Ooooh... Algae Control!

Yes, the green monster has reared it's ugly head. I probably got a little too cocky about being able to avoid it thus far. I think I had been more luck than good up to this point. It has not only overtaken the foxtail and the rotala, but it is even showing up on the ludwigia and bacopa! The glass is not overcome by it, but is getting its fair share as well. I performed a water change and flushed out all the crap in the filter. Additionally, I knocked off an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening on the timer, so we're down to 10 hours of light now.

The nitrates aren't all that high (look like less than 20 ppm), but I'll hold off on fertilizers to try to starve the alage. I'm going to stop dropping in cucumbers, seeing as the otos should have plenty to eat now. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the addition of the driftwood. I wouldn't worry about it, but the two smaller pieces I left in the bucket have been consistently turning their water brown. There's no discoloration in the main tank, but maybe the filter's not getting everything, and something from the driftwood may be boosting the algae. I can't add AlgaeFix anymore because of the ghost shrimp now present -- the directions warn against having crustaceons in any treated water.

A Little Tidying Up

On Friday, I got a few, uh, floating plants from a, uh, local fish store. I threw them in my 5-gallon tank to float around and soak up my 10-watt light. I also picked up an airstone for either attaching to a homemade CO2 system, or in the near term, hooking up some extra pipe to blow into. Good lung exercise. In addition, I dropped more cuttings from the 30-gallon in there with lead weights and I'll see if any of them stick. I even put the potted glassostigma in there, because there's no good place to have it in the 30-gallon anymore. Hopefully the runners that are in there will take. In the meantime, I hope it will stay alive in the 5-gallon in case I need more in the future. The potted stuff was already looking a little tired in the bigger tank, but it's pretty hard to "force it" to take the substrate. The roots are just too small to stay buried in the gravel, and it's not necessarily tall enough to bury the plant.

To get things started this morning, I went to Fintique to get some driftwood to start setting up boundaries to help to aquascape my jungle of a tank. Although I was looking for something bigger, maybe, I'm really happy with how the piece on the right turned out. There were bigger pieces available, but I didn't want to spend $20 on wood, so I used the best piece I found to kind of frame the foxtail and separate it from the moneywort and rotala. I'm going to try to get the stargrass going in front of it, and let whatever ground cover that happens to the left happen. The rotala is actually doing a pretty good job these days. The plant in the far, right, back corner that hasn't done much of anything would actually look awesome if it were spread out a little more, and as it is, one piece peeks up behind the moneywort nicely. Hopefully the water sprite doesn't have a problem taking a back seat to the foxtail, and it's actually pretty green right now. The hornwort is almost all gone (you can see through the tank in the middle), because it was just growing out of control. There's a smaller piece of driftwood to the left, and I'm hoping the sword on that side will dominate that part of the tank. I also picked up some java fern at Fintique; I don't know how healthy it is, but I'm hoping it takes root either in front of the hairgrass or on some driftwood.

Anyway, I think everything is in a good place now. I just need to stay on top of those water changes and hope that nitrates balance out. Speaking of which, I'm starting to rethink getting swept up in all this forum talk. The lady at Alamo Aquatics explained to me that she doesn't get too scientific about any of that stuff. She has about 50 neons in a 30-gallon planted tank, doesn't fertilize, doesn't inject CO2, and only changes water once every three months. I think there are rules of thumb, but there is also a time and place to just roll with what works despite conventional wisdom. I'll try to strike a proper balance.

Nitrate Police

So my sketchy water tests are concerning me that not only are the nitrates in my 5-gal high, but my 30-gal are getting up there. I was hoping the plants would be using up most of the nitrates, but I'm afraid that's not going to cut it. I did a big water change on the 5-gallon and maybe a 10-20% water change on the 30-gallon. The 5-gal still read higher than I wanted, and I didn't test the 30-gal again. I'm hoping to find a better, more reliable way to test it.

You can see (or cannot see) from this "nighttime" shot (look how the flash picks up the neons and albinos) that the place is getting really overgrown. To remedy that (and give me something else to worry about), I've taken a couple of cuttings of hornwort and anchored them in the 5-gallon with a lead wrap. The 10-watt lamp is only 2 watts/gal, but then again, there's no CO2, so maybe it doesn't need anymore light than that. Anyway, I switched the LED timer to the lamp and we'll see if we can't make something grow in there. It's worth a shot. I'll have to start throwing away cuttings pretty soon at this rate...

We March Forward

It's Sunday, so that must mean it's time to change water. I had read an article on Aquamaniacs that questioned the need to change water much, if at all in a well-planted tank. However, after measuring the nitrates to be quite high in both tanks, I decided that both would get a water change (and the small tank probably needs another one soon, since there's no where for them to go). I'm hoping the nitrates I measured in the big tank are at least partly due to fertilizers I added. In the small tank, it was apparent that all the particulate I sucked up with the gravel vacuum was at fault. I really need to find a nice balance that will not leave all this uneaten food on the ground.

Also. while scouring the Aquamaniacs forum, I believe I've identified the unknown, meshy little guy that tagged along with another plant and is growing quite well. It is called riccia, and it indeed, does not grow roots. Some people weave it in a mesh and lay it down for ground cover. It looks good when they do it, but heaven knows I don't have nearly enough to do that (plus I've got plenty of other plants that would like to be ground cover).

Boo!

After a tough and tight softball game, I swung by the local fish store (LFS), Alamo Aquatics, to check out the planted tank for arrangement ideas, as well as inspect possible additions including ghost shrimp and pentazona barbs. To my surprise, the planted tank was completely new. Apparently, they had recently sold the other tank, and this one was only two days old, so it wasn't as old and inspirational as the previous one. Oh well. I guess now my tank is better! (although it did make me consider if I had "enough" driftwood.

Sure enough, they did not have pentazona barbs yet. The lady doesn't think they'll have them anytime soon, so she was trying to sell me on black phantom tetras. I'm not really interested in more tetras, but cherry barbs sound enticing. There were, however, plenty of ghost shrimp, and the price ($1.99) was listed by the dozen, so that's how many I got, even though that's probably too much. I dumped what turned out to be 13 in the big tank, and after further thought, I scooped two of the bigger ones out and dropped them in the 5-gallon tank. I am not confident they won't turn into food for the Buenos Aires tetra, but I think it's worth a shot. He's bothered them a little, but they've stayed out of his mouth, and seem happy and able to hide out in the cave for a respite. They've got surpisingly long "whiskers" that I'm afraid may prove enticing for the bigger fish. Speaking of enticing, a whole bunch of them carried several green eggs (presumably they're eggs). They will likely meet the same fate as other eggs I've seen, so I'm not to worried about the shrimp going all snail on me and overrunnning the tank. Only time will tell...

P.S. Thanks to LiveAquaria.com for these great reference pictures.

Football Tradition

It is becoming somewhat of a habit, but I performed approximately 20% water changes on both tanks this afternoon. I tend to give myself a pat on the back for a job well done, regardless, but today was especially nice. Just as the lady who works at Alamo Aquatics suggested, the water change in the planted tank (apparently) significantly aided in the plants' respiration. You can see all the bubbles that have formed on the needle leaves of the foxtail, and several of the other plants showed significant bubbling that had been missing for some time now.

While I'm at it, it's probably a good time to step back and take a look at the tank again, since I haven't put up a picture of the whole thing since the beginning. Now granted, I have added a bunch of plants since then, but compaing the pictures, you can really see the increase of height and girth on the majority of them.

The veggie clip has been holding cucumber slices on and off recently, but they seem to be mostly snail food. The intented consumers, the otos, certainly haven't minded it very much. Speaking of which, I got some algae wafers, trying to go a different angle, but the corys seemed far more interested than the otos. I'm guessing my fear they don't have enough algae to eat is overblown, and I'll try not to worry about it again until I fail to see any algae in the tank (ha!).

Speaking of pests, I was disappointed that kuhlis wouldn't eat snails, as they are definitely overruning certain areas. For instance, as they crawl over the foxtail, they often leave enough slime to clump needles together and seemingly adversely affect the plant. I guess I'll have to let them find a happy equilibrium with the tank, until I work up the intestinal fortitude to squish them to death, one by one. They don't appear to be directly hurting the plants, by eating them or something, though.

"Kuhl" Additions

I finally made it to Fintique this morning, and was amazed by what I saw. Not that they had a whole lot more variety than Alamo Aquatics, but they had an abundance of the two fish that I was looking for: kuhli loaches and oto catfish. I picked up 3 kuhlis and 2 otos (bringing my total to six). I also picked up a couple new plants: a smallish broad-leaf chain, and a cryptocoryne petchii. They both grow in bunches, and send out shoots with long slenter, leaves. Finally, I got three pieces of driftwood for less than $2, so not only will they give the otos something to munch on, I arranged them to give the loaches a place to hide.

The kuhlis are absolutely amazing! They look like swimming snakes with brilliant stripes. I read that they are noctunal, but so far, I've seen a lot of activity during the day, and they actually become a little more docile when it is mostly dark. I'm not sure I've seen them eating anything, but when they aren't swimming along the front glass wall with the albino corys, they are often digging around in the substrate as if they are looking for some chow. In fact, they may have found something to munch on...

I found some eggs that were laid on the CO2 ladder, and I would tend to believe they are snail eggs, but I've seen what I believe to be snail eggs elsewhere, and they are much smaller than these. Of course, I documented their arrival in case they were fish eggs and the fry never made it (perhaps I could get some help indentifying who laid them). However, within a few hours, they were completely gone, so I'm guessing the loaches decided what their food would be.