Serenity

Hey everyone, been a while since I was on. Lots changed. Had to reduced my number of tanks as well as I lost my aquascape and had to relocate all my tanks into the basement. Bright side is I got some new lovely fish for cheap from local hobbyists leaving the scene and free from others due to unfortunate circumstances. This post is pertaining to my most recent acquisition. Someone had a beautiful silver arowana in a tank far to small for his size. He is currently in my 75gal and needs a bigger tank asap which I'm working on but for the time being I want him to settle in and de-stress as he has been moved through 3 different tanks in less then 24 hours and the moves were not graceful or smooth. ADVICE NEEDED 3 things. 1 - Firstly, due to the fact he was in a small tank the front of his face/muzzle is worn completely raw and in bad shape. Has anyone dealt with this? Tips on faster healing or things to be careful about? Any idea how long it might take them to regrow/heal/regen? 2 - First time keeping a fish this size and this type so any advice at all would be awesome! I can read everything on the internet possible but trust you guys more so fire away. 3 - The previous owner had him purely on feeder fish and frozen foods. I know they need a varied diet, could you give any advice on helpful ways to transition to pellet? Which foods works best for you? Much appreciated! Pics to come, phone is dead and wife has the camera currently at a trade show.

/Agreed. Especially the part about going bigger

I bought a fluval canister a while back for one tank to test it out and now only use canisters on all my tanks. No noise and great filtration. Best way to go IMO. Good luck!

I had to do a lot of tank shuffling to move some fish around and finally got around to this tank today. Sucked out as much as possible and will try a 4 day blackout with double KNO3 dosing. I don't like the idea of using chemicals so I'll hold off for now but I'm getting tired of seeing this on my grass, just want my lush tank back. See you Sunday morning after the blackout

Ok, so quick update. Got home to this mess Here are some close ups The thick dark green I know for certain is the BGA but the whispy brown stuff I have never seen before. Any ideas? I'm going to suction as much as possible out of that tank and then start dosing with either Erythromycin or Metricide which ever I can get my hands on. After enough WC's to clean everything up I'll start the EI dosing again and see if I can get everything to bounce back. Cause? Not totally sure yet. But I did find out that the connection between my CO2 regulator and bubble counter had blown off and so my tank was completely void of any co2. Not sure when it blew off but it must have been soon after I left to have the tank grow like that. If you have seen my other posts on this tank you will notice that all my HC and moss are gone. I tore them up before I left as I wanted to do a re-scape when I got back. Hopefully I can get everything off the grass, I don't want to lose it. I'll update progress on this monster as it goes Thanks for all your comments everyone! I appreciate the help!

Getting home from my honeymoon and in the airport. Got a message from my mother in Law telling me there is "a LOT" of Algae. Not sure what went wrong but I have been gone for almost 15 Days. Not sure how bad it is Either but I was battling it for some time before this. I'll upload pics once I'm back home and can see the damage. :cry: Anyways I have done a lot of reading but there is a lot of mixed info out there. Does anyone have personal experience with winning a battle against the blue/green algae? I'm tired of seeing it and am willing to do almost anything. Its in a heavy planted 75gal with no livestock. I have tried the 3 day lights out method while dosing excel with no noticeable benefit when I had little spurts. (I know its not a true algae but tried this first) Has anyone ever done any nuking of their tanks without killing the plants? Thanks in advance.

Love all their products. Top quality

I have to agree. Things take time and nature moves at it's own pace regardless of what you want or what your expectations might be. If you're taking all the right steps and paying attention to detail then the only thing your skipping over is the time factor. Hope they do breed though, good looking stock. (except those 2 busted backs )

Lucky. I leave for a weekend and come back to find something unusual or a bloom of something :rofl:

:welcome: Glad to have you on board!

What direction are you taking this tank? Are you doing heavy planted again or just going to stay simple with the design?

Thanks guys! I had a bit of bad luck it seems. While I was busy getting married this past weekend my above average amano shrimp took it upon themselves to start ripping apart my HC bushes. One is totally destroyed and almost all uprooted and the rest have taken a beating. I love the shrimp but I should have smaller ones. I'll post a pic of the damage tomorrow. The moss is getting nice and dark green finally Jeremoose I got the paper for my background but I need to return some of it now as I bought 2 colors so let's hit a coffee and do it up.

Feel your pain. It's hard trusting others with your tanks. Especially when you give specific instructions that are simple to follow and they still manage to mess it up. Boggling. I have a 15 day vacation coming up and I'm so scared it's not even funny.

In my experience the mollies and guppies don't have issues being tank mates. Guppies can be a lot of fun and you literally have to do nothing to breed them. One male and one female and you'll have babies. Just make sure you have more females to males or all males. The males will constantly breed the female and having too many males will stress out the females. Another piece of advice is if you get guppies and they are going to breed, have something in your tank where the babies can hide, ornaments, plants, driftwood or something as the adults will try to eat them. Also talk to anyone at your local fish store and buy some loose forming foam (20ppm) and wrap it around the intake on your filter or it will suck babies up. A 30 gal would be a nice size. I have a 10 right now and it's overloaded from all the breeding haha! In Edmonton Aquarium Central has the best selection of different colored guppies I have ever seen. Give them a try if you can! Good luck!

Unfortunately you would need to start with a tank drained as much as possible. I had to move my one tank downstairs which provided the opportunity to drain it empty and measure the fill and my other tank was a DSM so I was able to measure as I filled it for the first time.

:welcome:

I also find it helpful to make a little discrete mark on the side of the tank indicating the location for a 50% water volume wc. Again, some drain down to the halfway mark on the tank itself which leads to a wc larger then 50% With my tank if I went to the halfway point on the tank it would work out to a 70% wc. The effect is obviously amplified the larger you go so smaller tanks might not be affected as much but still something to note for planted tanks or otherwise.

/agreed Always work from water volume. That being said I'll say it again. Always work from WATER volume. It is often a mistake that people dose according to the tank volume. You need to take into account anything that will displace water volume like your rock, any large equipment and substrate. I have a 75gal tank but after all rock/substrate/equipment/plants it only holds 55gals of water. If I dosed according to tank volume I would be wasting ferts and overdosing by 1/3.

Sounds like Lloyd! Hot bright and dusty at 10am and storming with buckets of rain and black by 2pm.....

If the bubbles are little then you should be getting decent absorption into the water. Can we get a full shot of the tank? I'm curious! What method are you doing for ferts?

Thanks epiphany and yuri! Yes that is pennywort on the driftwood, good eye. Everyone's tanks are looking spectacular! I'd love to see more submissions! This is my little fluval cube at work The grass needs some attention for sure haha I'm looking to tear out the grass in the front and throw in a nice carpeting plant with broad leaves. Something like Elatine triandra but I cannot get it at any fish or plant store!

Update time! Been a while... After flooding I had some great pearls And here are the updated shots. Let me know which background you think looks better. The blue, black, or nothing (beige wall) Please excuse the equipment still in the tank when I do my next big trim and WC I'll snap some shots with it all out. :thumbs: Blue Black Nothing (Beige wall) Had to remove some large chunks of moss that I felt were not adding much to the scape and I have a haunch they were causing some imbalances in the tank as well. After I pulled them I found large chunks of dead rotting debris which is never good. Still not totally happy with the weeping moss and it's look so I think I'll get aggressive with the trimming and see how it bounces back. It's getting a lot more color and coming in but I'm not sure it is having the effect I'm after. Hope you like!

You need as much co2 in the water as possible after the transition. I had been misting my plants with a water/fert solution for 2 months so when I flooded I knew they had enough ferts to work with. So I cranked the co2 and with lots of light they were pearling like crazy. Your plants will pearl when they have all the things they need: light, co2, micro/macro nutrients. I notice my plants don't pearl as much if something is missing. The fact that your plants are pearling at all is an indicator that you are doing good. Also as Jro stated they will adjust for a while after the flooding as well. What type of DIY setup do you have right now?

I think the question is one in the same and also depends on how you define or measure 'optimal growth'. By turning your lights on and off you determine the 'cycle' and therefore you don't have to sync it to our daily cycle. You could have your tanks turn on at 11pm and run till 7am and get lush growth as you're providing the needed amount of light. I run it from 2pm-10pm so that I get to enjoy it when I'm home from work. I used to do a split period but read on aquascaping world forums that some plants go through cycles and go dormant at lights out. So starting and stopping repeatedly throughout the day may not be best. That being said with any hobby there is a lot of information out there so try what works best for what your lifestyle and preferences are or experiment and find what your tank needs. Every tank is different. What I will say however is that I think there is something to be said with emulating nature and how the plants grow in the wild. The sun doesn't wink in and out throughout the day (not saying that's a bad/wrong approach either)

Not sure if anyone has seen this before but if not take a look. One strange creature for sure. Think it's real? http://www.wimp.com/creaturecaught/