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I am assuming it will stretch out of the tank. Never saw one before, thought it was pretty neat.

Caught George and Tammy Spawning. He just does not fit where she chose. I did move the log back a bit after last time. It’s crammed against the back wall but there still is not enough space. So Im not sure these are fertile again. Video ended abruptly so I could chase Crystal away from the spawning site. Jealous any time George pays attention to Tammy.

First, I am so sorry for your losses. As others have suggested, my gut tells me chlorine. You can’t predict what the water companies will do to the water. One day the water supply may have no chlorine, and the next day chlorine and/or chloramines may be present. Most dechlorinators will remove heavy metals as well for the safety of the fish. As @Galabar and @Tlindsey have mentioned, chlorine will kill your beneficial bacteria as well and can lead to “new tank syndrome” (unstable parameters ie: ammonia spikes).

Echoing everyone else here in saying it was probably chlorine in the water, but I will add this: You mention you've never run into this issue before. Well, you've probably just been getting lucky with the chlorine levels present in the tap being low enough to not cause harm. Some municipal water systems are being required to increase their chlorine concentrations to improve drinking water safety. Other systems will do occasional temporary "flushes" of chlorine for a variety of reasons. It sounds to me that for some reason, the chlorine concentration increased sometime between your last water change and this most recent one. I'm sorry for your loss, and let this be a good lesson for the future.

Here the finished stand painted the shelf boards and then wrapped/stapled beneath plastic sheeting. Yeah yeah, wife bought the board trying to help. My 4 40s stands sits on solid actual plywood. Electrician wired in a clean circuit. Only thing left is dress up the wall.

I've kept planted aquariums for a while now but have over the past few years caught the MTS bug and recently tried my hand at casual breeding. The hobby has proved great for stress relief for me and is teaching me a lot about patience! Here are my 3 tanks (soon to be 3.5 as I will be moving my cory babies to their own grow out soon). 10 gallon: set up for about 1.5 years; stocked with breeding populations of neocardina and ramshorn snails; 1 mystery snail; 1 oto catfish; 6 pygmy corydoras; 9 emerald dwarf rasboras (7 adults and 2 juveniles). The rasboras produce a lot of fry but I've only gotten 2 to the age where I'm pretty confident they will make it to adulthood. 20 gallon long: set up since July 2023 (a replacement for my 40 gallon breeder which tragically sprung a leak); stocked with breeding populations of neocardina and ramshorn snails; 2 nerite snails; 1 mystery snail; 2 amano shrimp; 8 ember tetra; 5 adult peppered corydoras; 2 honey gourami. The peppered corydoras have started breeding, I believe spurred by lower tank temps this winter. I now have a mesh breeder box in the tank where I have hatched about 10 of 20 eggs I collected in there. The fry are now 2 weeks old and I plan to move them to a 5 gallon grow out until I decide what to do with them! 29 gallon: set up in early November 2023 and stocked in early December. The tank is my undergravel filter plus plants experiment, which seems to be going very well. Stocked with neocardina (which are rapidly being eaten!); 4 amano shrimp; 1 clown pleco; 7 variatus platys; and 3 male (yes, 3 male) cockatoo Apistogramma. This tank has been a little challenging. The breeder sent me 3 males, instead of a male and 2 females as requested. I am told by breeder that the 3 males should be ok as long as I have plenty of hiding spots and that I never add a female. So far there has been some flaring and chasing but no real fighting or injuries. I am monitoring closely as I think these guys are not yet fully grown adults, and I suspect the aggression could increase. The other difficulty with this tank is the prolonged ich outbreak which I think I have finally turned the tide on. Been treating for 2 weeks with Ich X (at 69-72 F...) and have finally seen lesions subside on most fish. I am fairly committed to running my tanks without heaters, as I have had bad experiences with them in the past, so I am ok with slow and steady treatment as long as everyone is doing well.

Dark slate, locally soured community tank. Heavy planted with shrimp, CO2, external filter and whit LED (recently upgraded to WRBG)

Having had 75g fw that grew a hard green algae on the glass that plastic scrappers couldn't remove, I thought I'd share this scrapper I made for saltwater coraline algae removal, which I used a few times a year on the fw glass. It is a 3/8" dowel with a thin curf cut made halfway through at an angle. A coping saw or a multitool blade makes a cut that a straight razor fits firmly into without being so tight it is dangerous to push on or take off. Works great! No scratches on a 4 y.o. Nuvo 10g. Do not use this on acrylic. Here is the angle Snow!

I’ll defiantly look into it. Looks like some great advice on this. And yes I quarantine any added fish even if I think they might be fine. Definitely not worth the risk. I do the med trio from the start tho and keep them in a separate tank. thanks for your help! Here is an image of the tank as well. Would I need to add some additional hiding areas with this current setup to keep a pleco happy?

Yes o gave each side a similar Apisto cave to ACO. Mine are cobalt. And each got a small coconut. Crystal likes the coconut. Tammy liked under a piece of wood but did the coconut hut this time.

Keeping fish simple on YouTube has some of the best info, he also visits other breeders and logs it all on video. The vedieos can be 1h+, I put it on when I do chores. There is some great I fo but it is hidden

This would assume that the food would know the size and species you are feeding. As someone that has been doing this for quite a while, you’ll learn to feed appropriately. You will mess up and overfeed and this will all be part of the lesson. I’ve learned you’re better off feeding too little than too much. Also are you feeding the fish or are you feeding the aquarium? All of this will factor in to the quantity of food fed.

Yes I want Baby George’s. But it’s progress from George fertilizing the plants and all eggs infertile to at least I had fertile eggs this time. I’m surprised. Mine are very peaceful. I even find both girls and George just hanging out on one side of the tanks. Knock on wood I’ve seen no overt aggression and when the girls get testy George splits them up.

Well, it’s been two weeks since I posted an update, and I went by LFS this past Monday to pick up my last crew of tank inhabitants (5 Lake Kamala Rainbowfish and 2 Reticulated Siamese Algae Eaters) to hopefully find a solution to the algae issue with my plants and the RSAEs did not disappoint. They have cleared out all my hair, BBA, and a little bit of white algae that was growing throughout my aquarium, additionally in spots I didn’t know was algae (Java fern roots were covered in them, I thought it was natural). They are both juveniles so they haven’t grown to their full size (like most of their roommates). I was expecting them to not get job done til week 2 or 3, not within a week. I wish I have gotten them sooner. They also bring a nice shade of tan into tank, while being very active and friendly to everyone else. There is still diatom on the glass, but the amount is nowhere near as numerous and consistent as the diatom was before, so the reduced light schedule helped with that. Now, my only concerns are that still of my Corymbosa Compacta plants and my Amazon Sword in the far right back of my aquarium. I actually got some more Compacta to replace the ones that were pretty much lost all of their leaves/literally broke off their own stems) from Dustin Fishtanks. However, I can’t help but notice that some of the originals and newbies are losing leaves. The originals still have many of their leaves, but are looking more barren, and the newbies had a few of their stems broke in transit, but I buried them a little deeper than I like, in hope they would be fine. Does anyone know if stem plants can recover despite losing so many leaves and do their stems grow back if they are broken off for whatever reason (they still have their leaves and roots attached to the remaining stem piece)? As for my Amazon Sword, it has been in seemingly a state of dormant. It has shown no growth nor decay for about a month now, if not, a little more. Even with my RSAEs eating most, if not all of the algae on them. Should I be worried?

I have 6 fry myself atm, and 3 eggs! They ley eggs in a plastic container with moss, 1/3 of the days I have eggs. They 're in a heavy planted tank so I guess the other days they just lay them where ever. I wash the moss in tank water and suck the eggs out with a syringe. this is one of mine, 2 weeks old

I wish I could have gotten better images of this one, but here’s a cool shrimp. You can see his little face peeking out from the botanical he is cleaning.

I always worry whether or not Flint (pleco) is getting enough to eat, but one day I found him in the food dish when the light clicked on. And this morning I found “evidence”. So he’s feeding at night. During the day he eats catappa leaf, banana leaf, and wood. Also there is Button eating some of the zucchini.

Went by the new restaurant for a meeting with the GM today. The new restaurant is the one next to the LFS, and I needed some algae wafers so I popped in there. Snatched em off the shelf and headed to the counter. Said what’s up to my boy Tyler. He rang me up and I told him I’d like to use my store credit. He asks for my last name and goes, “Dang, dude. You’ve really racked up the credit!” I responded with, “Panda Angels, man. It’s all those Panda Angels”. Tyler goes, “Those are lucrative for you. Nice! By the way, we just sold the last of those Pandas and could use some more”. I shot off an email to the manager and I’m hoping to take them the next batch on Thursday. Could be just about perfect as that should leave me with about 10, and then I have the whole next spawn ready to move out of the 10 gallon grow out here shortly. The last 10 should be a good stop gap while I grow out this next spawn. I should really try to get these guys in the RPP program, or at least see if they’ll bring in some Xtreme food for me. That credit wouldn’t be stacked so high if they sold the foods I use. Maybe I just need to branch out and try some other things from their selection, but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Or maybe I’ll need some new hardscape. They did have some nice new piles of rocks that I saw today… Who knows. Only time will tell.

After a lot of online stalking, I used my ancient carpenter to make my own stands. I'm finishing up the shelves. I have room on two stands for 4 20 long and an under rack of 10s. The color was carefully chosen from the discount bin. Pic to show over all and the joints.

I would think there was either some sort of contamination or dechlorination wasn't used. 😞 There was a youtube video that matches exactly what you experienced and the guy realized after he forgot dechlorinator. I can't find the video because of search algorithm recommendation issues, but yeah.... I would recommend using dechlorinator. My condolences.

Either my male is confused or a bit slow but he scares me. His idea of dirty dancing for the girls is rolling on his side contorting his body. The same way they would if he was actually fertilizing eggs. But he does it in the center of the tank 🤪 Every time I see it I think he is dying. Then I see both girls looking on and rubbing on him. Tammy apparently had no fry. Yesterday she dropped her war paint and today her and Crystal both have on their sexy man catching dress. So I was vacuuming the tank today when George decided to put on a show. They have no fear of me it the siphon. I have to stop suction and nudge them out if my way. Today I stopped siphoning to try to video his Fish Dirty Dancing. By the time I dried my hands he stopped. With as violently as he shakes I half wonder if he isn’t fertilizing the water column and that’s why I keep getting infertile eggs?? So this is them not doing what I’m trying to video 🤣🤣🤣

Both girls are on eggs as of yesterday. George was a busy boy.

Everyone has them, I will make a journal too! I kept fish when I was little, but we ofcourse did it all wrong. Later when I decided to start doing fishkeeping, I did a lot of reading and research. Sometimes it feels like I like the planning and reading more than the actual keeping. My first was a tank my boss had at work in office, which was also completely wrong, but he allowed me to remake it and take care of it for few years and at the end, take it home. I also did the mistake of starting with my own 20 liter, which bought me nothing but grief but also a lot of experience and love for nano fish. In 2012 I purchased my largest tank and since then I slowly graduated to two larger and at this moment four smaller tanks, so I have six 🙂 South American tank, 120x50x60cm. My oldest physical tank, the setup is about 2 years old though I keep meddling in it. It houses top to bottom, 6 hatchet fish, 20 or so ember tetras, 20 rummynose tetras, 4 bolivian rams, 12 sterbai corydoras, 6 otocinclus, several amanos. I sometimes consider adding something, but do not know what Asian tank, running for a year, 110x40x45cm. I am quite satisfied with this, though it is basically only two species because the hillstreams do not work. I feel like it may need something, but not sure what and with all the cloud minnow fry, I am reaching capacity. 20 golden white cloud minnow, 12 normal white cloud minnow, 4 older fry and 9 still doing some growing in another tank. 7 panda garra, one remaining hillstream loach "Window" tank, 60x30x30 cm, it is the one I inherited from my boss free of charge 🙂 It houses my colony of rabbit snails, I only have 2 adults now, but 11 babies that were born in the past year. In August I bought a group of 10 pseudomugil luminatus, which have quickly become my most favorite fish. They also breed and I have several fry of various sizes. Am very curious about their future. I know the pH water params shouldnt work for this combo, but they do. Office tank - 56x25x36 cm, it is a very old tank someone gave me with various chips in the corners, so I live in constant adrenaline state of when it will leak. It houses my 6 clown killifish, I think I saw some fry but they have been in there only since beginning of August. I think later on, when I have some generations, I will consider scarlet badis/tiger badis or some other bottom dweller. Shrimp tank - 40x25x25cm, this is my smallest tank. Houses my red cherry shrimp colony and eight Indostomus Paradoxus, that I have had since this march. They are easy to please but they do not breed for me, not sure if it is the shrimp/snails or something else Cube - 40x40x40cm tank. My last and temporary tank. Or so I say. It is again very very old tank, so I live with constant thrill of waiting for it to leak. This means I am trying to not stock it, but it taunts me with how well the plants are doing with zero light, except its position near window. I set it up quickly in June for my paradise fish, to have it as a solitary. Since then I left my colony of sterbais for over a month in vain attempt to breed, successfully spawned my minnows and now I am playing around with the idea of breeding otocinclus from my south american tank, but I will have to catch them first and since I started considering it, I didnt see a single one. Otherwise I am tempted by the scarlet badis, maybe a betta, honey gourami, pygmy corydoras, so many fish!!! I am trying to stay strong though I will post here if I do something interesting.

After months of gathering, bartering, trading, scraping, boiling, soaking, cleaning, and most of all waiting we have finally started setting up our 40 gallon breeder tank. The plan is for it to be a heavily planted community tank stocked mostly with fish that are described as "easy to breed". We already have guppies and cherry shrimp in our current 14g. The plan is to move them over once things are cycled. Odds are some ramshorns will tag along for the ride... Once things are established the plan is to add three honey gourami (1 male 2 female) and some hill stream loach or otos (maybe both...). For now the next steps are 1) Get a lid 2) Get substrate 3) Get a light 4) Settle on a final hardscape layout and glue things in place 5) Order some more plants

I been looking for some fancy livebearers that would work with my setup for a few years now. • Cooler temperatures • Softwater • 6.5-6.8 ph • Heavy waterchange • Smaller aquarium size Started with guppies and mollies but they just fell apart in my water over a few weeks. The few time I picked up platies didn't work out or never bred. I was able to start with this line swortails and this line seems to adjust well with my setup. They are on their 3rd generation, going from 55-70f and 80-90% cooler water changes. Now since they are surviving the fun began lol It's time to start setting up breeding goals. • Color - haven't really decide what would be more fun and more of an challenge • Size - most breeder would breed for the largest fish, but I'm breeding for a smaller fish. It doesn't make sense since I mainly have 10-20gallon aquarium. I can keep them in bigger group. • Less aggression - I want to be able to put a decent group in smaller aquarium • Conformation - looking for a longer stream fish over a thick body fish. A very long sword. This project will be a male line project. Male line project is a project where all decisions is made to improve the males of species regardless how the female looks. Female line project is the opposite where all decisions is made for the female conformation regardless how those males turn out. For example it's very hard to get a slim long casting male from female line you bred to be big and thick Hopefully all goes well

A while back when a certain store has their tank sale I bought four tanks, did some cleaning out in the garage, and set up a mini rack. There is always something else going on outside of the tanks themselves too. It's all powered by a dual channel air pump and a gang valve. Here's what I have going on from top to bottom, left to right: - in the window there are a few infusoria, seed shrimp, and daphnia backup cultures - on the top reach I have the most recent batch of Nothobranchius Guentheri fry that are only about a week old and two Fundulopanchax Gresensi fry that are about a month old now - on bottom the first 10 gallon has Japan blue gold guppies (initially from @Patrick_G), in the second 10 gallon tank there are Nothobranchius Guentheri from my other journal, in the first 5 gallon there are young Nothobranchius Eggers, in the 5 gallon there are juvenile Nothobranchius Guentheri who will soon go in with the older ones - on the side there is my son's Venus flytrap, a few jars with random stuff for infusoria/snails/random inverts, and a brine shrimp hatchery - not pictured the two buckets on the floor one for dirty water and another with clown water for small changes. Also my workbench with live cultures of grindal worms, vinegar eels, and micro worms

So I did a thing. I have created a Walstad shrimp jar. I followed her instructions here. I tried to find as many of the plants she used as I could, but I could not find the exact ones. I used Rosette sword, bacopa, and dwarf hairgrass. I added a piece of driftwood that has been in the fish tank a few months. It will provide biofilm and bacteria. I was going to add a piece of cholla wood, but there really wasn’t room once I added the hairgrass. The plants are more important. Since I changed my mind on the jar, my light would not fit on the lip. I improvised a solution. Hopefully the Iron Sheik does not mind too much. 😉 Next I am going to plug the light into a Christmas light timer. I have not added any critters yet, but the water I used is water from the shrimp tank. I had some extra hairgrass that I added to the shrimp tank and to Geppetto’s (betta) tank. My neighbor has some bladder snails. Perhaps I will add one or two to this jar. I also hope to add floating plants.

I'm moving my journal over from another forum. I've made intros here before, this is my most recent project. I managed to win the AGA Dutch-style aquascape competition last year. I am hoping it wasn't a fluke, so I'm going to try again this year. In its current format, this tank is not Dutch-style. But you must learn how to grow before you can garden, and I am still learning how to grow. This tank uses 6 T5HO lights and inert gravel, both of which are new to me. I need to get a handle on what plants do well in these conditions before I start massaging this to actually look like a Dutch-style aquarium. What other projects? I also dabble with ponds, wabi kusa, and living walls. I am interested in trying my hand at a really great paludarium and biotope someday, but for the time being I don't have the bandwidth. Most aquarium projects are on hold right now as I bought a house last fall that has needed pretty constant repair. A few warnings: I'm not a great writer. I have given up on trying to be super scientific and precise, so if you ask me a specific question my answer may be hand-wavey. Try to keep in mind that the way I do things is only one of a whole spectrum of ways to keep successful aquaria. I am no an expert, just a guy semi-obsessed with one of the nichest hobbies imaginable. Current dosing: 15 ppm Ca, 12.2 g CaSO4,2H2O 7.5 ppm Mg, 14.4 g MgSO4,7H2O 7.2 ppm NO3/ 3.33 g 2.8 ppm PO4/ 1.5 g 15.2 ppm K2SO4/ 5.19 g

I'm typically just a lurker on forums but figured I'd like a place to track my progress of my tank. I've been enjoying all the co-op podcast and reading everyone journals. I got into planted tanks and aquarium's in general a few months ago. I found a great deal on a 10 gallon water box on Facebook. Was suppose to be a cheap low tech tank but it spiralled out of control. Ended up getting a fzone CO2 generator and ledstar aq-s 40. My next purchase will be a canister filter, currently using a filter from a different tank. I played with the hardscape for a few hours but was never really sure about it. I changed route and just went for more of a dutch style. I was very lucky to find a local person who was able to supply me with all the plants and a ton of info. Here is day 1 after planting and filling the tank up All the plants came from a green house with very high humidity. Only a few had a little melt. I let everything adjust to it's emersed form for a week. I ended up trimming the tops off and replanting a few. Also moved a lot around. Here is 10 day in and where I'm at today. Not sure what I will stock this with. Thinking cpd or phoenix rasbora if I can find some. Put a few endlers hybrid fry that was getting gobble up with my other tank.

Hi all, I'm an aquascaper / small scale hobby breeder / Aquascape lease startup atm, I have a 5G shrimp tank, 20G community tank low tech and 40G high tech.I hope to learn and share findings about breeding, setup's quality of life hacks,....

Welcome! Glad to have you join the group 😀

I went to my LFS a few minutes ago and got some moss, the guy threw a bunch of a different plant in the bag as well. Anyone have an idea what it is? It reminds me of one of the little crypts.

I have both dwarf seg. and Cryptocoryne parva, this one is Cryptocoryne parva for sure

Hello fellow european !

@Augustjd27 is there a reason you've avoided or not used decholor up to this point? I'm trying to ask this honestly and fairly, and without my own opinions on the matter being obvious... having difficulty 😞 Is it cost? Have you been told it's not necessary? Do you not trust the products or mfrs? Was 25% a higher amount of water change than usual? Anything else different? New fish in the past few months? Plants?

Water change day. Due to this I overfed the big tank with bloodworms in order to have corydoras eat their fill, otherwise the tetras will get to them, and this way I can easily get rid of the excess. All tanks are doing ok, I am awaiting new air pump and new plants to come. The frogbit on the clown killifish tank is massive! wide and massive. Fun

Before and after. I've been traveling a lot so haven't had time to trim. It's crazy how much happier the fish look when they have some room to swim. I'm also trying out Limnophila sp. Wavy and Hygrophila odora for the back left, since the Hygrophila difformis kept bolting to the surface and looking all messy.

looks like it will do a fine job, and nothing wrong with discount bin brown!

I have a pair of peacock gudgeons right now and they mostly keep to themselves. Very colorful fish and they’re super fun to watch in a planted tank. They’re very photogenic too 😁

(1) Before leaving home, feed live foods heavily. Lots of Daphnia, Baby Brine Shrimp, whatever you have on hand. (2) Adjust conditions to promote spawning behavior: especially for NANF, leave certain tank lights on (i.e. turn _off_ the timer), add a stone tray for riverine egg scatterers, open a vent to a basement fishroom to allow temperatures from central air to lift from mid 60s past the golden threshold of 70-F... (3) After everything has settled down, kids are tucked in bed . . . post a thread about how neat it will be when you return home in a few days to find your fish have been spawning while you were away at your in-laws 😎

Home from Christmas on the in-laws farm. Here is a look at what has been going on in the fishroom…

Restarted some cultures because the garage was getting stinky... I got a new light for my birthday recently abd it's much bluer than those grow lights but it has a timer built in which is nice. Plus it feels less likely to fall apart. Turns out a coworker of mine keeps fish too. He gave me a grocery bag full of guppy grass. I'm using half of it to give the female nothobranchius Guentheri more hiding places. Here's a close up on the tank on the left. It's actually put together to look nice But it's a bit overgrown. A close up of a suspicious gathering... One of the nothobranchius Eggersi males watching over his spawning site

My helper stole my chair while I was doing some water changes

The biggest change is I no longer have the hygrophila 53b and replaced it with pogostemon erectus. String algae is still around. New growth is looking better with the increased K and N and more regular micros. I also added a couple root tabs under the crypts and limnophila aromatics. Speaking of which, I'm undecided on the limnophila aromatica. It's super slow growing, but the leaves look healthy. The big question is whether I can propagate enough to make a Dutch-style bush before the next AGA competition. In other layout changes I need to adjust the bucephalandra bush shape as it's super awkward right now. I also want to put some Monte Carlo in front of the crypt nurii. As I've mentioned before, I like the dramatic changes in height you get from low carpeting plants but the dwarf baby tears just didn't thrive in this setup. Monte Carlo is pretty bulletproof, so hopefully it will work out. Overall I like the direction this is heading. It needs some serious refining but it has good bones. It probably looks underwhelming to most people, but that's the way it goes. It takes months from getting the layout down to growing the plants to maturity.

After checking with the Aquarium Co-op test strips, NO3 appeared to be below 10 ppm before a water change so I increased my dosage 4 ppm. I also increased K because of the pinholing. All numbers below are for 50 gallons of water change volume, and the water is R/O. 15 ppm Ca, 12.2 g CaSO4,2H2O5 ppm Mg, 9.6 g MgSO4,7H2O20 ppm NO3, 6.2 g KNO36 ppm PO4, 1.6 g KH2PO420 ppm K (35 ppm total), 8.5 g K2SO4 The GSAS auction was this weekend. It was financially a loss when I consider how little some of the stuff I brought sold for. The way I look, at it I've also bought things at auction way below market value, and the things I sold were not paying rent to live in my house anyways. They are better off with someone who will love them. The good news is I picked up everything I wanted and more. I bought a hardy aponogeton for the pond, myriophyllum roraima, eriocaulon Vietnam, and one of the people I lost a bidding war gifted me almost half their bag of Blyxa japonica. Best of all, I managed to buy a school of eight rhadinocentrus ornatus for $34! Way better than I could get elsewhere. The current plants are (roughly L-R): Vallisneria spiralis Tiger, Hygrophila siamensis "53B", Crypt nurii "Luminous Green", crypt wendtii "tropica", Rotala rotundifolia, Alternanthera reineckii, Acmella repens, Blyxa japonica, Microsorum pteropus "India", Lobelia Cardinalis, Ludwigia ovalis "Pink", Pogostemon erectus, Bucephalandra "Kedagang", Eriocaulon Vietnam, Limnophila aromatica "Red", Myriophyllum roraima, and callicostella prabaktiana on the back wall. I removed the big log as it just wasn't doing it for me. I also mounted the java fern on needlepoint mesh since it was just awkward on the little stick it was mounted on I did a water change on the tub ponds to clear out extra schmutz that accumulated over the winter. They already have some scuds and chironomid larvae growing in there, and I just seeded them with a copepod culture I bought at the auction. Eventually the rhadinocentrus ornatus will go in my carnivorous plant tub and the rainbow shiners will go in the backyard urn that has some crushed coral in the bottom. The water was 54 degrees when I checked today, which I think is technically warm enough for both those species, but I would prefer to wait another week or two just to be safe. In the meantime, it's great having 30+ fish in this tank! They are all peaceful but still attack food like a pack of piranhas.

Things are going pretty well, still some algae but the fish are happy and eating voraciously. I got some Venezuelan corydoras that I absolutely love. The tank went two weeks without a water change as the RO system has taken longer than expected to set up. As I mentioned there was some algae but a lot of the plants are doing well. I'm really liking some of the new specimens, especially ludwigia ovalis "pink", acmella repens, and this crazy huge mystery blyxa species I picked up. I put my old 36" Chihiros WRGB on the tank, and I gotta say I think I like it more than the T5's. It's just so much easier to dial in a nice spectrum. It also has a lot less light bleed. The pictures below show the difference when the tank is viewed from farther back. T5: Chihiros: One of the receptacles in the T5 fixture stopped working, and this is out of warranty. I'm considering just selling it as is and getting a fancy modern LED. The other advantage of the LED's is that as a point-source light, it shows off the iridescence of the rainbow fish way better. These are seriously stunning fish, they are just so hard to capture. Full tank shot with the beginnings of a "Dutch street" below

Not really journal related but it was pretty cool to see my aquarium in Amazonas magazine!

Got some fish! Melanotaenia trifasciata Habgood River and notropis chromosis. I want to try the rainbow shiners outside this summer. I'm gonna probably get some cories down the line when I know this tank can handle a bigger bioload. The rainbows are fairly small but already have a nice blue sheen. I'm looking forward to watching them grow out.

I got ahold of the club par meter and finally did some testing with some different bulb combos. I only tested par at one spot on the substrate to get even comparisons. Overall I found that as long as the sensor wasn't shaded, the PAR levels were remarkably even across the length and width of the tank. For the pictures, I used a tripod and the same settings for every photo (1/125 shutter speed, ISO 400). I'm going to post all the pics at the end so they are easier to compare. Combo 1: ATI purple, Geisemann Flora, AgroLED Bloom, Geisemann Tropic, Geisemann Flora, Geisemann Super Purple 96 PAR. This is the combo I've been using for the past month or so. It looks pretty good in person, but looks too cool and unnatural in photos. I'm pretty much just using all my expensive bulbs here. Combo 2: 6500K, ATI purple, Geisemann Flora, AgroLED Bloom, Geisemann Tropic, Geisemann Flora, Geisemann Super Purple, 6500K 115 PAR. I like the look of this combo, maybe the best, but I'm not trying to blast this much PAR into the tank right now. I've done higher light than this before, but you start to lose color definition between different green plants. I'm assuming this is due to higher anthocyanin and carotenoid production to protect the leaves from high light-- many plants will tend towards yellow and pink hues at the tips. For a Dutch-style aquarium a slightly lower par is better. Growth is more manageable and the entire system is more forgiving. Combo 3: Geisemann Flora, Agroled Bloom, Geisemann Tropic, ATI Purple 64 PAR. This is what I was running for the first month the aquarium was running. It does not photograph well on a phone camera, but overall a nice bulb combo. I was seeing some plants reaching (longer internode distance) at this PAR level. Combo 4: 6500K, Geisemann Flora, Feisemann Super Purple, 6500K 46 PAR. I didn't care for this one. Everything looked kind of washed out. Combo 5: 6500K, Geisemann Flora, AgroLED Bloom, Geisemann Tropic, Geisemann Flora, Geisemann Super Purple 94 PAR. I replaced one of the purple lights with a 6500K from my usual setup to try to get a warmer color temp. I really like this combo. It's lucky I like it because while setting my ATI purple bulb down I accidentally smashed it... Combo 6: Geisemann Flora, AgroLED Bloom, Geisemann Tropic, Geisemann Flora, Geisemann Super Purple 80 PAR. This is just from removing the generic 6500K. It's essentially one less purple bulb from where I started. 80 PAR at substrate should be high enough to grow just about any plant while still being very manageable. I'm strongly considering getting a 3000K bulb. The old Dutch tanks tend to have a yellowish tone that makes them feel warm and nostalgic, and I'm thinking a 3000K bulb (warm white, like an incandescent light) might help achieve that look. Combo 1 Combo 2 Combo 3 Combo 4 Combo 5 Combo 6 Conclusions: The two biggest takeaways for me are that you can's tell at all how powerful a light is based on a picture, and that there is not a huge difference between a generic light and a fancy German aquarium T5 when it comes to par. Also, I was using too much purple.

I trimmed some Ludwigia rubin, Alternanthera reineckii "variegated," Lobelia cardinalis, and Bacopa caroliniana to sell at the GSAS auction tomorrow. I also got rid of some plants that I've had since November that just weren't doing well: Lagenandra meboldii "green," Rotala wallichii "long leaf," and Mayaca sp. "Santarem Red Fireworks." As you can see below, they were far from thriving. My (poorly kept) secret is that I'm not particularly good at growing plants. I just try a bunch out, and only keep the ones that do well. Different plants want different conditions, and if you try to change parameters to fit one plant you will inevitably throw them off for another. Much better in my opinion to just keep plants that like the soup you're serving. On the positive side, I'm really happy with the recovery of my Microsorum pteropus sp. India. After a few months in a low tech tank it was looking super rough, and the existing stock is recovered from almost bare rhizomes. It's a variety with somewhat narrow but very short leaves. The Cryptocoryne nurii "Luminous green" has been looking really good as well, and a third tiny plant is starting to pop up. At the current rate it seems like it makes a new plant every three leaves or so. I love the brown and green stripey pattern on its leaves. Here is the current dosing. These are given for a 50 gallon water change volume, not based on the whole tank (75 galon) volume: 15 ppm Ca, 12.2 g CaSO4,2H2O 7.5 ppm Mg, 14.4 g MgSO4,7H2O 16 ppm NO3, 5 g KNO3 6 ppm PO4, 1.6 g KH2PO4 16 ppm K (30 ppm total), 6.75 g K2SO4 Overall I'm happy where things are. If things go as planned I should be getting some fish in here soon. I'm still fighting algae more than in a mature tank but the healthy plant mass is reaching that critical point where algae can no longer take hold. Today's maintenance was about three hours due to pulling algae, replacing an empty CO2 tank, and trimming, but I should be able to get that down to about half that time soon enough.