Dark River Aquatics

Made a thing and squished some buces and bits of Riccardia into it, hopefully it doesn’t unalive 😵‍💫

Making moss rocks tonight, need about 3x as many small rocks plus some larger ones and have several other species of moss to use but this is the progress so far. Tumbled lava rock a la Oliver Knott, with tissue cultured Mini Christmas Moss from Tropica to be grown out emersed for a bit inside a ziplock baggie to get the moss stuck to the rocks. Riccardia will be next 🙌🏻

Thank you all for the kind words! The shallow tank is scaped and running with a dark start cycle, and will be for a contest so this is the only pic I’ll share of it so far 😄 I did take some pics of neat plants to share though, including this one which is becoming a new fave - Ooia Manduensis procured through Chantz Cramer, it’s sort of like anubias and buce had a baby It was grown emersed in these first pics, and now that it’s been submersed for a bit the new leaves have a slight metallic blue sheen & speckles like you’d see in buce. It’s getting crowded in there so this pic isn’t great but you can see a few of the newer leaves. There was zero conversion melt, it just kept trucking and is growing fairly quickly for an aquatic aroid Got a Bucephalandra Black Angel recently and moved some of the rarer buces to this 40g scape to give them brighter light - this pic has Black Angel, Helena 2013, Hellfire, Ghost 2010, and a teeny tiny Ghost 2015 Black Angel is small but showing some vivid color. These are some baby Echinodorus Opacus Rataj that I pulled over the weekend to sell, the mother plant is spitting out advantageous new sprouts which I’ve been splitting off once they get a few leaves + roots, and these babies will be getting shipped out soon. This is a Cryptocoryne Cordata that arrived the other day Crypt Black Borneo is doing well too, it’s seeming to like the well water and is finally switching from a deep red to a truer black on the surface of the leaves Some of the tanks in my basement are in a state of full neglect and need more love than they’re getting, but are doing ok considering the lack of time and energy to dedicate to them. The 75g is over a year old now which feels crazy, and it’s experiencing a small amount of BBA now from lack of regular maintenance but nothing too too bad. Most of the BBA smudges are on species that will have a harder time recovering from it like Anubias Pinto, Anubias Jalapeño, and Echi Iguazu but it’s not too terribly bad yet - I just need to force the time for more water changes to get the tank stable again The 14g cube has gotten overgrown to a point that the Pogostemon Sampsonii is emerging & flowering The Ancistrus colonies are all doing well too. The Rios are spawning again after a period of inaction/upset from moving their tank, the Green Dragons are still prolific, the Wabens are large and in charge, and I recently got a funky male of some sort that was sold as LDA72 - not entirely sure that that’s what he is, but he’s nifty with unusual coloring This is a pic of some juvenile L519s that I’ll be getting soon from a friend - he imported them a few months ago and as soon as I’m able to set up a tank for them they’ll come to live here. Very excited about these! And lastly, more Zebra Otos

Haven’t been hobbying that hard for a few months from working too dang much, all the tanks are doing pretty well except the little 3g - I wasn’t taking care of it the way it needed, so took it down recently and have a new project to take its place. UNS 45S tank, a Chihiros C2 White, Oase Filtosmart 100 Thermo, Hakkai stone, and other materials Was also testing a co2 regulator for a brand I won’t name in return for a video review of it and… well… it ended up breaking and gassed all the livestock in my 40g forest scape including the Rio Guapores and it was horrible. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a gas out like that, and won’t be doing the review now and will always be sticking with GLA regulators in the future. It was heartbreaking to be honest… it’s funny how attached you can get to fish you bred yourself. Gave that whole tank some time to sit empty before restocking, and a few weeks ago felt up to getting new fish and landed on a trio of Apistogramma Agassizii Blue Flame - not usually a fan of the man made strains but these ones are stunning, and look like they’re either about to breed or are possibly sitting on eggs already Been collecting plants again too, and specifically some for this new scape - Anubias sp Stardust is one that will be going into the new shallow tank when it’s ready to plant

Yep! I use co2 in several setups at the moment, have a journal thread going that will probably give a better overview of various tanks than if I started yacking about them all here 😄 Good eye on the plants though, that tank does have Jacobsenii Pink and a few different types of Nurii - Rosen Maiden, Pink Line, Raubensis, Pahang, and Luminous Green. Although I’m not sold on some of the different names, a few of them seem to be pretty much identical now that they’ve been kept in the same tank side by side with the same growing conditions so I don’t trust the trade names on a couple of them

The male in the tank with the Wabens is tank raised, got him through Red Fish Blue Fish - he was constantly ripping the fins of the female even in a densely planted 40b so I moved him out and will likely order another pair and hope for a more mellow male 🤞🏻 The Trifasc Rio Guapore in the second pic are an F1 male & female raised by me from a wild pair, with two new tank raised females added to the mix. That male is very placid and easy going, he flares a bit to assert himself but otherwise he has a very peaceful disposition Currently also have Apistogramma Alto Tapiche, generic triple red Cockatoos, and F1 generation Apistogramma Tefé from a wild pair from the same import as the Rio Guapores - this is the best male Tefé from all of their spawns, pic was taken a week or two ago 😄

It’s a male Apisto Trifasciata Red Fin, he’s an absolute dink to other fish but the Wabens don’t care so he’s just in there until I can get rid of him - have Trifasciata Red Fin & Rio Guapore in other tanks but this male doesn’t play well with others so he got voted off the island 😂

Super low motivation / low energy day so I just fed everyone, and sat very still next to the Ancistrus Rio Paraguay & Ancistrus Wabenmuster tanks waiting for them to venture out to eat. They’re all jumpy and hide at the slightest movement outside the tank so it was nice to sit calmly, wait, and watch them slowly come out to enjoy lunch Also pulled a test stem of Rotala Ramosior Florida from an established tank and added it to a new plants-only setup the other day, and it’s standing up & pearling today so it caused a release of happy chemicals in the brainbeans 🙂

And here’s a photo dump of fish pics, all taken within the past week 😄 Apistogramma - Tefé, Trifasciata Rio Guapore, and Alto Tapiche Ancistrus - Rio Paraguay, and Wabenmuster

Have done another thing! Tore down my 3g cube a while back, and set it up again last night as a specimen tank of sorts. Did away with any hardscape and it’s currently running a base layer of Brightwell Laterin VF + Laterite capped with a couple of inches of Landen Soil, a Chihiros C2 White light, two tiny HOBs with well seasoned BioHome media, and co2 injected with a nano sized Aquario Neo diffuser & GLA DS-Mini regulator. The water is straight RO remineralized with Ca & Mg only, targeting 0dkh & 6.5dgh, currently dosed lean with only a few drops of NA Thrive. The plants at the moment are all US East Coast natives, either collected by myself or by Chantz Cramer - current list is: -Rotala Ramosior Florida -Rotala Ramosior Cramer -Rotala Ramosior “Maryland” -Eriocaulon Aquaticum -Lobelia Dortmanna -Gratiola sp unknown -Suspected Xyris sp unknown -Sagittaria cf Filiformis -Sagittaria sp unknown -One that’s a complete mystery and I’m fully open to any ideas This is the mystery plant, it’s a very small green creeping stem with tiny round leaves found in a shallow lake in the northeast It’s itty bitty and neat so we’re giving it a whirl. I’m just really hoping I don’t kill any of the Ramosiors and can successfully convert them from emersed growth - especially the newly collected one from Maryland, it seemed like an extreme lapse in judgement that he sent me something so special & rare entrusting me to keep it alive but we’ll see how it does! The goal is to not have any livestock so I can seriously crank up the gas, and then do daily heavy WCs with 0kh, high Ca & Mg water to keep it all from unaliving 🤞🏻

Love waking up to this tank after sleeping in long enough that the morning sun is hitting it Also loving the tiny mushroom I just discovered in it while doing a water change earlier! The mushroom clearly got the memo we were going for an enchanted forest vibe

Baby Moliwe’s are starting to get the faintest hint of color

There is creatures is here now 🙌🏻 The plant list has changed very slightly, mostly just in adding a few random things from other tanks and removing the Blyxa for aesthetic purposes - added more Buce Skeleton Queen & Catherinae, two Xyris red, Crypt Striolata Red, bits of moss, some wild plants, and I forget what else. But there’s fish & shrimp now too! The stock list is: -Apistogramma Trifasciata -15 Pseudomugil Gertrudae -Amanos -Otos So far everyone seems to be doing just fine, the Gerties are difficult to take pictures of but they’re starting to pattern up - there’s a mix of normal ones, and Burster Creeks so I’m curious to see the difference once they mature a bit. The Apistos are settling in and the female is already caved up and yellow, can’t tell if she has eggs yet but if she doesn’t have them already it looks like she will soon. As best I can tell, no Amanos have become lunch yet either which is nice! Best pic I could get of the Gerties, they’re speedy little buggers. I also collected a cool little Vallisneria last weekend which ended up in here - sent a few to a friend to help ID them and only kept one, it’s already turning green on the new growth but it was quite reddish-orange and small out in nature. It was a surprising find, every resource I’ve found only lists Val Americana as being in our state - so I’m unsure if this is just Americana adapted to very specific growing conditions that kept it compact & small, or if it’s another species that’s either invasive or naturalized and just undocumented, or if it’s something else altogether. Still a cool find for poking around locally though! New green growth in the middle of the plant in this last pic, it’s been in here for a week and seems to be adapting well to a captive environment, but no longer has direct sunlight / sand substrate / cold clear nutrient poor water like it had growing on the shoreline of a glacial lake so it’s no surprise it’s losing the rusty red color. The ones I sent out for ID will be grown in a pond in Florida for now so hopefully they keep their sunscreen 😎

Doing a science experiment based on the advice of a friend - he’s been making root tabs with ground up Magnolia leaves + Osmocote for his crypts, and says they’ve been loving it. The rationale is that crypts naturally grow in typically humic-rich environments, so the leaf mulch + Osmocote provides them with humic breakdown / humic acids / ammonia + other nutrients at the root level. I don’t have Magnolia leaves but I adapted his idea with a bunch of old & crunchy Catappa leaves instead. Started by getting a cute little food processor and mulched them up as finely as I could For the tabs themselves I used size 000 gel caps, and added a small amount of Laterite powder to the mix as an iron supplement The caps have 2x Osmocote balls in the bottom, a pencil eraser-size amount of Laterite, then a bunch of the leaf mulch in the middle packed down with a pen, and 2x Osmocote balls plus more Laterite in the “lid” before the two halves of the cap were pressed together I’m sending a bunch of the 4x Osmocote strength tabs to a friend for him to test with them, and for my own use I made a few with only 1x Osmocote ball per capsule because I want to start small and build up. Curious to see the results (good, bad, or maybe totally ineffective) and it was a nice way to spend some time watching a movie and working on a busywork project 😄

I got it from Jenny West! Here’s the link, I think there’s still some available but not sure: https://v-aquatics.com/collections/rares/products/anubias-sp-chili

A few boxes of special arrived in the mail today! Anubias sp Chili, Cryptocoryne Nurii Raubensis, Cryptocoryne sp Black Borneo, and two Bucephalandra sp White Marble Also received some reinforcements of Bacopa Monnieri, and Potamogeton Gayi to fill out the new tank more - plant mass for the win!

Sitting in bed and watching the last 10-15 min of the ramp down of the lighting going from dim, to blurple twilight, to fully off is so hypnotic 😄😴 I went rogue and added a male Apisto Trifasciata tonight, it’s a little early but the kh seems stable (was questionably stable at first after using some supplemental uncharged Safe-T-Sorb to raise the back hill a bit, miscalculated how much to charge), and the co2 seems dialed in. I added a small herd of female Tefé to my 75g, and felt it was best to pull the Trifasc pair out of that tank early - although the little female is savvy and I couldn’t catch her yet… she’s smart enough that as soon as she sees the net she’s a ghost, so it’s gonna be tough wrangling her. She’d come out just long enough to taunt me then disappear back behind the giant piece of wood in that tank The male is in the redone 40 though, looking shell shocked and looking like he just discovered alien abductions are real, but the water parameters are virtually the same with a ~2 degree temperature differential so he got chucked in and I added a heater to bring it up from 70F up to 72F. Water changes will still occur daily but will drop from 90%+ down to 50% daily for the next couple of weeks and he should be just fine in there. Ammonia/Nitrite tests have been 0 since day one, and nitrate is being added via liquid fertilizer but isn’t really a thing with the heavy early WC’s - found that excessive WC’s early on are key in preventing algae - George Farmer is 100% right with his methodology IMO! Haven’t been able to get great pics of the Tefé’s tonight with all the commotion from the newly added females / my failed attempts to catch the female Trifasc scaring everyone, but the big male is all excited. And for the record the white spot on him in the pic is just crud on the glass and not anything on his body 😅

The feeling is all too familiar! 😂 Best advice I can give is to exercise as much patience as you can and plan it out / start collecting the equipment & hardscape over the course of a few weeks/months to spread the cost out and take some of the sting out of doing it all at once - plus that gives you time to plan the scape & plant list, and if you can collect some of the hardscape from nature or wait to find deals from local hobbyists selling stuff for cheap that’s even better! This scape used mostly collected wood or pieces recycled from the last scape, a decent amount of plants from auctions/other hobbyists/ones grown in my other tanks, and I found a big box of seiryu from a local dude for cheap. Drawing out the build to collect all the components over time and jump on deals as they come along def helps the wallet screams 😄

It’s cleared up! Doing 90%+ water changes of as much as I can physically drain daily, plus UV has all but cleared up the bloom 🙌🏻 Going to attempt a comprehensive list of everything that went into the tank if for no reason other than posterity Equipment: -40g Breeder tank + glass lid + metal stand -One Sunsun HW-302 with all three trays filled with BioHome Biogravel & Super BioGravel, with spray bar outlet -One Sunsun HW-302 with one empty tray, one with fine floss (will be removed), and one with SeaChem Purigen and a DIY Rex Griggs co2 reactor with no spray bar attachment -5lb co2 tank with FZone Pro dual stage co2 regulator & FZone co2 line + check valve -Jardli co2 drop checker -No heater yet, but it will get one when the fish go in and it will be set to 72F -90cm Chihiros WRGB2 + mirrored shades, currently set to a 7hr photoperiod, 1.5hr ramp up/down times, at red 75% green 55% blue 65% -Green Killing Machine UV Sterilizer -Tetra Whisper air pump + air stone -Liquid Fertilizer is NA Thrive at 6ml per dose, currently daily after each massive water change Substrate & Hardscape: -Penn Plax under gravel filter plates with no lift tubes attached, two layers of plastic light diffuser crating, and fiberglass window screen over all of it -Safe-T-Sorb (precharged with caso4, mgso4, Millers Microplex, and a small amount of NA Thrive) -Brightwell Aquatics Laterite powder, and Laterin VF additives -Landen Soil -Flourite Black Sand -Seiryu Stone -Alder wood for the main “trees” glue to hidden pieces of granite using bits of cotton + liquid cyanoacrylate superglue, with a few small pieces of spider wood roots for accent details Plants: -Anubias Chili -Anubias Congensis Mini -Bacopa Caroliniana -Bacopa Monnieri -Blyxa Japonica -Cryptocoryne Albida Costata -Cryptocoryne Axelrodi -Cryptocoryne Beckettii Petchii -Cryptocoryne sp “Black Borneo” -Cryptocoryne Ferruginea -Cryptocoryne “Florida Sunset” -Cryptocoryne Lutea -Cryptocoryne Nurii -Cryptocoryne Usteriana Green -Echinodorus Opacus sp “Iguazu 2009” -Echinodorus Opacus sp “Rataj” -Echinodorus Opacus sp “Verde” -Eleocharis Mini -Gratiola Viscidula -Helanthium Vesuvius -Hydrocotyle Tripartita “Japan” -Juncus Repens -Marsilea Crenata -Marsilea Minuta -Microsorum Pteropus “Petite” -Persicaria sp “Sao Paolo” -Pogostemon Helferi Downoi -Potamogeton Gayi -Ranunculus Indulatus -Rotala Rotundifolia Green Sorry that the plant list is a different font, I copied it from the notes on my phone and don’t know how to change it posting from mobile 😅 Two of the plant species are still yet to be added because they haven’t arrived yet, but will be going in within a few days as soon as they get here! I’m excited that it’s coming together. For fish, I’m not 100% certain on what to do but - thinking about adding a pair of F1 Apisto Trifasciata Rio Guapore that I bred, along with a decent sized school of Rasbora Kubotai. We’ll see! I’d like to keep the stock list relatively light, originally the plan was to attempt to breed L183 Starlights but I’m incapable of not scaping a co2 injected tank and now that the plant list has become what it currently is, I don’t want the bioload that Ancistrus feeding/breeding would generate so it’s off the table. But! It looks like a perfectly nice home for Apistos, and in my head the color combo of Rio Guapores + Kubotais to blend into a mostly green tank would be nice and mellow looking 😄 Dont really have any glamour shots yet because it’s still pretty crudded up with silt, brown diatoms, with loads of new plants but here are a few closeups:

Yep… full bloom 😪 Water changing daily anyway but it’s definitely bacteria & not silt so it is what it is. The Crypt sp Black Borneo is going to get shipped to me Monday along with a whole bunch of Anubias sp Chili to add as foreground accents, and I’m going to order a few more stems (more Bacopa & more Potamogeton Gayi) to make the background planting denser. Also considering more variegated Buce to keep aside until it’s more mature - found that Buce really doesn’t like new tanks, so it’s definitely going to have to wait…. Have a full emersed bin with a big clumps of Catherinae, mini Godzilla, Kedagang Red, Brownie Purple, and a few others to play with when the tank is ready but I’m actually kinda digging how bare & visible the hardscape is so we’ll see how many the tank actually needs when the time comes. Probably going to just add a few Catherinae for texture and leave it at that

Planting started last night and is underway 🥳 I have a suspicion that there’s going to be a bacterial bloom, the waters been cruddier than expected - although I totally didn’t rinse the Flourite Black Sand at all so that might be the culprit for the cloudiness, we’ll see if it dissipates or if it’s bacterial But yeah! It’s coming along. Still need to add more crypts, more carpeting plants in the foreground to do a more wild / Amano style mixed carpet, and need to pad out some of the stems in the back with a mix of more textures. But it’s almost there! Adding the co2 tonight and prob a UV just in case it decides to go full bacterial bloom 🥴 Turns out some of the Echinodorus Opacus I’ve been hoarding have gotten big, although I think some have been getting nommed on by the Green Dragons because a few otherwise healthy looking leaves are a little holey. Two of the three bigger ones are putting out advantageous babies though so that’s cool! The ones that have been added to this tank so far are one big mother Rataj plus two baby Rataj, two big Verde, and one medium Iguazu. Have another larger Iguazu but not sure if there will be enough space in here for it… might need another tank again soon 😂

Ta daaa Still playing with details but calling it “good enough”

@Beardedbillygoat1975 do you mean scale in terms of the tank size, water volume, substrate depth, etc? If so, and hopefully I’m understanding correctly, the smallest tanks I’ve done plenums in so far have been 10g’s and they’re still too new to see long term results from them yet. In the 14g, the substrate is still fairly deep even though it’s a smaller tank - maybe 1.5” at the shallowest at the very front of the tank, and then probably 6-7” depth at the very back - so judging based on the ratios of substrate to water volume, I think it’s probably overkill, but it’s working nicely so far. That tank is actually the most stable one I have right now in terms of healthy plant growth and lack of algae, although I think the heavy water changes early on combined with very lean nutrient dosing and very light stocking/minimal feedings are important factors to consider. So… idk, scale is maybe a factor? I don’t know if I have enough experiential evidence to say one way or another yet. I think a lot of it is also the amount of energy going into the system, the bacteria will of course only multiply out to the amount of chemicals available to consume - so my somewhat anecdotal 2 cents is that substrate depth is important in facilitating the correct type of anoxic conditions and providing space/surface area for bacteria to colonize, but then the tank volume/amount of substrate may not be as important to biological action as the amount of available “food” and the speed at which that “food” is delivered to the bacteria while still maintaining anoxia. I’m sure that the available surface area/space becomes a limiting factor at some point but I’d imagine that the amount of “food” chemicals, grain size of the substrate / water circulation through the anoxic areas is also an important point to consider - even if there are waste chemicals in the water column, delivering them down into the anoxic areas at a rate that the bacteria can consume more than the tank is producing is probably one of the most important factors in achieving balance. Hopefully I articulated that well, and I’m certainly no expert - all of this is somewhat educated guesswork and I’m just over here messing around and finding out in my own pea-brained way 😄

Making progress - probably going to stop soon and sleep on it, then revisit with fresh eyes tomorrow. Managed to turn the one giant piece of alder into three “trees” which I’m happy about, part of procrastinating it this long was wondering if I had enough hardscape material but I think it’ll work. Not super happy about a lot of the stone placements yet, some are just there to support the wood while the superglue dries but yeah. Needs work

This is now my… I think 7th tank with a plenum? If I’m counting right? Incoming rant, sorry in advance cause my back hurts from lugging bags of substrate around so I’m taking a break here we go… So in the first two setups, the green dragon 40g and then my planted 75g, I used the lift tubes - in the 40g with only easy plants, a big bioload, etc it’s awesome and functions super well for a breeding tank. In the 75g with high energy input, lots of demanding plants, etc the substrate bacteria actually compete with the plants for both N & P and I have to dose around 35-40ppm of kno3 alone per week to keep it from bottoming out. After two weeks of daily auto & manual dosing kno3 up to about 70-80ppm in that timeframe the API test kit registers a faint orange before the 2wk 60% water change. It’s insane! Then I started experimenting with using everything except for the lift tubes in the 14g cube - same exact setup but didn’t charge the STS (intentionally, just to see what happened), and had to do daily 60% water changes for roughly the first 3 months to remineralize the water because the kh would hit 0 and the ph would crash - then a WC would bring the ph back up to just over 7, kh roughly 6ish. So the substrate was very obviously interacting with the water in a noticeable, fairly fast acting way even without the lift tubes - and now that the STS in that tank is charged, I’ve found that the void space with no lift tubes seems to be much more stable substrate for high energy systems. In low tech, moderately planted, higher bioload tanks the lift tubes + the whole shebang is amazing IMO. I don’t want to install an auto water change system in this house due to difficulty with the concrete walls in the basement, and don’t want to be a slave to weekly WCs across all my tanks so for my specific needs the plenum & anoxic system is perfect! Plus in high tech tanks, STS has been an amazing substrate and sooo much cheaper than using 100% aqua soil - and on top of that, water diffusing down into a substrate with super high CEC value combined with liquid ferts means the substrate’s never going to get drained of nutrients. The initial learning curve was interesting and there were some road bumps bottoming out kh, N, and P but now that I know how it all behaves I’m converted. Low cost, super efficient biological action, what’s not to love IMO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯