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4K views 43 replies 7 participants last post by  Olympia 
#1 ·
Uh, since everyone is doing this I guess I'll join in. :)

I'll just be posting fish related stuff/daily life stuff since it doesn't really fit into my tumblr or my personal blog, heh. I hope some people will actually read this.

So today, after school I went to eat chicken wing with a few of my friends, it's a weekly tradition, Brewsters has $0.35 per wing every Tuesday, heh, we ate about 80 wings in total.

After that I decided to go my nearest pet store, PJ's Pets. They had more new Bettas in, I saw two Super Deltas, one boy was a metallic black one and the other was a blue with white wash, he was so pretty. I also saw a pearl double tail, I resisted buying the fish, they were kept in poor condition and I didn't want to support my LPS. They also had a recent batch of Crowntails, so pretty, there was a red big one, flaring away.

As usual I saw a couple of dead boys in their cups. :T Half dying ones too. . . They had tons of Albino Julii Cories though, when I get my 20g I'll get some. . . They're so cute. They also had nice looking plants too, but they were so expensive, $7.99 for each, ack.

Heh, at least this time I walked out of there without buying anything. I have a strong will!
 
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#28 ·
I'm sorry, Micho, but don't be so hard on yourself. One time when I tore my NPT down to remove the soil, I forgot to put dechlorinator in the emergency holding tank for the fish. By the end of the day, I lost 7 fish, including cories, rummynoses, and neons. These things happen to every hobbyist. We all make mistakes.

I found that when working with soil and sand, the best way to put water in is to place a plastic ziplock bag flat on the surface. It needs to be a pretty big bag, like a gallon/quart size. Then slowly pour the water in over the bag. It keeps the water pressure from dislodging so many things.

If the water gets really cloudy after a change, one thing you can do aside from another water change is to put an airstone in. The fish are gasping because they need oxygen and the airstone will help with that.
 
#29 ·
It isn't safe to stock immediately with soil based tanks, they usually give off incredibly high ammonia readings for a couple weeks. I've heard some bad things about soil tanks so I'll never try one, especially with sensitive species. :/
That really sucks. Poor fish. I lost my pygmy cory too (though I think he died of lonliness- could never find more). :(
 
#30 ·
Thanks Sakura.

The ziplock back trick is a nice one, I shall remember that, probably will use it tomorrow with my 2.5g. To be honest I thought they were gasping because of the soil being exposed and making the water toxic. Which is why I did the 2 50% water changes, sigh. I just went to check on the tanks, everything seems fine now the deaths have stopped I hope. I'm about to go around with a chopstick and start poking at the soil to aerate it since I have no MTS.

Yeah Olympia, soil based tanks can give off lots of ammonia during the first week or so, but I've been testing my water and there's no ammonia reading, I guess the plants are doing their jobs and soaking up all that ammonia up. I think the cause of death was simply because of shock and lack of oxygen. I think I didn't acclimate the fish correctly and dumped them in too quickly.

Right now I'm sitting at 4 Rummynose Tetras, 6 Pygmy Cories, 1 Balloon Molly, and my Plakat boy. I'm considering on how to re-stock this tank. Before I got my Tetras I didn't know about water hardness, and my water is quite hard, so I'm wondering if I should wait for the Tetras to die out first and get some other type of fish or add more to make a proper shoal.

Along with this issue, my sister doesn't like the fact that my RCS tank has just RCS, so I might have to house a Betta in it so that there's an actual fish in it. So many issues.
 
#31 ·
Here's another update on my tanks with pictures!

So only two of my tanks are NPTs now, the 2.5g and the 10g, reason behind this is because well, remember the Crypts I bought? Yeah they kinda all melted, to the point where there was no rescue, so I tossed them aside, there's a few left but not much. I need to find hardier plants, along with that reason I've noticed even with the LED lighting the Edge can't support plant life. I also got some Cabomba, messy little plant also really hard to plant since there's no roots just the stem. I moved my Dwarf Gourami into the 10 gallon, I feel like he wasn't doing really well in the Edge, he was glass surfing a lot of the time, and I found that really worrying, so I moved my Plakat boy into the Edge, and the RCS too, pretty sure they got chomped on by the Gourami. I've only seen one so far. . .

My Fluval Spec is still empty, I'm going to get another Betta soon, hopefully tomorrow if my mom isn't too lazy to drive me, might get a Halfmoon or a Crowntail, whatever is pretty! My SD boy has been blowing bubbles like mad lately for some reason. He used to blow them a lot too when he lived in the 2g but stopped when I moved him into the 2.5g. Guess he's back to doing it again.

So my plan for tomorrow if I get to go to my LFS is; get four more Rummynose Tetras, get four more Pygmy Cories, see if there's any Bettas worth buying (if there is I'll need to pick up another heater), get some plants that won't die on me, get some RCS, and last is to get some NLS.





 
#32 ·
How many rummynoses and pygmy cories are in the 10 gallon right now?
 
#34 ·
I have four of each right now, during my transition to NPT I made a lot of mistakes (you can read all about it in the last page), so some died off. Bumping the numbers to eight each will help them much better, since they're both such tight shoaling fish.

In my personal experience, LED lights are bright but they don't have the ability to penetrate the water so that plants on the bottom get enough light. They're bright but not strong, if that makes sense. I do think they're making significant improvements in LED lights though but not for the Edge.

Both tanks look absolutely gorgeous, by the way.
Yeah I got the LED lights with the tank, luckily. I wouldn't want Halogen bulbs, the LED lights get hot enough wonder what the Halogen bulbs would feel like. Yeah that make sense, maybe they made the new changes to the new Edge? The one that holds 12 gallons.
 
#33 ·
In my personal experience, LED lights are bright but they don't have the ability to penetrate the water so that plants on the bottom get enough light. They're bright but not strong, if that makes sense. I do think they're making significant improvements in LED lights though but not for the Edge.

Both tanks look absolutely gorgeous, by the way.
 
#36 ·
Yikes! That must have been scary, really glad now I have LED lights instead of Halogen ones, good thing it came with the tank, or I would have to buy the LED lights seperate. Still trying to figure out some easy care stem plants. I need to take a closer look at what my LFS has to offer when it comes to plants, might just get tons of anubias and call it a day, since they're so easy to take care of, and virtually impossible to kill.

Yeah the new Edge looks smashing, 12 gallons, you could do a community tank with that, be a great center piece to a living room since it looks so stylish.
 
#38 ·
I have some Bacopa Monnieri already, it's kinda annoying too because it latches onto the leaves of the Wisteria and when I move the Wisteria they get uprooted but at least it's not dying in my tank, got some Water Wisteria too but they're floating right now, maybe I should shove some into the substrate and see how it does. I've seen some Hygrophilia before at my LFS, I'll take a look around and see. I'm lacking some stem plants after my major Crypt meltdown.

Thanks Sakura. :)
 
#42 ·
Hey look what a major bump, I'm hoping this is allowed not sure. Don't kill me. Last update was roughly three months ago, uh, my tanks haven't changed that much, just some moving different fish into different tanks and adding more plants, etc. If you see a Rilakkuma in the reflection ignore it, that's just my phone case. I didn't want to show the images because they're kinda big, and people with bandwidth limits might hate me. So just click the links to see the pictures, 100% safe.

Fluval Spec 2g; there's just about 10 Cherry Shrimps in there, they're not active when it's light but at night you can see them swimming around and all that jazz, wish they liked the light more. Java Fern, marimo moss balls, and water wisteria are the plants.

http://puu.sh/VZWE

2.5g; this is a NPT, tiny Crypts and water wisteria as floating plants, the crypts grow really slow so that's nice. It houses my plakat boy, he likes to flare at his own reflection and build bubble nests all day.

http://puu.sh/W08Y

6g; this was originally supposed to house a Dwarf Gourami or a Honey Gourami but I found it too small for one so I let my SD boy live in it, plants are java fern, java moss, anubias, and water wisteria, for some reason dark green sticky slimy algae keeps growing on the wisteria in this tank. . And only this tank, it kinda frustrates me having to clean it off whenever I see it which is often. It's probably the lighting, but oh well. ):

http://puu.sh/W0fb

10g; it houses one dwarf gourami, four rummynose tetras, eight pygmy cories, and one balloon molly, eh its a bit overstocked, well probably really overstocked. It's a NPT, with a bunch of plants, there's two sword plants in the back, some hygrophilia, ludwigia, onion plants, anubias, moneywort and water wisteria are the floating plants. I actually picked up four pygmy cories today to make a shoal for them since some died off during my horrible NPT transformation, they didn't have any rummynose tetras though I'll check back next week.

http://puu.sh/W0fo

I dose all my tanks daily with Flourish Excel and weekly with Flourish, eh to be honest I don't really do water changes in the 10g any more, the plants really do a good job with sucking up ammonia I test every week but now I'm really apathetic about it and I believe in the power of my plants, nothing has gone wrong over the course of three months so, everything is probably alright. I don't do much water changes in the 2.5g either seeing how it has a lot of water wisteria and crypts, maybe once a week with a small 25% change. The 2g gets like once a month water change since it's just shrimps, the 6g gets a weekly 50%. But yeah most of the time I just refill water because it evaporated.

And taadaa~ I'm back now.
 
#43 ·
All of your tanks look absolutely bloody gorgeous and I am so very envious. :)

The slimy green stuff is almost certainly cyanobacteria. Lighting can cause that. So can phosphates and excess nutrients.

EDIT: You don't need to test for ammonia in the 10g so much as you should test for nitrates. Even with an NPT the nitrate level does creep up.
 
#44 ·
Yes, you want to do large water changes weekly, even though there isn't ammonia there can still be buildup of urea, hormones, proteins, salts and other metabolites. As well as other nutrients from left over, causing algae blooms and nasty. ;-)
 
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