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Current Tank Residents:
2003.10.13
The tank was starting to really show a lot of algae on the rocks so I gave it a cleaning.
But first I took the requisite chemistry...
So the tank seems to be performing well. I rotated the filter blocks, throwing out the lower one that was the most dirty, moving the upper one down, and adding a fresh one on top. Changed out about 25% of the water, vaccumed the gravel, and washed the waterfall filter. I also added a capful of Cycle.
2003.10.01
Well it has been a month now with the tank and I think it's doing very nicely.
It got fully set-up very quickly and I'm really happy with the results. The fish
are all healthy, the water chemistry is stable, and the plants are growing so well
that I've had to start giving clippings away to my friends for their tanks.
2003.09.30
All is well in chemistry land...
I went back to Pete's Pets and bought their one remaining C. Julii so that mine could have a friend. I also picked up two more glass cats for the swarm. I think the fish compliment for this tank is basically complete. I think the two guppies may be intimidated by the larger and faster glass cats, so I may get a few more of them to bolster their strength in numbers.
2003.09.29
Things are pretty stable in the tank these days. Soon I'll stop doing this
everyday and only when something of interest happens.
2003.09.28
I swapped out the old semi-clogged sponge filter on my waterfall filter
yesterday with a new one, but I suspect that it was a breeding ground for
a lot of my beneficial bacteria, so I'm expecting a small rise in
pollutants over the next few days.
I removed the final mondo grass and added a capful of Cycle to help the new filter get up to speed. The fish seem well. I also did a 10% water change even though the chemical environment wasn't needing it. I just wanted to pick up some of the dead plant matter that was in the gravel.
2003.09.27
Chemical environment still looks good, despite the new fish having been here for
several days now. My guess is that the Cycle is working well.
I went to Petsmart in Santa Fe today to see if they had any java moss that wouldn't be quite as dead as the stuff I have. They didn't but they did have a few things of interest. For starters, they had some "Green Mondo Grass" which is probably the "mundo grass" that they guy at Pete's Pets had sold me. They had its latin name as well, Ophiopogon japonicus var. On the tag for it they said it requires bright light, which my tank certainly does not have. So that's why it is doing so horribly. I bought some replacement plants for it. They are Dwarf Hairgrass (Eleocharis acicularis) and I got three of them. When I got home I replaced one of the dying mondo's with a cluster of all three hairgrasses. Supposedly they'll do just fine in "moderate" light.
2003.09.26
Didn't see much of the tank today as I was gone all day climbing mountains.
I did, however, cut the larger hornwart in half again and re-anchor the top bit to keep it from getting too tall.
2003.09.25
The catfish are doing much better now. They're still very skittish, but I hope that will go away as they get used to the new tank. They do look great when they're schooling together all tight. The only problem is that when they feed they spaz out and scare the guppies, which in turn don't seem to eat much.
2003.09.24
Uh... continued drop in the nitrates... no idea. Way to go plants, I guess.
The glass catfish really weren't doing too well, psychologically. They would just hide in a tunnel under the rock and not move. They weren't eating. I read online that they would freak out if there weren't a good school for strength in numbers. So I went back to Pete's and bought three more for a total of five. That should make a reasonable school.
2003.09.23
Now what the hell is going on? How can the nitrate levels drop from 80 to 10 in one day?
The only thing in the tank that eats nitrates is the plantlife... I guess they were really hungry.
The hornwort plant that was originally the upper half of plant #1 is still growing strong and is about 2" away from the top fo the tank again. The lower half hasn't started new growth itself yet. Meanwhile, plant #2, which looked pretty dead when I got it, has finally started growing. Soon I won't have room for any fish in the tank; it'll just be a hornwort cultivator. On my lunch break I went by Pete's Pets and picked up a pair of African glass catfish (Pareutropius debauwi). I'll get them some more buddies as soon as I feel like the tank has stabalized again. I also gave Peter hornwart #2 (the small one) for his tank, which suffered total plant devistation at the hands (mouth) of a plecostamus. Now he has put the pleco into a different tank and I gave him the hornwart to jumpstart his newfound planthood. After some internet research, I believe that my new fish were actually mislabeled and are in fact 3-stripe African glass catfish (Pareutropius buffei). This is fine with me, as the buffei variety are a bit smaller and more colorful.
2003.09.22
The nitrate explosion continues... I'll probably change out some more water tonight.
I suspect that I may have damaged my bacteria colony by washing the gunk out of my filter sponge with tap water that was still chlorinated. This could explain the increased levels of pollutants, though its probably just because of the new fish. Regardless, I put in an extra capful of Cycle this morning just in case.
2003.09.21
Holy nitrate explosion, batman!
I chopped the now huge hornwart in half and re-anchored the top bit next to the old piece. It is still growing at a rate of almost an inch a day.
2003.09.20
The cory is acting much more normal now, scavanging the bottom for dropped food, etc.
I added a capful of cycle to the tank because I had washed out the filter yesterday and
probably disturbed the bacteria colony.
So we're back to pollutants for a few days...
2003.09.19
Yesterday I uprooted my anubius plants and removed the glass wool that they came packed in.
In the process, I stirred up a whole bunch of debris and sent a lot of dead biological matter
floating around in the aquarium. This, more than the introduction of the new cory, probably
influenced the reappearance of ammonia in the tank.
The cory is acting weird. He spends all day with his nose against the glass swimming up and down the tank trying to find a way out. Maybe he's afraid of the guppies. Or lonely... I changed the water in the tank, about 10%. It got rid of the bulk of the large crud that had been deposited by the java moss falling apart.
2003.09.18
Still no ammonia, and now nitrite has dropped off the charts as well. Looks like all the
pollutants are getting eaten. Stranger, though, is the unexpected dropoff of nitrate.
The only explaination for this is that the plants are eating it.
This isn't too hard to believe, considering how much my hornwart is growing. I currently have it anchored at the bottom of the tank. Yesterday the top was about an inch from the water surface and today it is touching the water surface. So it grew an inch in a day. Pretty impressive. At lunch I bought a leopard corydoras (Corydoras julii) to serve my bottom-feeding needs. Pete's Pets still hadn't gotten a plant shipment in, but when I commented that their java moss looked terrible the guy said I could have a couple bundles for free to try to resuscitate. One of them was just too dead and I threw it out. The other one I attached to the top of my fake driftwood with a rubberband; we'll see how it fares.
2003.09.17
2003.09.16
2003.09.15
More algae. Should I get a plecostamus
(hypostomus plecostomus)?
I'm worried that it would just eat the anubius plants instead of peeling the algae off
the tank walls and the rocks.
After work I stopped by Pete's Pets and bought an algae scraper that works really well on the glass. It comes off with no effort at all; cleaning all the glass took about 45 seconds. I talked to them about alternatives to the pleco for feeding on the algae. Based on my conversation with them and my assessment of their knowledge, I think I'll just get a bottom feeder fish and cover as much of the light area with plants as I can. I want to get some java moss (Vesicularia dubyana) to cover the big fake driftwood in the tank with, because it attaches itself to whatever surface it is on. This will prevent the driftwood from being a breeding ground for algae. Unfortunately, all the java moss at Pete's looked like ass and they aren't getting a shipment of new plants for awhile.
2003.09.14
The algae growth continues, now there is some on the glass, though only
in little transparant bundles. I may get a scraper soon and remove it.
Other than the algae, the tank seems to be performing well. I removed Mark's gravel from the tank.
2003.09.13
Stirring up the tank with the cleaning yesterday sure made the water look bad, but
the filter was able to clear everything out pretty quickly. I thought maybe the
stirring of all that dead plant matter and fecal fun would introuce a lot more
ammonia into the tank, but apparently not.
What I did notice, however, was that there is suddenly a lot of algae in the tank. Not on the glass, but on the rocks and plants. It's really significant and it wasn't there a couple days ago. I could be imagining things, but I think it grew visibly since yesterday.
2003.09.12
Looks like the nitrate levels are starting to increase dramatically.
Maybe the ammonia level is coming down, but with only one data point, who knows.
Immediately after taking these readings I did a 15% water change to dillute out some of the NO3-. This was my first water change and was sort of a pain. All of the live plants and rocks in the tank make it difficult to get all of the gravel covered by the siphon. And aggitating the gravel churned up a whole bunch of crap into the water. The waterfall filter was able to clear most of it out in about 15 minutes, however. Once everything had settled I took another set of measurements to see what effect the water change had on the chemical environment.
So of course changing 15% of the water can't possibly remove >50% of the pollutants, right? The problem here is that these color-match test kits have huge error bars so the numbers as absolutes can't be trusted. But it was clear that the levels had dropped significantly. Adding the room-temperature water only dropped the tank temp by one degree. I also added another capful of cycle to the water and cleaned out the fungle from the waterfall filter.
2003.09.11
More of the same... still waiting for the ammonia and nitrite levels to nosedive.
2003.09.10
The tank is a little contaminated today, showing the highest levels of ammonia, nitrite,
and nitrate that I've seen yet. Despite this, the levels of all three are still benign.
The trouble with adding Mark's pre-cycled gravel to my tank was that I am now not operating under traditional "new tank" conditions. I therefore cannot expect to see the normal ammonia spike followed by a nitrite spike (and I'm not). For this reason it's going to be a little difficult to determine when my tank is actually cycled. I guess if I get to a point where I have very little or no nitrite and ammonia for a week or so, I'll consider it done.
2003.09.09
Nitrates continue to rise while ammonia and nitrites hover around their lowest
detectable levels.
The Hagen pH high-range monitor, I've decided, is somewhat crap. The color of the water for my pH, which I think is about 8.0, is so dark that it doesn't really correspond to any color on their chart. It's definitely a dark green, so it's not like its off the scale high (blue). But matching the color is really a pain. I tried another company's product that I happened to have, but it only measured 6.0-7.6 and my water tested off-scale high. Next time I'm in a pet store I may look for another high-resolution high-range pH test product.
2003.09.08
The tank is still completely clear. The fish seem to be doing quite well.
The fumes in the air from re-painting the living room and kitchen don't seem to be affecting
them adversely.
The continuing lack of ammonia in the tank leads me to believe that the bacteria colony that came with Mark's gravel is sufficient for the needs of these two tiny fish. The nitrite level is slowly rising, however. When it drops off, then I'll know the bacteria are doing everything I need.
2003.09.07
By this morning all of the haze in the tank had disappeared leaving nice crystal-clear
water. I guess whatever it was that came in with the plants and mucked up the water was
finally adsorbed by the carbon or eaten by the bacteria or something.
2003.09.06
The tank was slightly less hazy today, hopefully whatever it is that's mucking up the
water is getting eaten or destroyed or something.
2003.09.05
Took another set of measurements this morning. After only one day there is already some
noticeable ammonia in the water from the plants, and a barely detectable level of nitrite.
It was clearly non-zero, but wasn't yet as dark as the first non-zero color plate on the test
kit. The water is still slightly hazy from adding the plants.
Since the temperature has clearly settled and is slightly higher than what I'd like it to be, I clicked the heater down one degree to 70. On his way to work, Mark brought me a pair of male fancy guppies (Poecilia reticulata) and a small bag of his gravel complete with some algae and, hopefully, a fully set-up bacteria colony. I put the gravel on a plastic saucer and layed it down in my tank. The guppies were acclimated to the water and then released into their new home. I'll continue to monitor the chemical environment of the water daily until it looks like the bacteria are up to speed, then I'll proceed with buying the corydoras.
2003.09.04
The tank temperature dropped to 82 by
morning. I turned the heater down again to 71, we'll see where the temperature is tonight
after work.
Once the tempeature settles where I want it (~77 degrees), I'll get started on populating the tank with plants. I found a great website with information on aquatic plants. Reading up on their information and looking at the pictures has led me to want the following plant species to start up my tank: Dwarf Hygro (hygrophila polysperma), Tiger Val (vallisneria spiralis), Water Sprite (ceratopteris thalictroides), and Java Fern (microsorum pteropus). I went back at lunch and did some testing on the water. The heater was still set to 71 degrees, though the tank temperature had fallen to 78. The pH was between 7.5 and 8.0. The ammonia content was very close to 0 mg/l. This pH and ammonia content is expected for a clean empty tank with nothing but tap water in it.
I went by Pete's Pets to see what their plant selection was like. The options were pretty minimal. They did have some of the Tiger Val and Java Fern that I was looking for, but both were in tanks that were closed due to disease in the fish, so I obviously didn't get any of those. They had some free samples of Hornwort (ceratophyllum demersum), so I grabbed a couple pieces of that. I also bought two specimens of Anubius Nana (anubias barteri var. nana), which are slow growers but are very nice leafy plants that were in good shape and were already quite large. The last thing I bought was two specimins of some grass-like plant that may be sagittaria subulata or Tiger Val, though the clerk at Pete's said that it was called "Munta Grass" or something like that. The other thing I bought at Pete's was a higher-resolution pH measuring kit, centered around 8.0. The tap water in Los Alamos seems to be a little basic, so this should be good and it will give me more accurate readings. Three hours after introducing the plants, the water was noticeably hazy. My understanding is that this is normal and that it will go away in a few days. I put a capful of Cycle in the waterfall filter sponge and another in the tank to get the bacteria colonies up and running.
2003.09.03
I went back to Pete's Pets and bought some additional gear for my tank.
For starters I bought some cheap plastic air line splitters and valves to
replace my gang valve, and a check valve for the pump. This solved the
problem with my pump not driving both the lift tube and the undergravel air
stone. I purchased another five pounds of blue gravel along with some obsidian
stones and a fake piece of drift wood for decor.
Now both of the filter mechanisms are up and running. I'm going to give it a day for the themometer to stabalize the water temperature and for any remaining chlorine to work its way out of the system before I get some plants. After some online research, I think I am going to stock the tank with severeal cryptocoryne affinis plants and a small number of java ferns (microsorium pteropus). I had an idea at work today to use the waterfall filter's inlet tube to drive the undergravel (essentially using the powerhead on the waterfall filter to drive both filters). However, I've actually come to the conclusion that it would be better to buy a separate powerhead for the undergravel filter and run it in reverse so that the water is pushed up from underneath the gravel. This will reduce the frequency of required tank cleanings, but it will require a robust mechanical filter on the inlet of the powerhead which must be cleaned frequently. Hopefully this will be an easier cleaning solution than having to vaccum the gravel once a week. After some research into types of fish to get, and looking around at the tanks at Pete's Pets, I'm currently thinking of the following: I'll cycle the tank with three male fancy guppies from Mark's tank (along with a bag of his pre-cycled gravel). Once the tank has adjusted I'll add a small group of corydoras catfish to serve as the bottom dwellers for the tank. Finally, I'll add a good school of African glass catfish as the central attraction. They school so well; I love the way they look in a group. Maybe five or six of them. If the tank needs more color, I may eventually add a small group of dwarf blue gouramis. At lunch the water temperature was at 76 degrees F and I turned the heater on with the thermostat set to 79. By the time I went to bed the water temperature was at 84 and the heater lamp indicated that it was still heating. Turning down the setting on the heater did make the lamp go off, so my guess is that the thermostat is working - its just not calibrated correctly. This is going to delay things a bit, as I need to play with the settings. And each modification to the heater takes forever, because 10 gallons of water has a lot of heat capacity. I turned the heater down to 74 and let it sit overnight.
2003.09.02
Finally got sufficiently moved into the new apartment so that I could begin
to set up my new aquarium. I used the following components:
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