Dakota

hey sorry i didn't post yesterday i had a lot of things come up. Truck broke down and the tow truck company took forever to pick me up. Then i had to come home and clean. I will be posting pictures today and doing some water tests.

yeah i have no idea but i will look up water lettuce

please forgive the spelling errors lol

Hey all, My name is Dakota, and ive been in the hobby for approximately 5 years. I have tried different things and failed at different things, and have had great success with different things. Im a stay at home dad and absolutely love it. I love the aquarium hobby and love everything about it. But my true passion in the hobby is aquascapes and having it complement beautiful fish. My favourite fish has always been the German Blue Rams and absolutely fell in love with the behavior and the amazing colorations they have. This journal is gonna be my diary (lol) i guess you could say. I really appreciate input and can handle criticism. Im no expert, But i am trying and i am learning as much as i can and have learned that the best way for me to learn is to do. So here it goes.... This is my tank from a week ago... I have monty carlo growing on the bottom with Scarlett temple in the back right and an anubias behind the drift wood. There is my wife's Pothos plant on the top right. The tank is running an FX4 with a reduced flow rate. DIY CO2 Inector and a fluval heater. Will post additional Pic's. and then ive hung a blanched zucchini wedge for my oto's to the left. Second picture is my tank today.Went to my LFS and ordered my GBR's aswell as traded the Black neons, assassin snails and a couple of sterbai cory's. All i have left is the 25-30 neons, 3 cory's and some otocinclus cats. I have added some Anachris to the left and some Java fern on the wood. Everything is starting to come together. When i went to the fish store he sells the anachris in clumps, so i got a couple. But i got a hitch hiker and don't know what it is. Looks to big to be duckweed. Any Answers? Top View of Mystery Plant. My DIY setup which has served me well so far! Now Schedule! Please Excuse the handwriting. This is my maintenance schedule. It still needs some tweaking but i will work it out. EG= Easy Green EC=Easy Carbon WC= Water Change. Then of cource my Aquarium Coop sticker on the front right! Love you guys! So, This is just gonna be me keeping track of myself aswell as showing my tank off. I don't get a lot of guests at my house so, this is me being a good host as i welcome you guys into my home and passion.

As im prepping my tank for GBR's my only concern is how i do water changes and what i can do to improve the temperature going into the tank without having to go back and forth between sink and tank. This will be my first time keeping GBR's and want to make my odds of success as high as possible. Im still a month or two away from bringing GBR's into my tank but i am starting to practice tank maintenance now so that i know whats happening to the tank during water changes and gravel vac'ing. Right now my schedule is 2 10-20% water changes a week and gravel vac'ing during one of the water changes. I am also using a garden hose attached to a sink in the laundry room and stretches to the kitchen. Problem #1 Flow. I have a basic ball valve nozzle on my hose so i can turn it off and on at the tank instead of going back and forth to the sink from the tank. I suppose i can try barely turning the water on and filling it that way. But suggestions are welcome. Problem #2 Temperature. The temperature of the water coming out of the faucet is very hard to control and im not sure what i can do with out using buckets with heaters and powerheads. Im looking for a fairly cheap option to remedy this. I seen cory's proffesionally done water temperature regulator and found they are extremely expensive lol. I have posted questions before about keeping GBR's and i am trying to cover all my bases.

took the best pictures i could. It seems that all that stuff from the picture yesterday is GONE! IDK what it was or where it came from. Scared me. My lighting is a bit weird and tried to take the best i could. Readouts across the board are: PH 6.4-6.6 AM maybe .25 but closer to 0 imo Nit 0 Nitrate 10-20 ppm I do have fluval stratum as the substrate. The plants at the top of the tank are Pothos house plants and have been it there a while. Monte Carlo as carpeting I was never given the name of the plant behind the driftwood. It came in a starter pack when i first started the tank. the lights aren't scheduled to turn on until 1030 this morning so i turned them on for the picture then turned them back on to automatic mode. x2 Fluval 3.0 plant.

Ok i did change my lighting schedule to 8 hours. I will get you guys the water parameters today. I have been extremely busy so i will get it asap.

I also do CO2 injection which is the tiny bubbles in the picture

Did a partial water change in my 65g tank. Ive been having a short hair green algea problem and have reduced the lights to about 5.5 hrs a day with the settings in the picture. I gravel vac'd a small amount around the tank and plants the way cory taught me 😛 After the water change i dosed 4 pumps of aquarium co-ops easy green. which is no change for me to do. the only thing that did change was me gravel vac'ing for the first time since the substrate change and a new hose for water. I made the mistake of not rinsing the hose first 😞 i didn't even think about it. But i cant see why that would do this. I haven't done a water test yet due to the water change and usually wait 24hrs to wait for the water to stabilize. The fish don't seem bothered. I ordered Easy Carbon this morning before the water change and so glad i did.

what would be cool to me (my opinion follows) Having people show of their couple of aquariums or even only one and have them send a video to you and maybe critique/complement/ additional instructions. You could do maybe one or more tanks in one video. Idk never seen it done before and i think it would be a kinda cool idea just so people with or without fishclubs nearby are doing? But again just an idea i suppose

What about Monte Carlo? Any word on that withstanding 80+ degrees?

Yeah absolutely, this has definitely got my gears turning.

Im running an FX4 Filter. This looks cool but idk if modifying my Filter hoses would be wise.

thanks!

interesting, I will have a go and see how they do. Ive had several of my 30 neons for going on 3 years now and they will be the first to go i would believe Will have to watch them from now on and see how they react

Just moving the discussion from 1 inch per gallon thread. Keeping GBR's with neon tetras in a 65 gallon tank Moderately planted @ 82 degrees. Last post was someone keeping neons in a warm tank without any issues. Im looking for any long term effects and possible negative out comes with keeping a community tank with neons and GBR's.

Im gonna start a new thread because this has gotten way off topic lol @Fish Folk

So, that being said my tank is currently at 82 degrees prepping for GBRs. What would happen to the Neons if i kept them with the GBRs in that temperature? Will there be a mass death or would they become aggressive? And the bolivian rams are pretty but not as pretty as the GBR's. I would be willing to swap so i can avoid future headaches.

Good that is my dream fish for my tank but im probably gonna wait a month or 2 before i put them in so my tank can stabilize a bit and plants grow out some more. I recently changed the substrate to Fluval Stratum so, i want to see what a constant is with this substrate.

German Blue Rams? i read they were ok with Neons

I have a 65g tank running an fx4 filter, Good surface agitation, CO2 Injected, Medium planted. ~30 neons 10 BA Tetras 5 Corydoras ~5-10 assassin snails. Would love to add 2 or 3 GBR's. Does anyone here think that it would be viable to do that? @Fish Folk

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LYGVXLC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Im currently using this Diffuser. I like it pretty good and i think its doing what its supposed to be doing. Im not an expert with CO2 by any means. Not saying i haven't done research but the chemistry part of it is a bit vague to me and not 100% sure what it does to the water column (PH,KH,GH). The thing about this diffuser though is that it requires more pressure to be able to push out the bubbles due to surface area. Im also using the Fluval CO2 detector kit which is the cone shaped apparatus. I want the drop checker but if its the same thing and the shape doesn't matter i won't bother.

i have about 30 neons and i notice these traits aswell. Whats really neat is seeing them sleep and how dull their colors get. I put my money on living mood rings lol. I am also retired military so i also watch my tank a lot.

Ok, so, i have a DIY CO2 setup with 2 3L bottles for my 65 gallon tank. So far, the mix will last me anywhere from 4 days to a week. I told my wife that i should probably get pressurized CO2 with a regulator, and she asked will it be worth it in the long run? (for instance will a 5ib CO2 bottle last and entire month or two and refill it for a couple of bucks or will it be the same issue? I.e. Filling it once a week) Im running about 3-4 bubbles per second after i get the pressure to where i want it. Diffuser placement. I have moved My diffuser 3 or 4 times in my tank to get the best water column diffusion. So far its done really well under the filter out put, but it creates larger bubbles in the water column which i personally find unattractive. So ive decided to put it directly under the filter intake and gonna experiment with that. (my hypothesis is that the CO2 will further diffuse in the filter and possibly serve as a large reactor) Opinions and input are much encouraged and maybe share some experience?

ok will do