RockMongler

I have found an interesting issue in my tank late yesterday after doing a water change, specifically a cooler water change. One of my hillstream loaches (Beaufortia kweichowensis) suddenly appeared to have a fairly large wound on top of their head (was still red with blood when I first observed it a few hours after the water change), along with a moderate amount of fin damage. I have gotten the individual moved into a hospital tank (2.5 gallon kit from walmart, with small power filter and an air stone) with aquarium salt. However, I am kind of baffled as to what could have happened. My tank is populated by white cloud mountain minnows, a single otocinclus, 4 total hillstream loaches (one is now in the hospital tank), a fairly large number of red cherry shrimp, malaysian trumpet snails, bladder snails, and a small assemblage of things like detritus worms, planaria, and hydra. I am not entirely sure what could have caused the wounds (I haven't gotten a good chance with good lighting to get a good picture of the wounded individual). Nothing in particular is known to be super aggressive and mean. I'm not sure if it was a territorial spat between loaches or one of the whiteclouds getting nibbly. From what I've read, the loaches supposedly don't have the right kind of mouth to nibble on each other, and fights are normally just 'topping' where they scoot around and determine their pecking order. The white clouds have been a bit more rambunctious in their mating displays as of late, but that is almost entirely done in the middle of the water column, and it's usually just the males flaring their fins and looking intimidatingly at one another (though a few of the males do have nibble marks in their fins, but it's not always the easiest thing to spot). The otocinclus is usually super friendly, and i think has basically zero possibility of harming anything but algae and biofilm. The snails and shrimp I think are in a similar situation as the otocinclus; harmless to any of the major denizens of my tank. I wonder if the cooler water change (~65 F water into a ~72 F tank) just set off some slightly more aggressive tendencies related to spawning among my fish, and the one poor individual was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or if I should be more worried about returning them from the hospital tank to the main tank. Any thoughts?

That's kind of specifically what I mean by complex. It is not a simple system. It's complex because there are a lot of things going on at once in the same system, and a chemistry layperson (which is most people in the world, and the hobby) is going to assume everything always works out as nicely as you learned in a high school chemistry course. There are a lot of 'moving parts' in the chemistry of our tanks. The kind of chemistry most people get taught in school doesn't necessarily dig into systems where there are tons of things going on, and only look at clean, closed, ideal conditions. As someone who teaches high school chemistry, I wouldn't want to even start talking about partial combustion considering the hard time most people have with the super straight forward basic chemistry concepts. The big take away for most fish keepers is that the ideal reaction you look up for something usually isn't the whole picture. If you run out of one thing that the reaction is relying upon, different things are very likely to happen with the remaining materials. They won't always just sit there and do nothing.

The thing to remember about chemistry, especially in complex systems like a fish tank, is the 'ideal' reaction (which are the ones you look up for sodium thiosulfate and chlorine/chloramine) isn't the only possibility. Sometimes the excess sulfate that isn't binding up the stuff you want out of your water, will react with the oxygen. Its the same way that burning methane ususally doesn't generate carbon monoxide, it ususally makes water and carbon dioxide. But, if you are burning methane under lower oxygen conditions, you can start getting carbon monoxide forming instead of carbon dioxide.

Looking pretty great! The rocks holding down the log definitely looks better than the bag-o-gravel you had before. As to disposing of culls/casualties to another animal... Sounds fine to me. I take my casualties and bury them in my patio plants for a proper recycling into the environment. I've considered letting my house cat have a go at jumpers (particularly red cherry shrimp), but I worry that it might upset her tummy, especially if they have been dead for an indeterminate amount of time. Taking culls and using them as food for others may seem cruel to some, but that is just how nature is sometimes. The circle of life. It is more natural than killing them with cold/chemicals otherwise and provides food/enrichment to the predatory species. Its not that different than livebearers self-culling the young that are small enough to get chomped on by adults.

I have some of the 'newer' ones that come in the foil packs after seeing the co-op video about the older versions. They do seem to be super messy, but my cherry shrimp really like it, and my white cloud mountain minnows go kinda wild for the bits of the tab the shrimp throw into the water column. The big problem comes from the hillstream loaches going up and using its face to shove the tab from the side glass into the gravel. Then, it's pretty much only snails and shrimp that get to eat any of it before it breaks apart into the substrate. I never got to try the old formulation, so I don't know if the loaches did the same with the old style. I'm probably gonna burn through the product I have now but not bother replacing it when I run out. With WCMM, I never got the swarm of fish right up front like you see more often with live bearers or tetras with the tabs. I have plenty of other good foods that everyone in my tank likes (repashy, xtreme, bug bites, hikari etc).

Remember, the reason people inject CO2, is because CO2 is a small portion of the air we breathe, but is very important for plant growth. It's tricky to get your water anywhere near CO2 saturated just from the air in a room at any given moment. Oxygen is also very important, but it makes up a much larger percentage of the air mixture. Generally, an air pump bubbling room air through your tank will provide more than enough oxygen to reach saturation in the water, but the amount of CO2 in the air being bubbled is much lower. This picture should give some idea of what I mean. So, can you run O2 into your tank at night? Sure, probably won't hurt anything. Is it going to do you any good? Probably not. People specifically run CO2 injection because they have maxed out all other avenues for pushing plant growth (high end lighting, well tuned fertilizers). No one really injects oxygen because the atmospheric oxygen you pump in with an airstone or through gas exchange from surface agitation is enough to get more than enough for your aquatic critters in nearly 100% of situations. The only time I'd consider it is if tank temps were getting very high (which reduces O2's solubility in water) to help keep fish alive until I could get the tank's temperature under control.

You want to make sure your rhizome (the log-like bit that the leaves are growing off of) for your anubias isn't buried. It would be better if the remaining leaves were just left to float. If they are OK, they will (slowly) regrow a new rhizome over time. I've had a fallen off leaf of an Anubias Nana that has been free floating for close to a year that looks like it's getting ready to sprout a second, new leaf. The rhizome of an anubias does better if you have it tied/glued to a rock/piece of wood.

Its been a crazy week. I got hit with sub-zero (farenheit) temps and lost power for over 36 hours. But, prepared battery air pumps (one USB, one running off D-cells) and sleeping bags appear to have avoided a mass casualty event in my tanks! Powers back, and it looks like everyone made it! The tank is still very cold, in the upper 50s. The hillstream loaches seem to be just fine, and are scooting around like ususal. The WCMM appear to be very very lethargic. I was worried about a few when I first opened it up from having a sleeping bag wrapped around it, but they are getting up and starting to move more. I also added some hygro in the last few months, and it is doing pretty well for me. Hopefully, everyone else out there dealing with this crazy weather is keeping their wet pets safe.

I have a 20 long with java moss, anubias nana, hornwort, and hygrophila (and some small amount of duckweed I've been too lazy to exterminate). I have the 30 inch Nicrew ClassicLED running for ~ 10 hours a day at 60% (it's sold as an 18 watt, 920 lumen lamp). I had to turn it waaaaay down from when I first put it on, because having it at 100% for 10 hours (or more at first) gave me insane amounts of algae growth. Now, I have some very very happy plants, and my java moss in particular looks amazing, and the hygro just has a tiny bit of excess algae where it gets a bit too close to the surface and the light. So, you might be pretty good as you are! Keep an eye on it, a lot of things plants do, they do slowly!

If you are adding water to account for evaporation, and not pulling water out during regular water changes, you could be building up ions in the water that the plants aren't using. You might be able to add more nitrogenous compounds/other things the plants need for further growth, top off with distilled water, or just do regular water changes to help prevent the build up of stuff your plants aren't using. I do weekly water changes without tight monitoring of water parameters just to make sure I don't end up with a bad build up of stuff in my water (and to just pull some of the less good looking debris out of the tank)

So, your water softener is probably pulling out ALL of your Ca+ and Mg+ from the water. That's kind of the point of a water softener. If you have a way to skip the water softener, that would probably help give you far more 'regular' water for your tank. And to some degree, your plants will want things like calcium and magnesium. Beyond just skipping your water softener, you could also look at dosing with other supplements. I know the coop and the surrounding region tends to have very very soft water out of the tap, and they often use products like wonder shells, but those may also bump up your KH as well as your GH. You could also go even further and get a RO system, and then re-mineralize the water yourself to match whatever you want/need for the things you are raising. Easiest option would probably be to skip the water softener specifically for your tank water, though.

KH is how many carbonates you have dissolved in your water (Carbonate is CO3, bicarbonate is HCO3). This often comes from things like crushed coral, or limestone as part of your substrate, or because the water you are using comes into contact with limestone. GH is general hardness, and is usually looking at the Ca and Mg you have dissolved in your water. The stuff that makes up your kH is a part of the carbonate buffer system. http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/environmental/l24/3.html. Basically, it is a system of dissolved ions in water that favors a slightly above neutral point, and it will grab onto and release hydrogen ions into water to keep it in that slightly alkaline/basic range. It's also very common in a lot of natural water systems. Less of the carbonate buffers in acidic water is one of the reasons if you aren't careful, it's easy to let your pH drop precipitously into deadly territory. You don't have ions floating around that are keeping the excess hydrogen under control. With the carbonate buffer system, it tends to be a lot more stable, and the amount of H+ floating around in your water is more stable. GH and KH are often related, but not always. You can get excess KH if you inject CO2, because the CO2 will do stuff and become part of that carbonate buffer. Putting something like calcium chloride in your water would give you GH, but not effect your KH.

A lot of it comes down to control. You have much less control from day to day how much light your tank will get with the sun. And one good way to get a whole lot of algae is an uncontrolled large amount of light hitting your tank. You also have seasonal variability in how much sun a particular spot might get (more in the summer, less in the winter), and daily variation depending on your local weather (sunny days vs cloudy days vs stormy days). The goal of many people is to minimize variables to make sure you can provide the best environment for the creatures we keep in our care, and that comes down to controlling stuff. While you certainly can light a fish tank with natural sun light, it might end up being like trying to water a small flower pot with a fire hose. With experimentation, you can probably make it work very well, but it will probably be a lot trickier, and take a lot more trial and error, than trying to get lighting right with a modern LED light.

Biggest thing I would worry about would be sulfides in the rocks, as these tend to contain heavy metals we want to avoid in our tanks. The most common one would be pyrite (fools gold), but for the most part anything metallic looking is probably a no go. Generally speaking though, I imagine a quarry pulling up material for aggregate should be fairly inert. Other thing to keep an eye out for would be carbonates, as they can do similar things as adding crushed coral to your tank. Which is to say, they can be bad or good, depending on what you are going for! Since you do work at a quarry, talk to your geoscientist if available, and see if they can let you know if anything would be overly reactive. You generally want inert things like silicates, or carbonates, if you are looking for making your water more alkaline and less acidic.

I've not observed it, but I suspect my cat has done the same thing at times. It's why I make sure I keep a decent lid on the tank. I had a 2.5 gallon cheapo tank I got from walmart as a backup/isolation/plant bucket/quarantine tank set up, and I was testing using loops of air tubing, sealed closed as a way to contain/keep out floating plants (in particular, duckweed) like I had seen folks online do. The lid it came with was kinda crappy, and so I let it stand open with a decent light to keep the plants I had in it going well. Then, I found a bunch of duckweed, hornwort, and the airline ring pulled out of the tank on the floor. I didn't see the cat doing it, but I can't think of any other thing that could have caused it. Now I just make sure everything has a decent lid, and the airline rings I did make became cat toys, because I determined my cat would probably just pull them out otherwise anyway.

Algae is a part of life in a fish tank. The trick is controlling it to reasonable levels. In my tank, I keep the front glass clean with an old credit card/small piece of co-op coarse filter sponge every other water change or so, and let the spot algae go to town on the sides/back of the tank. The biggest problem I had was I started to get a little bit of BBA on a few of my plants, along with some staghorn and a bunch of hair algae just growing everywhere. (FYI, my tank is a 20 gallon wide hillstream setup) I'm currently in a pretty good spot, making use of less hours of light per day at a lower intensity to make sure I'm not getting an excess of algae growth. (~10 hours a day at 60% with the 30 inch Nicrew vs 12 hours at 100% when I first set up the tank). I have enough lighting to keep some of the cobbles in my hardscape covered in algae for my bottom feeders to chow down (and a thin layer of algae on a rock does look pretty natural and authentic). The BBA and staghorn eventually died off my plants under the lower light conditions and the once prolific green hair algae, I mostly removed the excess daily with a dedicated tank toothbrush and paper towel. I'd dig into the algae with the toothbrush and twist it to pull out a bunch (occasionally pulling some of my java moss with it), and I'm now in a place with minimal excess algae, and what algae remains is mostly under control of my bottom feeding crew (hillstream loaches, otocinclus, cherry shrimp, and bladder/malaysian trumpet snails). Its now to the point where I don't think it's negatively affecting the growth of my plants, so I'm happy with the results. I should be able to update later with an up to date picture of the tank!

Yeah, the trick seems to be finding the line between "not enough flow" and "Oh no, the flow is slowly killing my fish". And I don't know if its actually possible to find that line. I think some day building something like this profile drawing might be what I want. Plenty of lower flow areas, along with that high flow. Two (or maybe even more) larger tanks connected with a shallow, faster flowing area for the species that love that stuff, but still plenty of more calm water areas for other species to not get overly stressed. Also, having rocks/hardscape that stuff like the loaches can climb to keep it properly one larger environment. But, such a thing would be probably very expensive, and more liable to failure than I'd be comfortable with. The kind of thing that probably works best in a zoo/public aquarium/science center.

I'm still not entirely sure I'm happy with my flow, because on the more left side of my tank, there is little to no surface agitation. I can see with my still-not-quite-under-control hair algae. Though, to fix my surface agitation issue, I might take my airstone and move it from my right side near the output, and take it to the left side, near the stream flow manifold intake. And, now that I am on my Christmas break, I might spend some time trying to rework my spreader bar. In reality though, it is probably fine overall. I know with a big tank like you have, a canister filter with well separated intakes and outtakes can do the same thing as my stream flow manifold. I just am overly intimidated by servicing a canister filter. I know for a fact I would put off cleaning it, and that only leads to tears and sadness in the long term. Sponge intakes and HoBs are much less intimidating. I also do love your setup. I'm just limited by apartment living right now. Did you ever get that big chunk of wood to stay sunk without the bag of gravel? For me, a bigger setup would be nice. I know if money wasn't an object, I'd look at building a multi-tier setup of multiple tanks connected with waterfalls arranged so that the hillstream loaches could travel up and down between them. Some more calm pools, and other more riparian sections, all populated with various small minnows, loaches, gobys, killifish, etc. I've found myself captivated by the behavior of the small freshwater fish that live in the stream environment.

It would probably work. Biggest worry (outside of the risks associated with hole on the bottom of your tank) would be making sure the bubbles don't spread too much side to side, so they start coming out the filter not through the riser tube. But, a bit of tubing going up to an airstone from below should get you the same results as the air line coming in from above. As to the fear of drilling the bottom of your tank... I was under the impression it was a moderately common practice in ye olde days when undergravel filters were the main form of filtration, so you could use gravity to flush clean gunk out of the bottom of the system through that hole in the bottom. Perhaps some of the more seasoned and experienced members can chime in on that?

In other fun news, I think my hillstream loaches might have had a spawn! I don't have any pictures at the moment, but last night, after having the lighting off all day, I turned it on for a bit to get a look at the tank. Lo and behold, I found a cluster of eggs (~ 1mm or so little dots) sticking to some of my java moss. Because it looked like some of my bladder snails were chowing down on the eggs (maybe? everyone in the tank was behaving a bit strangely because the lights were off all day), I tried to cut the piece of java moss and move it into a smaller container for me to try and hatch the eggs in a piece of tupperware (with an airstone). I managed to get maybe 1/3rd of them, but as I was trying to pull the bit of eggs up to the surface, some went and fell down into the coarse substrate I have. I wonder if the combination of a fairly large water change on Wednesday, followed by a day of darkness on thursday pushed them to try and spawn. I don't think the eggs are the shrimp (I have some neocaridinia, and my understanding is those fellows have momma carry the eggs until the shrimplets hatch), the bladder snails have clear egg sack like things they lay, the malaysian trumpet snails are live bearers (I think?), and my understanding is the WCMM have much smaller eggs than this. Woohoo, maybe I'll have to go make a thread over in the breeding forum and see if anyone else knows much about spawning these loaches (and when I get a decent picture, I'll edit it into this post) Edit: Here is a picture of some of the eggs.

I've tried the newer o-nips, but my whiteclouds don't seem to 'get' it, and it eventually just falls apart and makes a mess. I stick it in, and watch for maybe 10 minutes where it gets no attention, then go away and take care of other stuff, and come back about 20-30 minutes later, then it's ususally gone. Not sure if its because it got chomped, or it just completely fell apart.

Your pictures don't seem to have loaded correctly! I have used this site to get some idea of what loach species I have. My pseudogastromyzon is probably the myersi or cheni species, but actually telling the two apart requires measuring some body proportions, and I don't necessarily care enough to find the distinction. As to feeding, I haven't done baby brine shrimp in my tank yet. I haven't gotten any setup for hatching them, and my local big box retail stores haven't had any frozen in stock when I have checked recently. I mostly feed a mixture of xtreme micropellet, xtreme krill flake, repashy soilent green, and occasionally frozen bloodworms. I haven't seen the loaches particularly go after the frozen blood worms that make it to the bottom. I have a few other foods I've bought that I mix in as well for good measure, and I'm looking at adding vibrabites to my mix, since I got a sample from a friend, and the white clouds go absolutely bonkers for it. Everyone also does seem to like the repashy... the white clouds sit above it and wait for the loaches to stir bits up into the water column, and then they chase those bits down. For lighting, I have a nicrew light with one of their programmable setups that lets me control brightness and times of the lighting. Right now I'm down to ~ 10 hours of light at 60% brightness. I started a few days of ambient light only this morning, along with reduced feeding for the tank to see if that helps the algae get pushed back, and I'm also looking at ordering some amano shrimp from aquahuna to help in cleaning up as well (also some yellow fin white clouds to add some variety to my school and 2 more of the beaufortia loaches to make the odds of getting a breeding pair better). I figure less feeding might push the bottom feeding crew to consider eating the algae more instead of just waiting for the repashy. I still always worry i'm not feeding them enough, as most of us do.

Here is what it looks like right now. The string algae is a bit annoying (i'm also working on getting my algae growth right, probably gonna do a day or two with the lights off), but it does help show flow. You can see that there is flow in the middle of the tank fairly slowly looping back towards the spreader bar. over on the right. There is also fairly intense flow back along that right side behind the spreader bar. My next one, I might get my powerhead turned 90 degrees, and use some bends in the PVC to get the spreader bar closer to the far right side on my next iteration. As to the loaches I have now, there are 5. 1 pseudogastromyzon, 4 of the beaufortia. I am thinking of getting 2 more of the beaufortia and maybe see of I can get a breeding colony going of them. I'd probably have to find another tank for the pseudogastromyzon though. They are kind of a jerk to the other bottom dwellers. I haven't gotten any of the sewallias (which are the reticulated hillstream loaches) for my tank. The pseudogastromyzon is also noticably different from the other loaches I've seen. It has more of a opaque belly compared to the almost transparent bellies of most regular hillstream loaches, and has a much less aerodynamic body with smaller pectoral and pelvic fins. Overall though, watching the loaches and their social behavior is quite entertaining, and I'd honestly be happy having a tank with just a bunch of them in it. Have a sketch. the single one I have is a lot taller, and the others are much more aerodynamic and have bigger fins.

I am still kind of working on it. The intake is actually not very strong at all. It is two 1 inch pvc pipe with a large co-op intake sponge covering both intakes. The shrimp like to hang around on the sponges and feed. I have made one spreader bar using 1/2 inch pvc tubing parts that fits nicely onto the output from the aquaclear 50 powerhead to make the output flow not ridiculous. The problem I have now, is I think the directionality/number of holes I have is now giving me a bunch of dead-zone fairly low flow areas. When I first did it, I only had holes drilled in the pipe sending the flow right across the top, and causing a fairly strong swirling effect in the tank. Now, I have twice as many holes, with one set aimed parallel to the surface, and another set of holes pushing flow straight down. The ones pointing straight down give me kind of a silly amount of flow in one part of the tank, and very very little almost everywhere else. I am planning on going to my local hardware store and purchasing more 1/2 inch T joints and end caps to make another manifold, maybe trying a saw to make wide outputs in the spreader bar instead of drilling holes in the PVC. I will report back later with pictures and probably my new spreader bar attempts to see if I get a better result. The overall goal is to have lots of flow overall, but still have some more calm areas for the WCMM to chill out when they are resting. Now, its like I have maybe 1/5th of the tank with silly amounts of flow, and the rest is almost chill enough for a betta. The other problem I have is my pseudogastromyzon loach is kind of a jerk to the other bottom dwellers. I might have to move him into his own tank, because I sort of want to see if i can get the Beaufortia kweichowensis to spawn, and I think the other guy is spooking them a bit much.

I have a 20 wide with some hillstream loaches, a lonely otocinclus, and a bunch of bladder and malaysian trumpet snails as my bottom dwelling crew. They are fun to watch.