Projects & Rambles

[Dark River Aquatics]

This is just a straight up ramble but I found a Dieffenbachia for a cheap price over the weekend and added it to the refugium. The container is a 97 cent plastic pot, drilled out on the sides with a ~3” hole cut in the bottom and plugged up with a thin sheet of coarse sponge. The roots were rinsed thoroughly and placed in the pot with pea gravel tossed over to anchor the roots, and the foam bottom should allow it to send tap roots down into the dirt layer of the substrate. The Dieffenbachia in the Goliad Farms greenhouses gave me the idea, and I guess I’ll learn the hard way if this one gets as massive as theirs (and if the sap of this particular species is as nasty when it gets on your skin)

 

I also impulse ordered a Philodendron Micans the other night when I couldn’t sleep (that can be both good for the hobby and bad for the wallet depending on how you look at it), and it arrived today! It actually showed up in really good shape and at a decent size for an Amazon impulse bought plant and I’m excited to add it later! It’ll get swallowed up by all the other plants at first but hopefully it does well!

 

I don’t think I posted an update about it but I did add a handful of scuds and 15 juvenile cherry shrimp to the refugium last week, and can’t get a good look inside but I’ve caught glimpses of the cherries with a flashlight and haven’t found any bodies so hopefully they’re all alive & well! More scuds will go in soon but I wanted to make sure the cherries were able to settle in before unleashing a scud army. 
 

 

And one of the red mangroves not only didn’t dead, but is officially growing! So excited about that, a couple of the very smallest propagules didn’t make it so I’m very relieved to see some new growth from this one. It wasn’t a good feeling pulling the dead ones out, they were ethically harvested & purchased but it still felt like a defeat to kill them. The guacamole seed hasn’t sprouted yet but now that this mangrove has new growth, every other plant that has been added seems to be doing well 

[Odd Duck]

On 7/26/2021 at 5:15 PM, Dark River Aquatics said:

@Odd Duck He is fine with it, his name is Binh Le and this is a link to his Facebook - shoot him a message if you like, I’m pretty sure he still has nurii rosen maiden / pink line available as well as some nice assorted buces and a ton of various other plants 😄

 

https://www.facebook.com/binh.le.5851

 

We must have cross posted!  Thanks for the link.  I’ve sent him a friend request and msg.

[Jeff]

I LOVE your hardscape with just the rocks! Love! It's so simple, but natural. I may need to copy this...

Awesome stuff. Great thread!

[Dark River Aquatics]

Haven’t had a lot of time to put into new projects recently, but everything is coming together quite well for my new 75g planted tank and it’s almost ready to fill and plant 🙂

 

I spent a lot of time in the past months researching anoxic filtration, specifically on Dr. Kevin Novak’s YouTube channel - I’ve set up several deep substrate beds with plenums/void space at the very bottom in the past and have had positive results, and this time I wanted to go a step further and use a powered, low flow plenum and montmorillonite clay plus an iron source capped with aqua soil per Dr. Novak’s instructions. After researching materials I settled on using a Penn Plax under gravel filter system, some plastic light diffuser to help distribute the weight of any large rocks used later in the scape, Safe-T-Sorb as the montmorillonite clay, Flourite red and laterite powder as the iron source, and Landen Soil as the cap.

 

For those unfamiliar with this type of system I will try my best to explain it but can’t/won’t claim to be an expert and hopefully I get the details mostly right - for more research on it, this article is a great summary of the science behind how it works: http://www.mankysanke.co.uk/html/anoxic_filtration.html

The general idea is to create void space at the very bottom of the tank with slow and gradual water movement down through the substrate created by the suction of the UGF’s lift tubes. The depth of the substrate, and low oxygenation towards the bottom as a result of aerobic bacterial action in the top of the substrate creates anoxic conditions (very low levels of oxygen, but not completely anaerobic), plus the long term iron source from the Flourite & Laterite creates a perfect habitat for specific types of bacteria to thrive - bacteria that require oxygen and are capable of pulling oxygen molecules out of Nitrate and Phosphate to get what they need, effectively processing these two waste chemicals instead of allowing them to build up in the system as would happen with purely aerobic biological filtration. The clay itself also has negatively charged ions which help attract ammonia and other positively charged molecules down into the substrate, attracting & trapping them for the bacteria to utilize. The overall effect is that the substrate itself becomes a giant biological filter capable of achieving a full cycle, ie processing nitrate down to soluble nitrogen which off-gasses from the tank as well as processing phosphate down to trace levels. The other added benefit of the plenum system is that nutrients dosed into the water column via liquid fertilizers get pulled down through the layers of aqua soil and clays, and the high CEC value of these materials allows the substrate to effectively reabsorb nutrients over time as the plants deplete them - and in theory, the substrate should never reach a point of exhaustion where it needs to be replaced. Hopefully I’ve explained that well enough to capture the benefits even if I’m not able to explain the science as well as Dr. Novak can.
 

For this particular tank I wanted it to look decent and hopefully the substrate will be deep enough; 3-4” depth is the recommended amount and I sloped the substrate to be around 2-3” deep at the front, and 5-6” deep towards the back so hopefully it works.

The following pics are of the substrate layering:

Plenum and light diffuser layer

 

First layer of STS

Flourite Red and Brightwell Aquatics Laterite Powder

 

Second layer of STS

 

Cap layer of Landen Soil and some random hardscape, I’m not wild about the rock placement yet so it will probably continue to change. I still need to secure the driftwood to something heavy so it doesn’t float and in hindsight I should’ve zip tied it to the egg crate and let the substrate itself + rocks keep the wood submerged, but we’ve come too far to do that now so the wood will probably be fastened to some rocks with the cigarette filter cotton + liquid superglue method.

 

I’m also just about done sorting out an initial plant list and the ones I already have are still doing quite well! The Crypt Rosen Maiden and its baby planet have continued growing nicely, and the (now two) Flamingos each have new leaves shortly after adding them. None of them melted which I was happy about!

 

I also just received a Cryptocoryne Nurii var. “Raubensis” yesterday which came in healthy and has been stuffed into this tank for now as well

 

Very pleased with the colors on this one 🙂

 

That’s it for this tank for today, and I hope to put in a lot more work this weekend and get the rest of the plants ordered. I just received a whole bunch of long & short fin Green Dragon Bristlenose to get colonies started in other tanks so those have been stealing my attention but this 75 will get off the ground very soon

Edited August 20, 2021 by Dark River Aquatics

[Patrick_G]

Nice looking piece of driftwood. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

[Dark River Aquatics]

Almost happy 😄

[Colu]

Love the ancistrus Rio Paraguay with the selection of plants it will be another interesting project

Edited August 22, 2021 by Colu

[Dark River Aquatics]

Small update - both the 75g and 40g are full of water and running, and after installing the co2 on the 75g this evening we’re ready to rock & roll ordering all the plants! 
 

 

Both clouded up a bit after filling, I didn’t bother rinsing the STS or flourite at all and relied on canisters + floss to clear them up, but they’re all cleaned up and have been running blacked out for a couple of days now.

 

 

The co2 system has been dusted off and installed - it’s a GLA regulator with a 5lb tank, with a NilocG in-line diffuser running on an otherwise empty little Marineland canister. I’m NOT a fan of this filter, it’s been sitting on a shelf because the impeller has a habit of getting stuck no matter how clean it is or how much I mess with it, but for tonight and until I can replace it it’ll do the trick for testing. The plan is to get a different canister to run the co2, and I’ll be stripping it down and running a large Biocenosis Clarification Basket in it. The big Sunsun has the UV bulb removed, and has nothing but layers of coarse & medium sponge plus some floss for mechanical filtration - all biological filtration media will be in the form of the anoxic substrate & BCB basket to test those out and see how well they work. Everything is ready for the timers on the lights & co2 to be turned on so now we order a ton of plants!

 

The 40g is also running an anoxic substrate very similar to the 75g, with the small addition of a sprinkle of soil from my yard in one of the layers plus some leftover aqua soil, and I didn’t cap it and left the top STS layer exposed. That stuff actually doesn’t look half bad and for $7 per 40lb bag it might become a regularly used substrate in the future. I didn’t take as many pics of the substrate layering in the 40g but it’s the plenum at the very bottom, STS, flourite + laterite, more STS, a thin layer of dirt + aqua soil, and STS top cap it off. This is a pic of the dirted layer mid-way through getting capped with STS:

 

 

The rocks are from the woods around my house per usual, the light is a simple 60w 5000k LED bulb in a cheap fixture with a quick DIY wooden stand, and there’s a mix of botanicals in there already including catappa & Texas live oak leaves, coco palm bracts, banana stems, and some birch cones. Filtration is an old Fluval 306 with all sponges & floss, a Coop sponge filter, plus the plenum. I’m kind of unreasonably excited to be running such a DIY & low energy setup compared to a lot of my other systems 😄

 

I plan to grab some silt & random leaf litter from a local stream soon and experiment with that as well, I’m not worried about what it may bring into the tank in terms of insects and with some luck it’ll add interesting microfauna and other biodiversity - overall it’ll be a fun experiment of a tank and will end up being vaguely blackwater with some crypts.

 

All in all, things are coming together!

Edited August 25, 2021 by Dark River Aquatics

[Dark River Aquatics]

There’s an interesting an unexpected learning curve that I’ve run into using Safe-T-Sorb. My initial research was almost entirely into using it as part of an anoxic plenum system, and while I did read that it would initially absorb a lot of carbonates I didn’t do any further reading into that and figured “hey my water is pretty hard and I’ll be running the tanks empty at first so it’ll balance out”. I tend to not test the water in newer tanks for a few days because if I do, it can sometimes cause me to want to speed up the process - especially if I’m using soil and a lot of seasoned media & stuff, the “cycle” happens within a few days and the impulsive part of my brain kicks in and wants to do alllll the things. So it’s usually better if I just let it chill and marinate to keep myself patient.

 

So these tanks have been filled and running empty & blacked out since the weekend and I finally tested each last night with the following readings (API liquid testing):

 

40g:

-1ppm Ammonia

-0 Nitrite 

-0 Nitrate

-ph 6 or lower

-0 kh

-16-17 drops for gh to change color

 

75g:

-2ppm Ammonia

-0 Nitrite 

-0 Nitrate

-ph 6 or lower

-0 kh

-16-17 drops for gh to change color

 

Some of the results make perfect sense. Both tanks are using either soil or aqua soil so that accounts for the ammonia, but it’s less than I’ve experienced in the past so maybe the STS is absorbing some? That would check out with what I’ve researched about the electrical charges & attraction working. Zero nitrite & nitrate also checks out as neither tank has been seeded with any established media or filter goop, so that’s to be expected. The ph, kh, and gh readings were surprising though. Kh bottoming out and tanking the ph makes sense as further research revealed STS initially absorbs a LOT more carbonates than I was expecting. The gh is interesting too - my well water is always 11-12 drops and it’s gone up! No idea what caused that or what the specific values that comprise the reading are though, given the nature of the API tests.

 

So last night I used all of the baking soda in my house to dose each tank figuring I’d take a brute force approach to charging the STS, and the forum posts I browsed through all talked about using insane amounts of sodium bicarbonate plus liquid fertilizers or other approaches to precharge the STS. Last night each tank got enough baking soda to raise the kh reading by a few drops and brought the ph up to the mid 7’s, plus 3x dosing of Easy Green. Today I measure again just now, about 18hr after dosing, to all zeroed out ph/kh/nitrate readings again. I picked up more baking soda on the way home from work and between the two tanks went through almost an entire 4lb box, and each tank got 5x doses of Easy Green. They’ll get tested again tomorrow and re-dosed again, and I figure if it all charges the STS to capacity I’ll do multiple water changes to reset back to my well water parameters.

 

Lesson learned - STS is crazy cheap and has some great usages based on all my research, but the amount of absorption that happens when it’s fresh is extraordinary! Good thing I haven’t ordered the plants yet, and that the tanks are running on a total blackout so I can dose heavily with nutrients and not risk any algae. And next time, precharging STS before use is key!

[Jungle Fan]

With the dark start it's best just to leave the lights off and keep the hands out of the tank for four weeks, then do the water tests and mess with things after planting and turning the lights, and CO2 on. I know it's hard but it works.

[Dark River Aquatics]

@Jungle Fanfor sure! The plan with this was dark start for about a week just to let everything in the substrate settle a bit, then “dose” with a bit of filter mulm, swap out most of the sponge in the canisters for used sponges from other systems, plant heavily all in one go, flip the lights & co2 on and then wait for the plants to establish. I’ve had really good results with that in the past, especially using raw soil combined with aqua soil and lots of established media with heavy planting right from the start - the quickest “cycle” I’ve achieved was roughly 3 days, where even the ammonia bloom produced by raw soil & aqua soil was processed down to nitrate - but that said, I’m definitely a fan of patience and letting systems age before adding livestock. I’m in no rush to get fish into these tanks, but I’m definitely impatient to get them planted 😜

 

Today’s water testing showed high levels of kh & moderate nitrate, so I’m assuming the STS has absorbed most if not all of what it wants to from the water column and I’m doing multiple 90% water changes right now to reset the parameters back down to what my well water normally is. If everything (kh & ph in particular) still looks the same when I test the water tomorrow, I’ll order all the plants and at least get it planted soon 🥳 Adding fish is probably a minimum of a few weeks away, we’ll play that one by ear and see how the tank settles out over time 

[Jungle Fan]

@Dark River Aquatics first thing I stock after I get the plants in usually are the invertebrates like Nerites and shrimp because any nitrite fluctuations won't harm them because their blood isn't hemoglobin based. They help get the cycle along further as well.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Jungle Fan

[Dark River Aquatics]

@Jungle Faninteresting! I always quickly end up with some combination of bladder snails and/or pond snails that hitchhike from my other tanks, but that’s really good to know about shrimp - I usually hold off on adding any until some biofilms have built up, but I have plenty of cherries & Amanos to add to this system early and plenty of supplemental foods so I’ll give that a whirl! Thank you!

[Jungle Fan]

@Dark River Aquatics when I ran my dark start for my current tank, even though I had pre-soaked all the wood for anywhere from 3 - 4 months, I noticed I was still getting some biofilm after about the second to third week, even on a piece of wood that I have now owned, and had in tanks for close to thirty years. I subscribe the biofilm to the abundance of newly established bacteria, and the addition of starter bacteria from day one.

However,  I waited with adding shrimp and snails not just until planting, and lights on, after four weeks, but I gave it another two weeks for the plants to be better established. After two more weeks I added all the fish. From lights on water values were all within normal parameters but I'm careful, and at $6 a pop for the 48 cardinal and rummynose tetras, 6 Rams, and 8 otos with lots of extra incentive to be so.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Jungle Fan

[Dark River Aquatics]

@Jungle Fan I usually take a very similar approach minus any dark start time, all of my new tanks for the past few years have included a lot of mulm and/or media from established tanks within the substrate, some form of ammonia production from either raw soil or aqua soil, and lots of established media in the filtration combined with heavy planting & lights on from day one - and typically I’ll use at least some botanicals, even if it’s just a few leaves tucked away somewhere. Usually the results are fairly predictable and they all mellow out very quickly and I usually add livestock in a very similar way to what you describe after several weeks have gone by and the plants are thriving 🙂

 

These two new tanks are a total experiment with a very different substrate setup from what I normally do though, and holy cow they’ve been…. Interesting. The 75g in particular has been nothing but problems and it’s getting irritating, I’m pretty sure the substrates are both charged up now and have absorbed everything they want to but both tanks are experiencing one heck of a bacterial bloom in the water columns after dosing heavily and adding a bit of mulm to the water, and earlier tonight my brand new out of the box Sunsun canister completely crapped out. The impeller was scalding hot to the touch when I took it apart and the dang thing is just completely dead in the water. I’ve used a lot of their smaller 265gph canisters and they’ve all been bulletproof, never once had an issue with any of them. This is the 525gph larger version and it was just a lemon I guess because it’s toast…. It’s all getting a bit frustrating, my plant guy has everything ready to send but we’re still delaying the shipment until the 75g gets sussed out. Super, super annoying 😒

 

 

These are the tanks as of earlier tonight and I’m kicking myself for not using more established mulm & media immediately like I usually do, I set them up with all brand new stuff to attempt to give the desired anoxic bacteria in the substrate a chance to establish without competing with large established colonies of aerobic bacteria but I think that was a mistake…. Lesson re-learned, when you set up a new system with brand new unseasoned materials it’s basically setting the stage for a monoculture of something you don’t want, so I’ll be going back to using tons of aged stuff in the future to kick things off with a lot of biodiversity right from the start.

Sorry, that ended up being more of a rant than I’d intended it to be 😜

 

On the bright side though, visited a friend earlier today and got to see some of his carnivorous plants and he hooked me up with a bunch of monster crypt spiralis and retrospiralis so that’s good 🥳 Some of them are easily 2’ tall behemoths 

Apparently the pitcher plant is native to where we live in New England, which is super cool - had no idea we have any types of plants like that up here and got to nerd out learning some cool stuff from him so the headaches of the 75g aside, today was still a good day

Edited August 30, 2021 by Dark River Aquatics

[Dark River Aquatics]

Visited a local stream today and collected a nice mix of sand, silt, leaf litter, twigs, and other detritus to add some teeny tiny biodiversity to the new 40g 🙂 It’s funny, this tank was just thrown together as an afterthought experiment with more focus and planning going into the 75g, but I’m having a blast taking it in a more chaotic, natural, see what happens sort of direction 

As it takes on more of its own character I’m considering adding apistos to the 40g as it seems to be evolving into something they’d like to be in. The stuff from the stream was just scattered along the front of the tank and mixed with the other botanicals, and even with the bacterial bloom it’s starting to have a nice wild feel - actually, I sort of like how the murkier water contributes an element of raw naturalism but I’m going to be psyched when both tanks clear up and can be fully planted. The poor crypts are floating for right now just waiting, and I think the majority of them will probably end up staying in the 40g planted along the back with a mixture of other random plants, but probably mostly crypt species. There’s no such thing as too many crypts!

[Dark River Aquatics]

Whelp, both tanks are still cloudy and I’m squirrelly and did a different thing over the weekend!

 

A good friend was tired of his Fluval Spec V and gifted the whole tank to me, and I spent the long weekend cleaning it up and making a dirt tank utilizing a lot of the additives Father Fish describes in his videos. Dirt isn’t new to me, but using an extensive recipe of soil mixes & additives is new and using a lot of found materials from the stream I discovered seemed like a great way to use this little tank.

The first step was emptying it out and giving it a good scrub, cutting a new block of coarse filter sponge to fit the sump compartment, putting gradual layers of light diffuser film over both ends of the LED to reduce the lighting a bit and focus it in the middle portion of the tank, and rinsing the flourite that was in it. After it was clean I let it sit overnight full of hot water and peroxide to kill off any algae, because it had a heavy amount of cladophora & hair algae (which actually looked pretty awesome but isn’t what I want in the new system)

I also ordered up a few things from Amazon, scrounged various items I already had on hand, re-watched a bunch of Father Fish videos, and settled on this for the dirt mix:

 

-2.5L dirt from my yard

-1L sphagnum peat mix

-.5L worm castings

-3 Tbs laterite powder

-1 Tbs baking soda

-2 Tbs Osmocote plus

-1 Tbs SeaChem equilibrium

-2 Tbs diatomaceous earth

-200ml organic lawn lime granules

-100ml Fluval peat granules

-1.5 Tbs Epsom salt

-15ml SeaChem liquid iron

 

As a disclaimer, I have NO idea what I’m doing and this is a mad scientist, “why the heck not” type of experiment and it may be a massive failure. But I had fun doing it and got to play with mud!

I took pictures of the bucket after adding each new ingredient but now that I’m looking at the album, it’s a ton of redundancy so we’ll leave it with these - but I mixed the dirt, sphagnum, and worm castings together by hand and then added the rest of the additives, mixed by hand again, dosed the liquid iron, added goopy water from a well established canister filter, and mixed up some mud. I didn’t use all of what I mixed and actually probably used too much; on a tank this small I probably should’ve gone for a .5” layer, and it’s about 1”. But in the name of experimentation we’ll see what happens. I added a thin layer of the old flourite and then it was time to cap it all

I went back to the stream and collected a lot of sand, gravel, silt, leaves, twigs, bark, and whatever else came up off the bottom including a couple of random plants. I’m moderately sure one of them is a species of Ludwigia, and the other was growing along the bank with wet feet and was added to the top of the filter compartment to see if it grows emersed. This was the result after adding a thick, 2”ish layer of sand plus a top layer of random stream stuff:

 

Then I filled it up! There’s a variety of tiny worms that came in with the leaves, and I was shocked to discover a baby newt or salamander crawling around in the tank after it was filled. Because I’m not sure what it was and don’t know if I unknowingly committed a crime by accidentally collecting it I won’t post pics, and it was released back in the same section of stream where I got the leaves. But it was super cute and was very cool to discover in there.

I added a few other plants I had on hand, so far just a mix of dwarf sag and Ludwigia Repens. I’d like for this tank to become a true North American native biotope and to eventually house a pair of Pygmy Sunfish, so I’ve stuck with native plant species for now. It may get some guppy grass as well as cover for the pygmies, but for now I’d like to let the other plants establish before getting mobbed with guppy grass.

The water is a little hazy but surprisingly clear already, and I don’t plan on doing any water changes or dosing any nutrients - we will see what happens with the dirt + cap, and it will be a couple of months before any fish go in so there is plenty of time to play with it and make sure it’s a healthy environment. And that’s it! Super fun weekend side project, and I’m enjoying how naturalistic it looks 🙂 Hope you all enjoyed my frankentank and we’ll see what happens over time!

[Dark River Aquatics]

It’s finallllly cleared up and mostly planted 🙌🏻
 

I went a little crazy on the plant list though, still need to add my monster clump of Buce brownie blue and there’s a brownie ghost 2011 in the mail, an echinodorus iguazu 2009 coming from a friend, and cryptocoryne regina silver queen / crypt keei / crypt mini striolata coming in a few weeks, then I’ll need to suss out the remaining foreground space and figure out what to do.

The current plant list includes things still in the mail but barring any catastrophes this is the list of everything already in place plus the few still in transit (broken up by species/stems/misc):

-lagenandra silver powder

-lagenandra variegated green

-lagenandra keralensis

-lagenandra chocolate

-lagenandra tenkasi 

-lagenandra meeboldii red

 

-crypt nurii rosen maiden

-crypt nurii pink line

-crypt nurii raubensis

-crypt wendtii flamingo

-crypt parva

-crypt lutea 

-crypt pontideriifolia

-crypt crispulata tonkinesis

-crypt axelrodi

-crypt yujii

-crypt wendtii Tropica

-crypt keei

-crypt striolata mini

-crypt Regina silver queen 

 

-Buce brownie ghost

-Buce brownie ghost 2011

-Buce brownie ghost mini

-Buce phantom mini

-Buce red mini

-Buce purple mini

-Buce Godzilla

-Buce dark skeleton king 

-Buce brownie Helena

-Buce brownie blue

-Buce lamandau mini

-Buce theia red

-Buce kedagang mini

-Buce kedagang red

-Buce wavy green

-Buce mahap variant

-Buce boyan

-Buce mini coin

-Buce alamanda dark

-Buce crocodile

-Buce falcon

 

-anubias pinto

-anubias jalapeño

-anubias minima

 

-Ludwigia Cuba

-Ludwigia pantanal

-limnophila aromatica

-limnophila Belem

-alternanthera lilacina

-alternanthera ocipus 

-bacopa Salzmanii purple

-hyptis lorentziana

-hygrophila sunset

 

-micranthemum Monte Carlo 

-glossostigma 

-staurogyne purple

-echinodorus soekarno

-echinodorus iguazu 2009

-helianthium Vesuvius

-hydrocotyle tripartita Japan

 

Suuuuper happy that the milk water is gone and almost everything is in! I added a Finnex 24/7 strip light at the back of the tank with the red & green on 100%, blue on 50% and white in 20% in addition to the floodlights but still not crazy about the color rendition, and may spring for better lighting down the road as some plants get sold off. The collectoritis is very real but I’m hoping to farm & sell almost everything in there 😅

[Patrick_G]

Nice plant list! 

[Struggle]

On 9/21/2021 at 10:23 PM, Dark River Aquatics said:

It’s finallllly cleared up and mostly planted 🙌🏻
 

I went a little crazy on the plant list though, still need to add my monster clump of Buce brownie blue and there’s a brownie ghost 2011 in the mail, an echinodorus iguazu 2009 coming from a friend, and cryptocoryne regina silver queen / crypt keei / crypt mini striolata coming in a few weeks, then I’ll need to suss out the remaining foreground space and figure out what to do.

The current plant list includes things still in the mail but barring any catastrophes this is the list of everything already in place plus the few still in transit (broken up by species/stems/misc):

-lagenandra silver powder

-lagenandra variegated green

-lagenandra keralensis

-lagenandra chocolate

-lagenandra tenkasi 

-lagenandra meeboldii red

 

-crypt nurii rosen maiden

-crypt nurii pink line

-crypt nurii raubensis

-crypt wendtii flamingo

-crypt parva

-crypt lutea 

-crypt pontideriifolia

-crypt crispulata tonkinesis

-crypt axelrodi

-crypt yujii

-crypt wendtii Tropica

-crypt keei

-crypt striolata mini

-crypt Regina silver queen 

 

-Buce brownie ghost

-Buce brownie ghost 2011

-Buce brownie ghost mini

-Buce phantom mini

-Buce red mini

-Buce purple mini

-Buce Godzilla

-Buce dark skeleton king 

-Buce brownie Helena

-Buce brownie blue

-Buce lamandau mini

-Buce theia red

-Buce kedagang mini

-Buce kedagang red

-Buce wavy green

-Buce mahap variant

-Buce boyan

-Buce mini coin

-Buce alamanda dark

-Buce crocodile

-Buce falcon

 

-anubias pinto

-anubias jalapeño

-anubias minima

 

-Ludwigia Cuba

-Ludwigia pantanal

-limnophila aromatica

-limnophila Belem

-alternanthera lilacina

-alternanthera ocipus 

-bacopa Salzmanii purple

-hyptis lorentziana

-hygrophila sunset

 

-micranthemum Monte Carlo 

-glossostigma 

-staurogyne purple

-echinodorus soekarno

-echinodorus iguazu 2009

-helianthium Vesuvius

-hydrocotyle tripartita Japan

 

Suuuuper happy that the milk water is gone and almost everything is in! I added a Finnex 24/7 strip light at the back of the tank with the red & green on 100%, blue on 50% and white in 20% in addition to the floodlights but still not crazy about the color rendition, and may spring for better lighting down the road as some plants get sold off. The collectoritis is very real but I’m hoping to farm & sell almost everything in there 😅

That looks awesome!!!

[Dark River Aquatics]

This is a pic of the new 75g on September 16th, the first day it was cleared up enough to plant, and a pic from today 🙂

 

The plants are settling in, and there’s more melting than I’d anticipated and have been battling that with manual removal of melty leaves and WC’s. The Ludwigia Cuba is settled in and growing like a weed, and the bulk of the melt is from tissue culture plants and the Ludwigia Pantanal - my water parameters are on the high end of what Pantanal wants in terms of carbonate hardness & ph, so I knew it was a gamble to begin with but it’s throwing a tantrum and I’m not sure if it’s going to pull through. The Cuba on the other hand isn’t showing any crazy colors, but it’s put on some significant growth! The first pic here is right after planting, the next two are from today

 

There’s also new growth on the Crypt Flamingos & Staurogyne Purple which I’m pretty happy about, both are showing some nice coloration in the new growth even under the fairly bland color rendition with the lighting being used. I did play with the color settings of the Finnex 24/7 a bit more but it doesn’t do much to bring out better colors in these plants - oh well. There may be a Chihiros in this tank’s future if I can talk myself into the cost 😂

I’ve added half a dozen Amanos and a single random Platy, and more Amanos will go in this week and the Platy will come out soon - he was a random fish in my moss grow out tub, and I wanted to make sure the co2 & o2 levels were okay even though I’m running a drop checker and dialed it in first with the ph/kh chart method. So far so good, and Mr Platy will go back to the tub life soon.

I’ve been doing a lot of research & overthinking about the nutrient dosing this tank will need, and even though the initial plan was to use an All In One I’ve ordered a Jebao 3 pump auto-doser and the NilocG PPS Pro dry fert kit. I don’t trust myself to stay on top of meticulous dosing or a 7 day water change schedule, so the plan is to keep WCs to biweekly to start with and then see if the tank can handle once a month with a lean nutrient input via the doser. I’m working with a friend who’s much smarter than I am on what nutrient levels to aim for - right now he’s thinking I should try to target 20ppm nitrate / 3ppm phosphate / 20ppm potassium / 0.7ppm iron over the course of the two week cycle with half of the macros being front loaded, and the other half plus the micros being dosed on an alternating daily schedule via the doser.

Speaking of that friend, he is holding onto my BG2011 for now! These pics are before & after shipping, it lost a decent amount of color in transit but is bouncing back quickly

Echinodorus Iguazu 2009 is behind it in that last pic, I’m going to wait to add both of those until my tank has stabilized a bit more and the nutrient dosing is sorted out. I’m very, very excited to have both of those plants but am worrying over keeping them as healthy as possible.

So far there have been far more speed bumps with this tank than I’ve been used to, but we’re battling forward and making progress 🙂

[Dark River Aquatics]

Picture dump time because I got a new phone, and who knew going from an iPhone 6S to a 13 would be such a difference in picture quality 😜

 

This 75g has gotten a steady influx of plants, and aside from a few things still waiting to be shipped (a handful of fun crypts, buces, and aponogeton crispus purple), it’s just about stocked. It also has a total of 15 Amano shrimp, the lone platy, a pair of my F1 Apisto Trifasciata Rio Guapore, and a trio of my F1 Apisto Tefé (which are feeling each other out, and so far so good)

 

Full tank shot, with the doser ready to use once I figure out the exact nutrient uptake required by the system. Almost ready

Bucephalandra Brownie Ghost 2011, acclimating well with a new head & new roots and slowly darkening leaves

Echinodorus Opacus Iguazu 2009, with the male/female Trifasc settling in

Apisto Tefé trio having the most stressful day of their young lives getting transferred to the tank

Ludwigia Inclinata Verticillata “Meta” cuttings from a friend day 1 & day 5, settling in and growing well. Wayyyy less finicky than Pantanal

Ludwigia Inclinata Verticillata “Cuba”

Iguazu 2009 again

Buces, a mix of Dark Skeleton King / Nanga Pinoh Purple / an unknown species

Bucephalandra Green Skeleton King

Lagenandra Chocolate & Lagenandra Silver Powder

The poor Ludwigia Pantanal at the back as NOT having fun in my well water, but the two heads of Meta have been moved back to fill in and eventually propagate out to replace it

Bucephalandra Brownie Ghost

Still learning with this camera but misc growth - Anubias Pinto with a new white leaf, Bacopa SG Purple growing side shoots, Helianthium Vesuvius looking ratty but settling and putting out spathes of babies, Hydrocotyle Japan already creeping too far, and AR Mini at the back peeking out.

Cant wait to see this system mature now that the early tank struggles seem to be settling out 😊

The next moves will be hooking up the auto-doser, finding a large school of dithers (possibly 30+ Black Neons?) and waiting for the last few plants on the list

[Dark River Aquatics]

Haven’t updated on any tanks in a while but things are going well 😄 75g ended up being way crazier than intended, and starting a new 14g cube on top of it soon

[Colu]

Your tanks are looking great did you get an breeding from your apistogramma

[Dark River Aquatics]

On 1/5/2022 at 10:00 PM, Colu said:

Your tanks are looking great did you get an breeding from your apistogramma

Thank you!! I haven’t been focused on breeding any of the apistos as much recently, the F1 Tefé babies that I kept are doing really well but I haven’t put any effort into breeding them out into F2 yet. The best looking male went into my planted 75g just for kicks, here are a few pics of him 😄 His parents are still alive and well and spawn clockwork, but I haven’t intentionally pulled/raised any of the clutches and the female always ends up eating the eggs if I leave them 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Dark River Aquatics