Troubled waters

[Demonknight]

Meh, best name for my Xperiments into a heavily planted tank, so far its been slow going. Had my 125g tank setup with some large wolf and pike cichlids, sadly ich got started while I was gone and it wiped out my tank..three weeks later I finally set it back up after doing some of the basics, washed and cooked the gravel, 1.5 g of vinegar trying to get rid of left over salt water residue...tossed all the drift wood I had (just in case).

Decided to try a pseudo-Walstad Natural tank, first try failed (under gravel filter sucked dirt through the gravel and made lots of mud), did a 75% water change and while its looking better its still cloudy

as you can see... I have however have begun to transplant in plants from my 10g along with some of the gravel and moved over the HOB filter in hopes of "seeding" the beast. Also have some plants coming in from MFDrookie so that should help out a lot.

I have 2 sets of 96w 10k/antic combo lights and one set of T8 lights (36w each) so if I figure right i'm just on the low side of things for light and will be adding in more once I figure out what i want.

I have made one mistake so far, and its right up front for all to see, bought whats supposed to be a Alternanthera reinecki "Red" without looking it up first to see how much light it wants.

 

[Demonknight]

Oh yeah...sat my 10 year old son down and had him looking at fish pics and had him pick a dozen he liked for the tank..after going through and removing those that were salt water or "mean" fish it came down to a bunch of tetras and glass knifefish...Blue Tetra(Boehlkea fredcochui), Flame Fish(Hyphessobrycon griemi). Emperor tetra(Nematobrycon palmeri), Cardinal Neon(Paracheirodon axelrodi) and glass knifefish(Eigenmannia virescens)...

couple of questions, would each kind of tetra school only with its kind, or would they all "join" into one large school? It seems as if these would all get along for the most part, or am I missing something?

 

[Demonknight]

well did yet another pwc (about 75%) and only tested ammo as thats the only test I have beside ph atm, so for the last 4 days I've had no ammo reading or extremely low(bright yellow)

The snails that hitched a ride from my 10g are very happy in the tank and seem to be expanding in numbers X10 each day...almost never see new snails in the 10 so wondering whos eating them? The 10 has 2X bristlenose, 3X female bettas and shrimp .

 

[Demonknight]

After 6 days of bright yellow ammo testing I added one of the dwarf's and nic named him canary...ok maybe not the nicest way of testing the waters but after a week he's happy as a clam so i added the female bettas, 1 of the bristlenoses and the other dwarf. NOT looking forward to catching them all later on when I get to order in the South American cichlids and black skirt (black widow) tetras..but figured the bio-load they provide is better than none. Besides i want to change the gravel in my 10g once the shrimp drop/hatch their newest batch of eggs.

Side note my breeding of my bettas seems to have worked out and the couple came through it pretty much intact, and I see at least one tiny moving critter in a otherwise empty tank.

 

[Demonknight]

short update, water has finally settled down, fish are happy, all lights finally working and new bulbs in them (10K 96w pc + 64w of T8) NEW can filter up and running along with the old HOB filter, rocks and plants all over and the algae is loving the fact the plants are just now thinking of taking off. Current stock is 3 female bettas, 2 red honey gourami, 2 bristle nose cats and a small 8 fish Black tetra school, and lord knows how many snails.........

 

[Demonknight]

Now to find/make a background for it, even if I break down and just do the trash bag for now.

 

[Edward61]

Big difference from the 1st picture. This tank is coming along rather nicely, good job!

 

[Demonknight]

 

[mfdrookie516]

Nice! Definitely some good growth for sure.

 

[Demonknight]

http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hpho...0301280825477_766940476_9280484_5234984_n.jpg

any guesses to what this is?...
http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hpho...0301280285477_766940476_9280476_7745641_n.jpg

new favorite tank shot looking down from the far end

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hpho...0301279150477_766940476_9280461_2321368_n.jpg
one more of the unknown red plant

 

[Demonknight]

Ok, been awhile so doing a update on my troubled water,

notice one of my little crack heads sat long enough for me to snap a shot of him.

Not much to see here, just some really thick star grass, the green swords now roughly 5 times bigger than the red one, and both went in just days apart.

bad full tank shot, yes the canisters "still" in the front of the tank, its too tall to fit under the cabinet and no room behind it.
As of today I have 6 or 7 Black skirt tetras, 4 juvi angels, 1 female betta, 2 bristle nose cats and who knows how many ottos.. a few fish have disappeared over the last two months, or they are really good at hiding, but we don't see them at feeding either. All in all I am looking forward to my move thats coming up so that I can do a major rearranging of the plants (right now my "high" light plants are UNDER the Lilly pad) and figuring out where the "fish grave yard" is.

 

[Demonknight]

well today ended this tanks run as a dirt tank, traded down in size due to up coming move and the uncertainty of where we will end up (apt or house)... only thing I can say for certain....no more dirt tanks if a move is even a possibility, my god its ripe when you start pulling plants out.