Life Is All About Changes

I'm getting kind of peeved about conditions in the 30-gallon tank. Not only has the algae returned with a vengeance, but I noticed some frayed fins on a couple of the albino cories that upset me. I'm suspicious that the dwarf gourami is the cause. Apparently, he's not satisfied with the flakes he gets, and he often swims to the bottom to peck at the food pellets. I see the cories become startled, and I am inclined to believe that he's nipping at them. This even happens with no food at the bottom, and the DG will just cruise there and harass the albinos. So one way or the other, either by direct nipping or DG-induced stress, I'm afraid he's leading to fin rot or something or other. It's worth noting that it seems to only be affecting a couple of the cories.

As for the algae, not only is the green hair algae becoming overwhelming to me and the plants, but other types of algaes are springing up and quite frankly, flummoxing me. Red algae growing on the edges of temple, spot algae on the leaves of my wendtii, dark-green algae tentacles woven in my ludwigia... they all must go.

After airing the issue in Aquamaniacs, I bought a Gh/kH test kit to help figure out my dissolved CO2, but basically, with my pH so high (~7.8), I knew the CO2 has to be pretty low. So I set out to make a "CO2 reactor" to replace my bubble ladder using these directions. First, I was pretty sure the Rio pump I got was defective because it was so noisy. The new one was a little less so, but I soon realized that the main problem was that choking the flow by restricting the flowrate caused the noise. I needed to hole out the top of the vacuum to allow the full volume of flow through (no necking). In the mean time, I'm using the behemoth vacuum I bought (I really wanted the large-diameter hose that came with it) for the reactor volume. Because it is so big, it canoot point down as directed, so I have it awkawrdly placed in the front of the tank shooting down at an angle to churn the CO2 bubbles. This will have to suffice until I get the smaller vacuum prepared.

Better Friends

To open this post, I'd like to openly criticize the ease with which blogs can be lost during composition. And now, I will have to painfully rewrite the 5 paragraphs I have just lost. G-mail has figured it out. Now it's time to catch up on the learning curve. Thanks BlogSpot.

Okay, where was I? As it turns out, it looks like the 30-gallon is just not big enough for two male drawf gouramis. One of them assumed the dominant role, and then I didn't even see the submissive one during feeding time. He became quite the hide and seek player, and it often took me several minutes before I found him tucked between some temple leaves or hiding under the plastic rock.

After consulting with my Aquamaniac friends, I decided to play it safe by returning the shy one versus buying another one to diffuse the negative attention. River City Exotics was gracious enough to welcome back their prodigal son with open arms. Getting him in the Zip-Loc bag to bring him there, was another story. With only one net at my disposal, I resorted to using my free hand to corral him. 30 minutes later, I finally managaed to scoop him up and fish him out (pardon my pun). It was suprisingly difficult to turn him over, but I think everyone is better off for this.

During all the comotion of trying to scare the gourami out of his hiding spots, I also stirred up several of the oto cats, so that I actually saw all 5 of them for the first time in as long as I can remeber (in all honesty, it had been so long, I assumed that I was down to three, just as I suspect I'm down to two kuhli loaches -- I just don't have, er, direct evidence of their demise).

I swung by the local PetsMart to pick up the lonely julii cory that I had been eyeing for the last 3 months, but of course, he was nowhere to be found. I can only hope someone had a similar idea and gave him a good home (wishful thinking, on my part, I know). I guess I'll just have to keep the spot open for another fish in need.

Speaking of which, it looks like the fish load in the 30-gallon is quite acceptable. The latest nitrate tests showed the that the 5-gallon was completely saturated (as expected, since we all know it is overstocked), but the 30-gallon was barely reading anything despite the extra gouramis and missing a weekly water change. I was pleasantly surprised. With the intensity of red increasing with increased nitrates, I think you can guess which test tube belongs to which tank.

As a side-note, I also picked up a teenie-tiny 3-gallon filter for the bucket (previously, I had bought a 10 gallon filter that turned out to be way too big), so I might add some ghost shrimp to tend to my plants.

As a side-note to my side-note, I realized it had been 4 months since the first Flourish tabs were put in, which is the longest one is supposed to wait between tab additions. So I put in a couple tabs near my amazon swords and temple plants, and then two half tabs by the rotala in the back and the star grass in the front. We'll see if this gets out of the substrate and inceases my nitrate count.