Light Up My Tank

The rotala indica has been one of the more noticeable beneficiaries of the increase in CO2, and it is hanging over the front of the tank, much to the detriment of the lower plants. The glosso was taking a definite hit, and the upper rotala branches were emerging from the water, so I spent a bit of time Saturday morning clearing out all of the extra foliage.


Rotala indica was not the only victim, although it was the most thoroughly butchered. I also grabbed some ludwigia, stargrass, bacopa, foxtail, temple, a crypto wendtii, and some watersprites. This picture gives you an idea of what I had to throw away, much less that freezer bag worth of stuff that I brought to Alamo Aquatics.

The extra CO2 has been great for growth, and it's led to consistently high pearling all week, but the extra consumption has already "emptied" the tank. That is, the pressure is dropping below 1000 psi, so all the liquid CO2 has been consumed. I'm thinking about buying a 5 lb tank to increase the time between refills (aquariumplants.com has some affordable ones). If I stick with this higher flowrate, I'll have to refill more than once a month. With gas prices what they are, I'll probably save money. I'm also motivated by the fact that my tank seems to be breaking; it seems to leak after every refill, and I'm not sure they can keep tightening whatever nut that's causing trouble.


My new bulbs (26 watt, 6400 K) from 1000bulbs.com came in late last week, so I replaced them today (the far right and middle left bulbs). I even found a use for the extras, because my girlfriend's having some light bulbs go out on her, but unfortunately, the temperature does not match the orangey color of her existing bulbs.

I'm planning on replacing two every four months, giving them eight months each. Before I flush a bunch of money down the toilet, though, I think I'll check on some forums to make sure they really lose 50% of their brightness or whatever after six months. I was surprised I couldn't notice more of a different between the new and old bulbs when they were plugged in.

Here's what I scared up about light intensity over time. Maybe The plan will be to replace two every 9 months; that way they'll be replaced when they are 1.5 years old.

I found a cherry shrimp that was as brilliant a red as any I've seen while ripping up the rotala indica. Since then, he's been hanging out a bit with the temple, creating some very striking images, with the bold reds and greens complementing each other nicely. Humorously, this was among the same shrimp sold to me originally as "blue-black algae-eating shrimp".

Also, in regards to the 5-gallon tank, the black skirts are doing much better since the medication and seem to have reestablished their territories, I suppose. I see a tiger shrimp on occasion, but I really have no clue as to how many are still alive. There is a new wendtii shoot that I'm pretty excited about; hopefully this means I won't have to go in and destroy the substrate in an attempt to add more plants again.

The water change I did scared up the bamboo shrimp from who knows wear; he was looking a little pale, but he also looked pretty stressed out as he tried to hide.

Raising the Stakes

Upset that my drop checker was not budging from blue (although I measured the pH down in the 7.2-7.4 range a couple days ago), I decided Tuesday morning to jack up the CO2 rate by raising the regulated gage pressure 40 psi. If there's any kind of linear correlation between pressure and bubble rate, I should emit 33% more bubbles.

After the first day, I did not see any marked improvement in the drop checker color, but I did notice considerably more pearling; especially on plants where it doesn't usually occur. Tonight, I still saw lots of pearling, and I might have even seen the drop checker move off of blue and become something of a sea green. The red lotus is taking on a real deep red, and the leaves are really stretching out and expanding.

The Foster & Smith magazine I get offers very reasonably priced Azoo pumps, so I may have to replace my Rio pump. Hopefully, I could get something more powerful to increase the efficiency of the CO2 diffuser, but at the very least, I'd like to get something a little quieter.

Also, the curviceps are looking really brilliant lately. The "female" is much lighter on the bottom half of her body, almost an iridescent blue. The "male's" stripes are very well defined, and tend to appear to stretch down further than the female's. Both of their dorsal fins are quite colorful when unfurled.

Where'd The CO2 Go?

I don't know! (Thanks Ween!)

Seriously, though. So I decided to finally get off my butt and make some 4 degree KH water to retry the whole drop checker thing. I believe I did a pretty good job of getting it as close as I could, but that means something like within plus or minus 0.5 degrees. I wasn't really willing to (nor did I have enough distilled water to) do the measuring in big batches, that is several test tubes worth of water so that a drop was closer to a quarter of a degree or something.

Anyway, I looked up the amount of baking soda it takes to do this, and it turns out to be 1 teaspoon per 50 LITERS! Um, that's very little baking soda in 0.1 liters. So I literally sprinkled whatever stuck to my fingers in my Nalgene bottle. I actually did a pretty good job, and got it to 6 degrees KH by that method. I then added enough water to dilute it down to 4 degrees as best I could.

I added two drops of pH indicator to my plastic doo-hickey, and then filled it the rest of the way with my "special" water. It turned blue like it was supposed to, but after placing it in the aquarium, I found it didn't change color, much less the color I wanted (green).

As a sanity check, I checked the pH of the aquarium, and was disturbed/disappointed to find it to be a solid 7.8. Thinking that perhaps the KH had increased, I found it to be 13 dKH; higher than the expected 9 dKH, but according to the calculator, it only adds up to a paltry 6 ppm CO2. That is not good. In fact it's quite sad. I have not yet figured out why it is so, but I'm going to try looking again tomorrow after the CO2 comes on, but before the lights come on.

Trouble in Paradise

I don't know if I just simply don't remember how they used to act in the 5-gallon, but the black skirt tetras seem to be overly aggressive toward each other in their new digs. Either I was used to their more moderate temperaments in their spacier 30-gallon home, and they had always had skirmishes in the 5-gallon, or they are not adjusting so well after getting to spread their fins in the bigger tank.

Either way, I thought I had lost one on Thursday. I fed them in the morning and only two bothered to come up to feed. I looked everywhere for the third (I thought he was a little too big for his carcass to hide from me), and finally found him wedged between the piece of driftwood and the side of the tank. I fetched my net, ready to fish out his carcass, but when I moved the driftwood, he swam away, relieved to be free.

Unfortunately, when I spied him Friday morning, his left flank and left eye were both visibly damaged. Combined with some questionable scales on the other two (are they harassing each other that vigorously?!), I added a half tab of Fungus Clear to help ward of infection and give them a chance to heal.

(For my own sanity, I tested for ammonia and nitrites, and both came back zero)

The plan now is to remove the driftwood and add that wendtii that's been hiding in the back corner of my 30-gallon tank under low-light conditions for quite some time. It's nice and tall by now, so I hope to use it to obscure the heater and add some cover in the back of the tank.

As an aside, though it's very difficult for me to get a good picture of it with my current photography equipment, the bamboo shrimp continues to fascinate me. I saw him filtering the filter output this morning, so I stirred about a food pellet I had left in the box a couple of day ago, and I got to see him capture some of the particulates. It was something else to watch his fan hands accumulate food, disappear to his mouth, and reemerge completely clean and ready to go to work again. He's a little redder these days, so I'm guessing he's getting comfortable in his new skin, er, exoskeleton.

Like A Glove

So yesterday, I moved the black skirt tetras back to the 5 gallon tank in order to generate some nitrates for the plants in there, but more so to nip any potential conflict with the curviceps in the bud before it has time to blossom. Poor guys generally take a back seat to whatever I'm doing, but they sure are hearty and seem to take everything in stride -- I've had all three from the beginning. I just hope they can readjust to living in such cramped quarters again.

I was afraid that I my bamboo shrimp had died, but I quickly realized I had spied his molting. This would not be a concern at all except I have not decided yet how aggressive those curviceps are towards lesser members of the animal kingdom. I've even noticed otos swimming away at their approach, although they can be skittish to begin with.

I had assumed the bamboo shrimp would be hiding somewhere while he waited for his exoskeleton to harden, but I found him hanging upside down from the spray bar, looking oranger than usual. I paid close attention when the curviceps swam by him, but fortunately, they did not seem to be particularly interested in eating him.

One more note from yesterday, I went to Alamo and got some cichlid food. However, I discovered that they don't bother, and actually feed their cichlids flakes, not special pellets. Apparently, it's pretty much all the same stuff.