tnnlynch

I found dragon stone at a local petco. More expensive than Lowes but I was able to walk out with it. I did a quick H2O2 and a longer alum dip on my plants (not my vals). Probably overkill for the coop plants but I really did not want to add any fast breeding snails or insects to my new tank.

Still fighting some green hair algae on the Vals. Manual removal works but it's a bit difficult to do without pulling up the plant. The apple snails will eat it but I seem to have too many food options for them to really put a dent in it. I will have to keep tuning the fert/light cycle to see if we can eliminate that next.

When I set up my new tanks in my basement office, I blacked out the small window to help keep the algae in check. I had quite a bit of green spot algae on my rocks, leaves and walls. I scraped the front glass but left the other surfaces alone as I had ordered hill stream loaches. The 2 loaches, 8 cherry barbs and 4 corys came in from Aquahuna late July. I lost 4 of my barbs (1 DOA) and three within a day of arrival but everyone else made it through quarantine fine. By this time the algae on the anubias, sword and glass was very noticeable. The one wall and rear that get weak sunlight had rather thick algae and my snails and shrimp didn't seem to make a dent in it. Three weeks later and I have almost zero green spot algae left: You could see where the loaches cleaned the glass daily. The olive nerite snails have now cleaned off the anubias while the apple snails cleaned the sword plant. Now I am worried about not having any algae they will eat. I removed the blackout paper on the window but they clean the glass faster than it can grow. I have tossed in some algae wafers lately but the loaches seem to ignore it while every other animal in the tank eats it. I assume they are getting enough of what they need from that behavior.

I watched one of my mystery snails eat the roots of my frogbit. First it trapped the root against the leaves at the surface: where it stripped the fine hairs off the main root as well as almost severed it. You can see the two untouched roots next to the damaged one.

Those are some nice looking tanks.

I will see if any local nerms are on craigslist or fb marketplace need some frogbit otherwise it's probably destined for the lawn waste bin. I have 3 mystery and 3 nerite snails in the tank. The nerites are very slow moving. The mystery snails are very active but I have not seen them actively eating the frogbit. They do love their weekly 'snello' and do a decent job on the spot algae on my plants so maybe they are just well fed.

I would have 5 to stores to choose from nearby if I was into reef aquariums. No local freshwater clubs I am aware of yet but I can bring some when I visit the petsmart/petco just in case.

I left some american frogbit in my otherwise empty quarantine tank while I was away for two weeks. It has essentially taken over the tank. Seems a waste to throw it out but other than Petco/Petsmart there are no nearby freshwater aquarium stores. What do most of you do with excess floating plants?

@Taco Playz I used a blackout window film from Amazon. It is a little fiddly to apply but so far is working well. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Q29NBH7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

@Patrick_G I cut back on the ferts as I was on vacation but the fish-less quarantine tank full of frogbit seems to be fine. I will swap out the floaters between the tanks and see what happens.

All my fish equipment fits in one rubbermaid container or under my tank at the moment. But when I reorganized my garage I added 4 industrial shelves along one wall and an overhead hanging shelf (over the door) for seasonal items. Basically nothing is on the floor but the lawn equipment on the other side with bikes hanging over them and of course our cars.

@Beardedbillygoat1975 I was thinking of buying a few more buckets, filling them the day before and let them come to room temp overnight. Keeps the mess hidden in the basement. I will have to check out Dean's python video as well. Thanks.

Moved the floating plants to a corner shadowing my Java Ferns as opposed to limiting light on my sword plant. Added some Zebra Danios, Amano shrimp, Zebra Nerite and mystery snails to the tank. I upped the lighting a bit the week before I left but otherwise everything looked stable when I went on vacation. When I returned I noticed something unusual about my floating plants... All the roots are gone (and the pogo needs trimming). I assume the snails are to blame...

@Beardedbillygoat1975 Sadly when I remodeled our laundry room (upstairs) I used faucets that preclude a python attachment. Running a hose through the high traffic areas of the house would probably not be well received either. Looks like a lot of stairs are in my future.

Sorry for the lack of response as I was out of town. @DebSills I like the Fluval application and controls and really appreciated the advantages of an LED light so I don't regret it's purchase. Had I known the lighting area was 4 inches smaller than expected, I would have modified the layout to account for it. @johnjohnjohn87 I have upped my lighting to 60% for an hour a day for the last week. I see an uptick in the brown spot algae but I was out of town so that might be due to the lack of normal maintenance. The Val's have started to recover but the Pogostemon has essentially taken over the center of the tank by growing on an angle over my scarlet temple. I will need to do some trimming and replanting. Raising the light is a consideration I will have to think about. What light are you replacing the fluval with for your tanks?

I water my new Hydrangea's as well. They are looking better every week.

If they get the new YTube membership API to work, I believe he said it would be 5%. No discount until they get it working.

It is. Zenzo's link has the details at the bottom of the page.

The 24" fluval light only has an 18" light surface. I centered it my new 29 galleon tank (30" wide). My aquascape has Pogostemon planted in the corner of the tank with the intention of it growing in to hide the filter behind it. My Pogostemon is actually growing on an angle to recenter itself under the brighter light. It is also growing rather long well spaced out leaves which would indicate to me my lighting is too low at least for it. I run 50% for ten hours and so far have had little to no algae so am hesitant to adjust. Think I should up the top rate at least for some portion of the day or rearrange plants?

Seems more of a pole arm than sword at this point. 😁 Definitely strange.

Not that I have a lot of experience but that looks more like a pond plant than an amazon sword. All the ones I have kept look like the one in the corner of your tank.

I discovered a flaw in my original plan for tank maintenance once I programmed my temperature monitor. My basement water connection (a maintenance faucet in the utility room) is only cold water. At 65 degrees it is way too cold to put directly into the tank (once it has fish). Looks like I will be using buckets at least partially filled with hot/warm water from upstairs. Hauling buckets through the house down stairs was not what I wanted but I can't tap into the hot water easily. Sigh.

My Pogostemon (not floating) has some nice new growth but the frogbit has almost doubled in a week. The floating plants show amazing growth. Hornwort is almost all the Goliad Fish Farms uses for filtration.

Figured I would open a thread in the journal area to track my progress. First week... Second week (after some die back) Week 3 - Added a pot of scarlet temple on each side of the tank. Seeing a bit of melting but overall they look good. A few of the Vals are starting to grow again in the back, The american frogbit has really taken off with 8" roots and two more new clusters forming. I think I will keep two separate rings of frogbit as opposed to one large one. The same Anubias keeps disconnecting from the dragon stone at the slightest touch - it really wants to be a floating plant.

Probably being too paranoid but I had some concerns regarding high GH stressing some shrimp or hillstream loaches.