New (old) tank

Cookie_Monster

godtabh wrote: »

what substrate is it?

its just sand from the petshop, says "river sand" on the bag.

Slates

Where did you but the silk plants ??

Cookie_Monster

Slates wrote: »

Where did you but the silk plants ??

there's only one silk. In post 25 its the dark green/purple one to the immediate left of the wood. Picked it up in Petstop in Carrickmines. The 2 on the left are real, from Seahorse) the rest are plastic from various shops (Maxi Zoo & Fish Antics)

Cookie_Monster

Update:

Was away for the weekend, friend looking after the fish.
Came back to a bit of a mess. The last Danio had died, which I was kinda expecting tbh. But she obviously didn't notice him and this kicked off a wave of bacteria & algae growth. So he got flushed and a crash maintenance program was begun

So 40% water change, all rocks and plastic plants taken out and scrubbed clean of algae, seems to have done the job. I think I'm winning the battle with the brown algae, the plant leaves look much cleaner over the last few days. The snail war is going less well though, the buggers are everywhere. I remove about 10 a day.

I had added a plant (dunno what, half cm long leaves, multiple stems, 100+ leaves per stem) recently and it had gone mad in the few days too, it must have grown at least 2 inches, so that had to get chopped back.

Fish brightened right back up after the maintenance, they're all looking good. 6 panda cory and 12 cardinal tetra. Corys are definitly larger than when I bought them, seem well. Glad I changed to sand, they spend the whole time digging it up, the gravel would not have suited them.
Tetras look to be doing well also, all brightly coloured, swimming freely throughout the tank. Every so often one does a vertical dance infront of one or more of the others, dunno what thats about. the first time I thought it was sick but a few of them do it every so often and are back to normal after.

Cookie_Monster

more change.

2 red robin gourami added today, lovely little fish.
4th plant added so more of the plastic ones get the boot.

a bit more re-arranging again also, I'll stick a pic up when the water settles down and clears

Cookie_Monster

Some more photos, not great quality due to camera and a lot of crap in the water from adding and disturbing sand last night.

Cookie_Monster

An update and some changes.

New plants, water onion in the corner and the sword have sprouted daughter plants which I snipped off and planted. Some of the plastic ones have been removed to make room for the live plants.

New flowerpots (they're pretty easy to spot:D)

New fish: 6 cory trilineatus, 4 assassin snails
Some losses: lost 1 cardinal and 3 panda cory since the start
All the slate is gone, I think the cory's have been damaging their whiskers off it at times.

Overview

Sword sending out shoots again, looks like more baby plants on the way :P

both type of cory and one of the amazon sword off cuts

Heard lots of names for this guy: red robin or honey gourami mainly

Assassin hidden between the leaves

Water Onion and Cory's

Water Onion and Cory's


Hope you like it

chris139ryan

that tank has come along way man well done.

Cookie_Monster

chris139ryan wrote: »

that tank has come along way man well done.

Thanks

Still getting there. the amazon sword in the pot is sending out more shoots and the water onion has gone mad all over the place now.

I cleaned all the gunk outa the filter thoroughly too and its a much much better flow off it again.

Cookie_Monster

I've decided that tomorrow will involve a major cleaning of the tank.

Heater / filter housing / flower pots etc all need to be cleaned and a massive anti snail programme launched as the assassins can only do so much. Plants need some trimming and will also change a much large % of water than normal, prob about 50%.

There is small hard green dots of algae forming on the glass and other surfaces. Can't get it off with the little magnet brush, any idea what it might be?

I'll go at it with a bit more force tomorrow anyway. Camera isn't good enough to pick it out clearly.

gbee

Get a Zebra Loach for the snails, it's a community fish and will abide with anything. He loves snails but will eat readily anything as well.

An Algae Eater would help clean the glass, you'd need to chose carefully as some can be vicious, others destructive to your hard work and may not be worth the bother.

Cookie_Monster

^^

I looked at that but decided the tank was too small for one of them so not really fair.
The algae came off easily enough with a bit of scrubbing and I removed 100+ snails :eek:

There's still dozens and dozens in there though. On the plus side I counted at least 12 baby assassin snails zooming around which I've never seen before. So that's 4 adults and 12+ babies. It may be down to three adults though, I accidentally washed one of them in the sink while cleaning off the wood. Popped him back in and he moved around and eventually buried himself. I'll check on him tomorrow, if he's not where he is now I'll take it as a good thing.
So with the assassin reinforcements I may be on the verge of gaining the upper ground in the snail war

Cookie_Monster

A few of my tetra have growths on them. I have treated the tank with Tetrasafe Fungi stop, doesn't seem to have done the trick though.

Reading around a product called Melafix seems to fit the bill for treating them, does anyone know what shops in south Dublin may stock it before I go trapsing around. Petstop in Carrickmines or MaxiZoo in Bray would be handiest for me.