quite yet. I changed some stuff last night (pics tonight), and finally divided up and planted the foreground, hopefully that'll grow in. Pulled the augustofolia from the right hand side, it wasn't doing well, not sure why. planted val nana in it's place.

I'm not happy with the middle section at all. It's basically just a bunch of stuff crammed in there right now. Doesn't look horrible at a distance, but up close I'm not happy with it.

Algae isn't under control yet. The autodosers are running and doing a great job, I think I narrowed into the problem with the algae last night. Time will tell if I figured that out like I think, though.

[FishEggs]

I was able to pick up a couple of those zebra oto's a few days ago and they're lookin good and healthy. They still have i think 3 or 4 left. I would have liked to get all of them but you're right about the price and i couldn't spend that much so i got 4 regulars to keep them company.

cant wait to see the new pics of your tank!

[neilanh]

Keep an eye on em. I had them in my 46 for a few weeks with no issues. 2 days after I transferred them to my 125 they developed ich. Not sure if it came in on them or the rainbows I recently picked up, but keep an eye out.

[FishEggs]

Just wanted to confirm that the zebra oto's are the culprit. i made it 7 months without having to deal with ich and now the most expensive fish i have gives me the most trouble.

[neilanh]

I was afraid of that. My rainbows have now acquired it too. Always a risk when one doesn't utilize a QT tank - shame on me.

I'm treating with heat. Not the first time I've had to treat ich, unfortunately.

[FishEggs]

well this is the first for me since i've only had the tank 7 months now. i'm gonna try heat too since i have a planted tank. i'm also feeding garlic as i've read somewhere that it also helps and it has been done for centuries in asia, plus the fact that i know how beneficial it is for me to consume.

[neilanh]

No updates for you - sorry. I'm battling staghorn algae, it's all over everything, and I'm not happy about it. Rocks, plants, I swear I saw a snail with it on him too. Geez. Annoying to say the least.

I'm assuming this stemmed from the 1-2 weeks I didn't dose anything, so I'm hoping that now that dosing is being done it'll stop growing. In the back of my mind I know that I'm going to have to manually remove it all - but I refuse to accept that as of yet, because it's everywhere. Any other ideas?

Things are growing, the stellata is growing really well especially, and has nice deep purple near the surface.

I added in a ton of shrimp, mostly RCS and about a dozen amanos. Hopefully they're hungry. The intent is to get the RCS populated and established before putting in the rainbows. We'll see how that works out. THere's about 120 or so RCS in there right now.

[pitt420dude]

Wow that's a lot of shrimp. Do they reproduce or is that the max you'll ever have. I assume they eat algea but don't have big appetites so you need a lot of em.

[ingg]

They reproduce like crazy given the chance.

That said, they are more sensitive to water parameters than fish are, and are the lowest on the food chain - almost all fish will pick off babies and juveniles given the chance...

So, in a big tank like this, you drop several dozen in from your shrimp tank, and then hope the colony outbreeds the predation. Did the same thing in my 180g, started with about 75.

[neilanh]

That's exactly it. I imagine once the fauna go in that they will be enjoying a tasty snack here and there. By jumpstarting with these maybe they'll get a good enough colony going to survive.

I dropped in 20-40 of my own, and got a great deal from a buddy on 100, so that's why they're in there in such large quantities to start off with. I opted to maintain my shrimp tank quantity for the most part for other reasons, rather than steal a bulk from them to setup the initial colony in the big tank.