2.5 gallon powerless desktop

[dskidmore]

Well, the weather has been cooling off nicely around here. Hopefully this weekend I can find the ambition to finish photographing my driftwood and get a trade thread going.

I havn't been brave enough to bring liquid reagents in to work, but the snails are monsterous, the water smells better, algae is taking off, and the test strip is reading 0 nitrite and positive nitrate. (Not going to bother with numbers, they're test strips.)

Wacky ideas of the week:
1) Going to set up DIY CO2 soon. If I have a couple bottles with one solid cap, I can swap out the bottles to recharge at home. They say the majority of the areation gained by an airstone is the surface turbulance, so I'm hoping injecting CO2 will also increase my O2 levels.

2) Between the algae and some reddening of the microsword leaves, and yellowing of crypt leaves, makes me think I should fertilize. Once again wanting to avoid mess at work, I'm thinking of doing dry ferts, mixing the ferts with fine sand to "dilute" the mix to a measureable concentration.

 

[dskidmore]

Related trade thread

I have open ears and wallet if anyone wants to sell me some plants now.

 

[dskidmore]

Wow. Thanks everybody for all the offers! I'm going to have fun playing with such a broad pallette.

 

[dskidmore]

I've got clams on the way and am putting them into tanks with plants as filters and will post what happens, fwiw.

Any results yet?

There is disagreement about wether the freshwater clam young are dangerous to fish. Some say it's a clam vs. muscle thing, and only the muscles cause problems, some say it's both. I'm thinking to be on the safe side, maybe only one clam per tank.

I talked to the LFS, and they said they occasionally get freshwater clams in. Now that cooler weather is here, I think I'll leave my name for them to call if they come in.

BTW, my boss looked at the tank for the first time the other day and didn't say anything about it. I'm not sure if was a "see no evil" response, or if he just wasn't curious.

 

[czcz]

Sorry, updated off thread -- my clams all slowly died under two weeks regardless of setup. None use any mechanical filtration and one had high current. It's not unusual for my place to get hot duing the day, which may have had something to do with it. (As mentioned earlier I've lost many inverts this summer and last.)

The tank looks nice and it's certainly an unbstructive size. Hope it continues to work out!

 

[dskidmore]

Any opinion on wether I should leave the lights on or off on the weekend? On could lead to algae problems, but I don't have a problem yet. Off could be bad for the plants.

I left the lights on over the weekend for a few weeks, predictably developed an algae problem in the Java Moss. Switched to weekend lights off, and everthing is looking good. The plants don't seem to suffer from it.

Unrelated issue:
The ramshorn snails seem to be breeding/growing much faster than the trumpets. Any way I can alter feeding to favor the trumpets more? (Besides culling ramshorns regularly?)

Unrelated comment:
MTS is really taking over. With all the plant clipping offers I've gotten, I now want to set up an "art box" to hold all these wonderful materials in while I play with the aquascape in the 2.5. The "art box" will have to stay at home, and I'll set up high lighting, CO2 and ferts for it.

 

[dskidmore]

Well, thanks to the generousity of many, I'm overflowing with new plants! This isn't aquascaped yet, I just kind of stuck everything in to see how well it does under my conditions, and try to grow out some of the smaller samples, but have a look-see.

 

[Purrbox]

Let the collectoritis begin!

Seriously though, I look forward to seeing how things turn out with the tank. It looks like you've a nice variety of plants to choose from, and I do see some nice things starting to happen with the driftwood on the right.

 

[dskidmore]

The picture may not be clear. (I'm a horrible photographer.) The far right hardscape object with the moss is a rock. The Anubia is resting on a separate piece just to the left of the moss.

I've got to add CO2 and ferts promptly. The original crypt started melting when I added the new plants. I think it's suffering a nutrient deficiency.

 

[dskidmore]

Still havn't gotten CO2 and ferts in there, starting to pay for it. The increased plant load is robbing some of the previous occupants of nutrients they need. Crypts suffering the worst. Must find time to do this soon!

Taking out the vines, there's plenty of nutrient removal going on.

 

[dskidmore]

Arg!

Massive snail death over the weekend. Water testing positive for nitrites and negative for nitrates. (I use test strips at work, numbers not very reliable.)

Some of the snails might survive, they are currently withdrawn into thier shells. Doing massive water changes. Perhaps I should not feed on Fridays, right before weekend lights out in a plant-filter system.

Glad I havn't gotten the shrimp yet. Still want to tinker with the plants more first.

 

[WaterPond]

oh, thats too bad, sorry about your loss. Must be hard to keep a powerless tank. I had one that I kept in front of my window with a few feeder guppies and they are still alive today after almost 3 years(althought they are in a different tank). Good luck with the remaining snails and shrimp once you get some.

 

[dskidmore]

Good thing with the window, is you won't forget to turn the sun on in the morning.

 

[WaterPond]

lol, true

 

[dskidmore]

Good news:
No MTS bodies found, one MTS survivor seen.

Doing twice dailiy 50% changes, removed a couple dozen ramshorn bodies.

 

[WaterPond]

great! good luck with those water changes! lol

 

[dskidmore]

Left lights on over the weekend for maximum absorbtion of nitrogen.
Back to 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate.
One MTS survivor seen.
Unidentified snail eggs hainging out in a corner.
Tons of algae, expect that to go away in next weekend's blackout.
Resuming feeding at 1/4 algae tablet every other day. (Skipping Fridays)

Will be moving to a diffrent cube with some natural light on Friday. (I'm getting the aisle side of a south-facing-windowed cube.) Will keep you updated on how that affects things. Will likely re-scape after the move, will get you pictures of that in a couple weeks.

 

[dskidmore]

Opinions on proposed procedure for fertilizing 2.5 gallon without liquids at work? I based it off of the PMDD paper on the krib, and someone here's recipie for DIY root tabs.

Mix:
1 T Trace Element Mix
2 t K2SO4
1 t KNO3
2.5 T MgSO47H2O
.25 c clay powder

makes ~25.5 tsp
remove 1 tsp ~= 1/25.5th of batch ~= 25 doses for 2.5 gallon tank
remaining 24.5 tsp ~= 20 doses for 75 gallon tank - divert to 75 gallon project.

Mix additional .25 c clay powder with the seperated 1 tsp of base mix, add water until workable, form 50 root tabs, let dry.

Use 2 root tabs per week after 50% water change.

The root tabs should take up to a month to disolve, but after several weeks of dosing, we will reach an equilibrium level of ferts.

 

[Purrbox]

You could try dry dosing. This would require having a scale with fairly good precision, so it may not end up being entirely practicle. If you are able to measure out small enough doses, you could then place the measured doses into one of those daily medicine containers. Each day just dose one of the compartments.

Another option would be to mix up the liquid ferts at home and then use one of those children's measuring shringes to hold the fert. Many of these have a cap that covers the tip of the shringe for storage. You could either fill and bring to work each day, or buy enough to do an entire week's worth. Just uncap and dose with no measuring at the office.

 

[dskidmore]

I tried the above proposal. Way too much clay. I should have added only 1 Tsp of clay powder to the 1 tsp of mix, and added water by the drop. I ended up making up half the batch into 145 pellets. That would be around 14 pellets per weekly dose. This would allow better distribution, just not what I had in mind.

If I could find a good dropper bottle, liquid ferts might be a good solution. I'm just not sure where to get one.

There are scales in the building that are precise enough to measure out dry ferts, but they're legally biohazardous. I can't bring anything back out of the lab that's been in contact with them. My scale at home isn't very precise. I considered dry dosing, but figured I'd have to dilute the powder somehow, maybe with sand to be measurable.