An extended lockdown update... from a house with a baby that is currently on a three hour nap...
I have struggled recently to get decent cardinals and my group is now down to 4 hardy individuals - I tried to increase numbers about 6 months ago and most of the newbies didn’t last very long at all - this is the second time I’ve had this problem - anyone else observed the same thing with these fish? Everyone else is of course very healthy indeed...
I have still got the Pygmy puffers in there and they are doing absolutely fine with the other fish. As such I have taken down their old tank (can’t remember if I’ve said this before...) the plants are now in the main tank with them.
No signs of fry from the Nanacaras constant breeding but if they lay in a visible area again (only happened once) whilst we are still in lockdown, I might try and remove the eggs and raise the fry.
I believe the ember terras have started to reach a point of old age (they only live a couple of years) and I have lost a couple from the group of 12. In the heavily planted tank with shrimp and snails I never see any evidence of losses so it’s not too bad really.
The shrimp themselves have benefitted from the puffers decimation of the snail population - I have both a Neocardinia and Cardinia species in the tank (red and orange) - there are often more than 20 visible out and about. So there’s probably over 100 in the tank overall. There are a couple of Amano shrimp in there too but I never see them - only their moults
I have been trying to make the main tank as low maintenance as possible... it is now down to just one slowish growing stem plant (Bacopa) and I have added floating plants to increase fast growing plant mass - they are not CO2 limited so are a very good supporting plant with fast growth to limit algae/excess nutrients. They can also be used to identify any nutrient deficiencies in the water column before it significantly impacts the other plants which is useful. In this way I can minimise my nutrient dosing. I have also added Vallis back into the tank which is reasonably fast growing and I want the volcano like appearance the leaves will give appearing over the hardscape at the back. This is also able to be trimmed from the surface without need to ‘get arms wet’. The floating plants can be removed when there are too many (every fortnight) and the Vallis trimmed from the surface.
I am currently doing a 10% water change one week and a 50% the next with no adverse effect noticed so far - if I ever pluck up the courage to remove the planting substrate from the tank - put filter floss down to contain it as a barrier behind the rock work - and replace it, this will stop the stuff from seeping through on the foreground cosmetic sand which is the only reason for the 10% changes to clean it off the sand - then I will be down to the fortnightly 50% change only.
My aponogeton is growing again after a dormant period and has sent two flower spikes up to the surface too. It’s definately one of my favourite plants so I like to see this growth. It’s similar by smaller to crypt balansae if anyone is more familiar with that - with its awesome crinkly textured leaves.
I’ve sold 2 meters of Bolbitis rhizome which goes to show how much of this stuff I had in the tank and how overcrowded it was becoming - it’s nice to be able to see the hardscape again now! There’s still more available if anyone does want any... limited amounts of Java fern too...
Gretta the Bettas tank is still going strong - i had been debating whether to make this into a biotope tank but for now I have added hornwort from the pond (
@Sue you kindly sent me this years ago!) and have transferred the polysperma (someone on here also sent me this years ago...) today (fast growers) and have turned the little air powered sponge filter off... bit of an experiment (I’ll be looking after Gretta don’t worry!!) to see how the tank will get on and whether the plants can deal with the fish waste effectively enough. Keep you posted!!
Anyway enough ramblings... hope some of that is interesting to members...