Jungle Tank Log

[TheDukeAnumber1]

Jungle Tank Log

I've wanted to make a log thread of this tank for a while, it has been a very fun tank for me and I would like to share its progress. This tank has been running for over a year now but I have kept logs since the beginning so I will start there and fill it in as I have time until we get to the present after which I'm planning on doing monthly-ish logs.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

8-18-2019
The setup had been running for a month at this point. The filtration for this tank has been (2) 3D printed airstones in the back corners running on usb airpumps and giant duckweek I purchased off of ebay. Stocked with white cloud mountain minnows I had just bread in a 100g summer tub, and MTS & ramshorn snails. Their diet consisted of fluval big bites and baby brine a few times a week. I used aragonite substrate and the wood is from a dead apple tree in my yard I had cut to fit. The lighting is a finnex stingray 20in set to run 14 hours a day. I would occasionally dose the PPS-Pro fertilizer reciepe to keep the duckweek running happily. My water is sky high KH and GH well water and the tank is covered with a tight lid I cut from an acrylic sheet.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

9-8-2019
First non floating plants added! I purchased (2) vallisneria from the Co-op and (1) anubias nana "petite". Both val had small runners so I got (4) val total. I planted the val along the back and tied the anubias to the wood with twine. My fish room does get cold in the winter and although the white clouds can handle it I wanted to have some daily temperature changes. So I put in a 25 watt heater and plugged it in with the light timer. It's technically undersized for the tank but that's by design so the temp changes are low and slow when the lights come on.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

9-18-2019
Here you can see some vallisneria plant growth with their first new runners sprouting, and my sister needed to rehome some mollies.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

10-5-2019
The vallisneria has been making great progress growing and making runners. On select weekends I open the adjacent window and let sunlight hit the tank for a few hours. Fish have a hidden beauty that only the sun can unlock, also the val loved it. The anubias nana "petite" had grabbed onto the wood just enough for me to remove the twine.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

10-12-2019
More noticable vallisneria growth and runners. A molly passed and team snail managed to strip it to bones in 24 hours. This is when I started using filters on my photos.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

10-27-2019
More vallisneria growth, it is coming close to time to disturb everything and replant them.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

11-15-2019
It was time to replant the vallisneria. I also ordered (2) dwarf sagittaria plants and planted them in the front. The goal was to have a val wall in back and a dsag carpet in front.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

11-29-2019
Things were really starting to take form, unfortunately I really started to have issues keeping staghorn aglae under control on the wood. I impulse purchased a smokey pleco but I sadly quickly found out it did not like my water. This was the peak of the tank with the wood.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

12-22-2019
The vallisneria keeps marching on and the dwarf sagittaria is gaining speed. I moved the anubias nana "petite" to a piece of cholla wood in a last attempt to remove enough staghorn algae from the wood in an effort to make it more manageable.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

12-30-2019
I had enough of the staghorn battle and removed the wood and put in a 'monolith' looking stone. I took this opportunity to take out the white clouds, for several months I wanted to keep heterandria formosa and decided to pull the trigger on the idea and order some

[TheDukeAnumber1]

1-31-2020
The heterandria formosa finally arrived. I wanted to buy off aquabid but none were being offered at the time so I turned to ebay. I bought a lot of (10) but the shipper decided to try and send (20) and good thing they did because with questionable bagging it was a mess. Only (8) survived, (7) adult females and one juvenile that turned out to be a male. What a lucky guy to get (7) ladies all to himself. A few cherry shrimp were added, more val moved to the back and the nana petite I let float.

[TheDukeAnumber1]

4-26-2020
After a few months the one heterandria formosa male has finally matured and little fry are starting to appear. The vallisneria wall is holding strong and the dwarf sagittaria made a lot of progress filling out the front.

[Levi_Aquatics]

Looks great!

[Alesha]

Really great photo journal here! So glad you caught pics at each juncture. It's really interesting to see the vallisneria do it's thing. I've never had it in my tanks, so it's fascinating to me. 

The only time I dealt with staghorn was with my ruffle sword leaves that were floating on the top of my old 20-high and the airstone bubbles were coming up right beside them. Somehow the air movement seemed to encourage the staghorn growth. In my present 55, I've not had staghorn, but have had black beard. Ugh. But oddly, in the same place - those top floating leaves near the sponge filters. 

I have my light on a timer now, and do the siesta timing, so it goes off mid-afternoon and comes back on at night. Since then, AND after moving the sponge filter AWAY from the floating sword leaves, I've had NO black beard. So interesting! I have no idea which switch helped...less light, less bubbles or more plant growth in the tank. I'm just glad it worked. 

I'll be following the thread to see how the jungle grows in!

[TheDukeAnumber1]

7-18-2020
The dwarf sagittaria made a lot of progress and is starting to carpet out as hoped but the staghorn is really starting to take hold on the rock. The heterandria formosa fry did very well. At this time I was feeding live baby brine daily and northfin krill fry food. I would infrequently fertilize with the PPS-pro recipe to ensure the greenery stayed happy.

This is also when I began having an issue keeping snails alive. For reasons I still haven't figured out nearly all of the MTS died out, 80%-90% of the ramshorns died, and I haven't seen a baby snail since. I think I can rule out copper since I had shrimp when this all started. I am slowly trying to test what the issue is in other tanks by eliminating variables. ATM my best theory is that some pesticide that effects snails has made it into my well from adjacent farm fields. Fish and plants are flourishing but the snails in my tanks do not.

 

[TheDukeAnumber1]

10-23-2020

This will be my last pre dated entry, further enteries will be current. The center stone being close to the light grew more hair algae than I was willing to deal with so I switched it out for a short one just to mark the center of the tank. The plants filled in more, I added fertilizer very infrequently and the fish population steadily grew.

[Alesha]

Oh wow! This is looking great! Especially the plants! That dwarf sag is amazing, isn't it?!

[PedroPete]

I’d love to read any update on the tank and HF if you have time 🙂 happy holidays!

[TheDukeAnumber1]

This next update has weighed on me for a while now, feeling that I owed it to the log, and now even more so that you asked @PedroPete 🙂  The Jungle Tank as of a month ago is no more. The last update was the peak of the jungle look and I was able to maintain it for a few months, but hair algae began to take hold and become more and more of a problem. Over time the dwarf sag slowly won the battle with the val until the entire tank was carpeted with it becoming so thick that the substrate was locked in and my ability to suck out the mulm layer was very limited. The hair algae kept growing faster and faster rivaling the duckweed. I generally don't mind algae and even like some in the right spots, but when it comes to hair algae.... the stuff is pure evil IMO.

I tried individually and in combination a UV sterilizer, excessive amounts of Easy Carbon, salt, photo period adjustment, hard/soft water, and fertilizer adjustment to combat the hair aglae with no success. I ended up removing as much hair algae as I was removing duckweed. It finally got to the point where the tank needed a hard reset, I pulled all the plants and gravel vac'd the substrate until it was clean, took about 15 gallons to do it. I redecorated with tank with flag stone and replanted some of the dwarf sag. After some thought I decided to move the tank to the 'dungeon' of my house. Lately I've really fallen out of enjoying keeping a tank looking good for 'company' and have been enjoying the natural cycle however it looks, minus the hair agae of course. Anyways this is getting long, it has been a while, but here are the update pics.

 

First photo shows the tank shortly after the hard reset, in the corners are "bubble sticks" my wife named them. Just PVC with airstones inside that acts as a flexible filter I can put heaters, UV lights, or filter meda in. They also control where the bubbles pop which made it easier to keep the top clean.

 

Second photo, shows a colony of bryozoan I discovered on my heater! There were present in the very beginning of the tank setup and appeared to die out early on. Seeing them again felt like being greeted by an old friend.

 

Third photo shows the current setup of the tank. I have been very much enjoying just keeping the fish happy until pond season starts up again.

[PedroPete]

On 12/31/2021 at 11:23 PM, TheDukeAnumber1 said:

Lately I've really fallen out of enjoying keeping a tank looking good for 'company' and have been enjoying the natural cycle however it looks, minus the hair agae of course.

Cheers to this sentiment! 

I really like the look of the Hformosa and platinum medaka together! Have they also coexisted in your outdoor ponds? 

I loved reading and seeing the changes, especially to the plantings - big changes and growth visible in a short term due to your documentation. It helps us all stay patient and also consider more carefully the lifecycle(s) of our tanks.

Thanks for the update! 🙂 and Happy New Year!

[TheDukeAnumber1]

On 1/1/2022 at 1:09 PM, PedroPete said:

I really like the look of the Hformosa and platinum medaka together! Have they also coexisted in your outdoor ponds?

Thanks, I had them together last summer in a 100g stock tank and they did well. The Hformosa bred very well and I was able to collect medaka eggs from a spawning mop throughout the summer.

[PedroPete]

Very nice!

I also do Medaka outside in tubs, too, both outdoors and indoors, so maybe I will try my hand with some H formosa this year (I just ordered 2 trios to be delivered this week! Very excited!). Playing with 100 gallon stock tank would be awesome, though. How did you catch out your Hformosa at the end of the season - besides extremely carefully with a fine net?

[TheDukeAnumber1]

On 1/1/2022 at 2:37 PM, PedroPete said:

Very nice!

I also do Medaka outside in tubs, too, both outdoors and indoors, so maybe I will try my hand with some H formosa this year (I just ordered 2 trios to be delivered this week! Very excited!). Playing with 100 gallon stock tank would be awesome, though. How did you catch out your Hformosa at the end of the season - besides extremely carefully with a fine net?

Neat, I may lean on you for some medaka advice next summer since last summer was my first time keeping them. I caught some of the Hformosa out with a normal aquarium net but getting them all would have been impossible in a reasonable amount of time. So this winter I'm experimenting with leaving the pond out and seeing how the fish do weathering an IL winter with me making efforts to keep it from freezing solid. The medaka are fine so far, it has been fun to see them swimming under inches of ice, but unfortunately it looks like all the Hformosa died out quickly when the cold snaps started hitting. Next year I'm planning to either bring in as many as I can or move them to a pond closer to the house that I can keep warmer.

[PedroPete]

Cool! I have platinums, "normal" (quite varied actually, some whitish, some grayish, some yellowish, some light bicoloring, some with light lamé sparkling), and I just picked up some wild types from someone in IL off Aquabid. I have been too chicken to leave my ricefish out over winter, even though it's wayyyyyy colder in IL and Japan than in Barcelona. Love to hear yours are doing well under the ice. Crazy strong fish! Sorry to hear about your HF, but it sounds like you also kept a bunch indoors just in case. I wonder if you could make a fine seine net or something to help.

I spent a month with my parents last summer in Indiana, and I got my dad back in the hobby with summer tubbing with guppies.  Was just a fun project to keep us busy while I was here. I was sad I couldn't be here to help him with breaking down the stock tank and catching out the guppies, but apparently it wasn't too much work for him as it turns out our guppies hadn't been very productive unfortunately. Very few fry by end of September. Actually he had real rotten guppy luck last year, but I brought him a bunch of mine from Spain for Christmas, and we are hoping for a better 2022 🙂  Oh, and what caught my attention from your jungle tank was not only the HF but also the timeless dwarf sag / val combo. Back in July I set up an old 20 gallon high from the garage for my dad to add the summer tub fish to in, and I planted it up with dwarf sag and val. I knew they'd spread, and he remembered them well from back when he had fish tanks 30+ years ago.