Dark River Aquatics

The Krib tank is happy happy joy joy Mom’s side is finally healing from a weird knick she had, and she may have moved the babies - she’s been buried at the back of the tank all day and I can’t see if she has them herded back there with her or not but her colors are still pretty intense Did a water change tonight and the weird little shelf thing seems to be working, the buce brownie purple has a new leaf and the riccardia & susswasstertang are growing, they’re emersed about 95% of the time with a constant dribble of water over them from the air lift tube, and 1 ml of Tropica Specialized per week seems to be growing everything well, plus the hair algae storm hasn’t come back so it’s win

@Beardedbillygoat1975 @SkaleyAquatics I’ll pm you both, they’re from another hobbyist and not a storefront but he told me he’s ok with sharing his contact info 🙂

Today was Cryptmas 🥳 A very generous human sent me a metric ton of Crypt Jacobsenii Pink & some Nurii’s, and after comparing them the crypts I had thought were “pink line” I realized that they are/have been 100% Jacobsenii Pink and I just got them under the wrong name. And now I’m starting to question the ID’s of some of the others, the plants sold as nurii “Pahang”, “Raubensis”, and “Rosen Maiden” all look strikingly similar. Even after comparing them with the plants that arrived today I’m not sure what’s what among my existing crypts…. But either way the collection just grew! There were some Crypt Purpurea in the bags too and those are new to me, so that’s exciting as well! Only got through planting about half the things, some are going into my 75g and some are going into another tank for holding until I redo another setup for them. Ended up having to pull out a bunch of Echinodorus Aflame to make more space for some of the new nurii’s, and planting the Jacobsenii into the carpet of marsilea was tedious but I’m diggin the overall look of a bunch of Jacobsenii growing up out of the carpet with flamingos behind. Still have a full bag of Jacobsenii left to play with, so may add more 😄

For whatever it’s worth I think your 75 looks awesome! I’m a sucker for having some algae on wood & rocks because it looks so natural & nice to my eye IMO combating algae is all down to nutrient consumption, lighting, and water changes - I had a lot of hair algae in one of my low tech tanks recently and so far (about one month later) it’s doing a lot better. I manually removed as much algae as possible, did a heavy gravel vacuuming combined with several water changes equating to roughly 400% of the tank volume, raised the light by about 6”, capped over the aqua soil with some sand, and added a lot of fast growing stem plants. Kept to regular water changes and light nutrient dosing after each WC and so far it’s a lot better. For whatever the advice is worth this is probably how I’d approach things with your 75, it’s by no means expert advice it’s just how I’d go about it -get a good dual stage regulator as well as all the other necessary gear like a drop checker, a good diffuser, good water circulation for the co2 bubbles, etc. I have heard that GLA’s quality has dropped off recently which is unfortunate, fzone regulators are what I hear are the current good bets for the money -before installing co2, do a heavy gravel vac to remove as much waste as possible and physically remove as much algae as you can, and remove any plants that look like they’re melting to reduce future organic breakdown -run the light a 6hr photoperiod at first IMO, and probably not at full blast at first if the light is adjustable - maybe 60-80% to start with -add co2 and dial it in achieve a 1pt ph drop. IMO it’s best to do this over the course of a few days, know your baseline ph and then start with a small amount of co2 and slowly increase it until you achieve a 1pt drop (drop checkers help too) after the co2 has been running for a few hours. Then coincide your light to turn on once the co2 has diffused enough to cause a 1pt drop. Doing this slowly and ramping up the co2 over the course of several days will allow the livestock to adjust easier and it’s better to have too little at first than to have way too much. My 75g has relatively hard water and the co2 runs for 4 hours before the lights switch on, and then turns off 1hr before the lights do for whatever that info is worth - your water chemistry and tank setup may mean your co2 diffusion schedule needs to be different -get as many plants as you can reasonably afford right off the bat and try to stuff the tank with new healthy plants. Make sure to have a decent number of hardy faster growing stems at the back, as they will soak excess nutrients from the water column and help to outcompete the algae for nutrients -dose the water column with a good all in one fertilizer. I’ve used NA Thrive for years with excellent results, and have been testing with easy green and achieving good results with that too. -do regular water changes of 50% every day or two (for the first few weeks; then slowly phase back), and then dose the liquid fertilizer at about 50% of the recommended dose after every WC. What this achieves is that you’re constantly removing algae spores & waste, and resetting the nutrient levels which is important IMO -once the plants become established and start growing in, you will have to adjust the lighting & nutrients as necessary based on your observations of the tank, and likely increase them slowly over time. It can be tricky to learn the intricacies of getting lighting/fertilization correct in a high tech tank, but you got this and water changes & nutrient level resets are your friend in the meantime -don’t let the plants get too overgrown, trim & replant as necessary so they dont start to shade themselves/others out and shed too many leaves resulting in more organic breakdown I hope that helps, there are many ways to achieve a balanced ecosystem but this is just my 2 cents on how I’d go about it. Critters that graze algae are certainly helpful but plants are the heavy lifters in preventing algae by outcompeting it. George Farmer’s advice of “plant heavily from the very beginning to give the plants the best chance at winning their war against algae” is good advice that had always served me well 🙂 Also, if you’re comfortable with it, I’d be happy to mail you some stem plants to add to the tank and we can discuss the particulars privately - I have a couple of species in mind that are absolute weeds and can easily ship you some

Yes, it’s co2 injected - although a lot of the coloration is from strong light and nitrate limitation, I’m running a plenum to consume excess nitrate and fertilize very lightly (with easy green in this tank) - 1ml at a time maybe twice a week, and nitrate stays less than 5ppm which brings out a lot of color in the rotalas

Haircut day Trimming the Rotala Mini Butterfly hurt my soul 😭

This is a terrible video because I couldn’t get it to focus, but the wiggly grey mass at the back of the cave is a herd of Krib Moliwe babies 😄

@Minanora@Brandon p it’s vinyl flooring over concrete, we’re good! The top shelf is all screwed together and now it’s a waiting game for other supplies to arrive in the mail - the overhang is bothering me slightly in terms of stability so I may modify it a bit, not sure if it’s necessary and need to research more and think on it. There isn’t a rush to this, and I only have three 10g’s with current occupants so I’ll set up a few tanks and let them marinate and then leapfrog the fish into them so I can strip their existing tanks to move them down here and redo everything after they’re empty. The game plan is to have plenums in every tank plus a sponge filter, and run shop lights suspended above the tanks. The bottom shelf will probably end up being two 15g’s instead of 20g’s but we’ll see, a 20-tall would fit but would only leave a 7” gap of overhead space to access them and that would get annoying. My basement is an absolute mess, but after this build is done I’ll move the plastic storage shelf out of the corner next to the existing rack and replace it with the 30” metal rack. Then almost all of my tanks will be along these two walls and I might actually be able to call it a fish room 🥳

Doin a thing 😄 Once the top shelf is finished (that’s not the final layout in the pics) it’ll hold two 15-20g tanks underneath and up to six 10g’s on top. Planning to consolidate a lot of my smaller tanks down here in the basement for ease of maintenance and to save space upstairs, so this rack will hold some of the existing setups with room for more. And then I already have a 30” wide metal shelving unit that will have a 20tall on the bottom shelf, the Krib Moliwe’s 15g on the center shelf, and probably a few of my nano tanks on top. Then I’ll just be down to a 29g and a 40g left upstairs which will stay where they are 😄

This is the mystery plant. It seems to be co2 dependent and slowly melts without it, somewhat slow growing, spreads with runners but the runners dont look like those of val or sag (it sends out as many as 5-6 runners at a time in all directions and forms a mat instead of chaining, and the runners are very thin and break off easily - you can see several runners in the roots of the larger plant pictured), the leaves are fairly thick and very rigid, and the plant itself is very buoyant when uprooted. I collected it next to the dock at my lakehouse (in the Northeast US) and it’s been growing there for decades, and I’ve never seen it grow up near the shoreline emersed or create any emergent leaves, never seen it send up stems/flowers/stalks of any kind, and it’s never gotten any bigger than it is in the pics

@Patrick_Gnot sure which one you mean but hopefully this answers it 1 - mix of anubias dark angel, and anubias pinto 2 - pogostemon downoi red 3 - blyxa japonica 4 - an unidentified possibly native plant that I collected locally, we’ve been unable to ID so far even after sending pictures & videos & sample plants to several different people and searching through websites/books of plants native to our area. It’s a weird one, but kinda cool - thought it was a Sag or an Erio of some kind at first but I’m starting to think it’s an isoetes, it behaves/looks slightly different from everything we’ve come across as a possible ID so far. If that’s the one you were referring to I have no idea what it is yet

Helped a friend scape his 10g today - the taco was my only addition and therefore I helped 😂

These photos are a couple of days apart, but I just put a new bulb over this 40g and this is the difference - looks WAY better in person in terms of color rendition of everything inside the tank, and should give a bit more juice to the plants now that there’s co2 being added. This is the previous, 60w 5000k LED bulb (I forget the brand): And this is today; with a Phillips 100w 6500k bulb (it’s the twirly lookin tube one): The camera makes the first pic look a lot brighter than it did in person, there were some very dim areas off to the edges. I have a little wooden mount thing built to hook up an LED floodlight above this tank but I’m dreading having to move the stand to get behind it to screw the light stand on. Sooo…. We’ll see how everything does under this new bulb, and slowly ramp up the light & co2 & fertilizer dosing over the next few weeks and see what’s up. I may just forgo the floodlight and run a second one of these fixtures side by side with the existing one…. Moral of the story, I LOVE the Chihiros WRGB2 lights on my other tanks and dont regret buying them. But cheap lights in the proper spectrum work just fine too - the 4-pack of these bulbs was $22.99 on Amazon and the fixture was like $12 from Walmart, plus a piece of scrap wood and a zip tie to mount it over the tank. So for ballpark of $17-$18 in materials it does a real good job of growing the lower demand plants in this 40g. And the 50w LED floodlights require a stand/mount of some kind too (and throw off a lot of heat), but a 2-pack of them was $39.99 on Amazon and powered my 75g for the first month or two just fine. The colors didn’t pop like they do under the Chihiros and everything’s all glowed up now, but the floodlights grew plants quite well for a fraction of the cost Oh! And edit to add, I went rogue and ordered several types of Crypt Nurii from two different sources to compare, as well as some small swords for the 40g - Echinodorus Golden Sun, Gabrielii, and Hadi Red Pearl to fill up the foreground a little more 😄

@Odd Duckit’s not the same person, but Marcos who runs ChiChi’s Aquatic Dreams posted that he has some nurii pink for sale at the moment - it’s not on the main site, you’d have to message him directly and I’m not sure how much he has but he did post some on his Facebook page a few hours ago

I consulted someone with a large collection of crypts & far more experience than I, and he thinks that what I thought was nurii pink line might be jacobsenii pink, and that what I thought was nurii rosen maiden might be nurii pink line 🤪 Going to get some of his plants to compare in person and see what’s up, and if he’s ok with me doing so then @Odd Duckand whoever else I may be able to share his Facebook contact info with you so you can get some too 😁

I’ve actually wondered if this is a jacobsenii because it’s so different from all my other types of nurii, but the guy I sourced them from (who had to move and unfortunately way downsized and doesn’t have them anymore, otherwise I’d point you in his direction) and Chantz both said it’s nurii pink line and they’re both way smarter than I am so I went with it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Do it up! I’m not 100% sure on the ID because I haven’t been able to find any others like it, but that’s what they were sold to me as - and Chantz Cramer has a few as well and confirmed the name last time I was down there so that’s what I’m going with until someone steers me differently

@Patrick_GGo for it! It’s one of those cheap fixtures from Walmart with a piece of wood & zip ties securing it over the tank, and a 60w 5000k LED bulb 😂 super yellow & weird color rendition but the plants do just fine @Odd DuckArent the cool?! They’re Crypt Nurii Pink Line, I got them from a friend down in Massachusetts a little while ago and absolutely love them. Slow growing, and not as full/bushy as other crypts but they’ve made a decent number of babies and I just added a couple to the little cube tank

Panda Garras are my new favorite thing and I’m gonna need about 87 more

My plant nerd friend is unfortunately tearing down his 75g rare plant collection tank next weekend in favor of a smaller and more manageable tank (super bummed about him stepping back but it’s a logical step for how busy he is), so I ended up with some of his plants and fish this weekend to give them new homes. This big mother plant Echinodorus Opacus “Rataj” with three advantageous babies sprouting off the bottom is probably the neatest and rarest thing. I have a few Echi Opacus Iguazu 2009 already, one of which is just to the left of this Rataj, and I’m curious to see if the Rataj ends up laying flat like the Iguazu’s now that it’s in more direct light. My understanding is that Rataj looks almost identical to Iguazu but stays a bit smaller (even though my Iguazu’s are currently smaller just because I got them as babies) I’m in love with Opacus swords, not quite sure why but they’re just such a beautiful green and the way they lay flat is a curiosity. I also adopted a couple of Panda Garras from the same friend and uploaded my first ever video to YouTube of one of them settling in to the tank - they seem to like resting on the hydrocotyle verticillata leaves 😄 Lastly, I did a big trim & replant on my 40g Green Dragon breeding tank this weekend, added a few new plants, and had some cool Endlers from Lucas Bretz arrive yesterday which were added. Don’t remember what they are because I ordered them a while ago and we waited to ship them because of the cold weather, but they’re a cool metallic blue strain plus a nice red strain. They’re not cooperative for photos but managed to get a pic of the red male I also finally got around to adding a co2 line to this tank - it’s a very very small amount of co2 for the time being because it’s all easy plants, but I’d like to farm some of the low tech stems in here a little faster to have more to sell locally - and eventually finance a second rack to consolidate more of my tanks and start building out a more legit fish room. It’s in now way a show-stopper in terms of looks but the Greens are still happily breeding, and I’m pretty happy with this rack as a whole 🙂

95 stems of mixed Hygro Sunset & Hygro Creeping crown stems cut to 6-8” sellable size and one (1) lunatic who counted every single one 😅 Along with some Ludwigia Glandulosa X Repens hybrid and a few others to go up in the local groups and get gone

Thank you, that means a lot! 😄

Did a muuuuuch needed trim on my 75g today, holy wow it was overgrown. Haven’t trimmed in about a month between being busy and being lazy, and pulled a total of almost a 5g bucket worth of stems out of it 🙈 Replanted a lot, did away with a lot of ratty ugly stem sections, and ended up with quite a lot to sell or auction off now which felt good. And the epiphytic Monte Carlo that happened by accident is starting to look kinda cool (a loose but must’ve gotten stuck in some buces and it’s been going to town) Some of the plants are suffering a bit from being so shaded out; the flamingos and a few others have experienced some melt but should hopefully recover. The finished result just felt good though, it took a few hours but was a much needed maintenance & meditation session

This is more updates of the same, sorry if it’s redundant but I’ve been swamped at work all week and am still captivated by these two tanks whenever I have a chance to relax - watching these Kribs sift through sand for bits of food never gets old 😄 I did add a piece of wood ziptied/suction-cupped to the back glass of their tank to create a shelf, and added a small airlift tube to throw water on it - the goal is to allow it to “carpet” with mosses & susswassertang, and I added a small previously emersed buce brownie purple for haha’s. There aren’t many plants on it yet because I’d like to experiment with added locally collected mosses in the spring to see what happens - for science and stuff Going for sort of a riverbank look without having to make it a full blown paludarium, and if it’s a failure it’s easy to remove and forget it ever happened. The plants are doing pretty goodly and the pogo sampsonii & hygro sp “creeping” are starting to look snazzy. Even though I’m intentionally limiting the fertilizer they seem to be doing ok And lastly, I added some brownie ghost 2011 and a few other buces to the little cube and gave it a haircut a few days ago. The Rotala H’ra & mini butterfly are catching fire in terms of color, and 1ml of Easy Green every 2-3 days seems to be the ticket so far with fertilization. One of the BG11’s is a little sad looking but hopefully it likes being in softer water with a bit more light I swear the last pic wasn’t edited at all, just focused the camera on the stems and the chihiros light with the normal 50% red/blue & 40% green that the tank is used to brings out some nice colors 🤓