Lost another rainbow - I believe all of the rainbows are done for, but that seems to be it. This whole experience, whatever caused it, was apparently too much for them.
I have decided not to stock my 40-gallon as I had planned (with puffers), and once the 150 stabilizes, maybe in a month or two, I will restock it but will use my 40-gallon as a quarantine tank. This will permit the mystery fry inhabiting it now to declare themselves and mature to the point of identification, and perhaps introduction into the 150, since they are undoubtedly tetra/rasbora/danio type schooling community fish and appropriate to move into the big tank. This remains to be seen, of course, but their behavior and appearance indicates as much.
This way, I can keep the fish in quarantine as long as I like, and gradually introduce them to the 150. I purchased the cories and the cardinals with the same thing in mind - these do best in large groups and they might not be available later if I purchase only a few at a time, so better get the bunch all at once. I thought the 150 could handle it.... Now I can still get the larger groups but put them in the 40 with BioSpira and let them settle in there for a while, and be sure they are not ill or otherwise problematic. If there is a problem I can treat the 40 and not bother any of the other fish in the process. I can use heat and salt and whatever else at my disposal, but there will be enough water to handle the load of a single group of fish at a time.
Over time, I will have my 150 restocked and where I want it, including angels. At that point I can switch the 40-gallon over to a puffer tank. I still have a 37-gallon tank that can be used for quarantine/hospital purposes. That does not need anything in it; a bare bottom and a couple of sponge filters would probably do the trick. I have sponge filters already, plus a spare small Eheim Ecco canister filter that I can use. I have several spare heaters also.
Once again, I am very happy I did not sell off my equipment when I thought I was done with it, even though at times I wanted to do so but did not have the time or energy to make such arrangements. I came the closest to selling off my CO2 equipment, and am SO glad I did not. That's probably the most valuable stuff I saved, and I will likely be using that on the 150 in the future when it is balanced. I am generally the type that likes to purge stored items, finding clutter and collections of belongings to be unsightly and a waste of space, but in this case something told me to hold on to it.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Disaster Strikes - Surprise Blessing
I knew those cardinals was a bad idea! Things have gone dramatically south. I found another cory with a mysteriously cloudy eye and pale gill plate revealing reddish gills, yet on the other side of his head he was perfectly normal. I am not terribly experienced with cories but a unilateral illness seems odd to me, especially since it looked exactly like the ailment suffered by the first cory casualty I had, both times on the left side of the head.
I therefore decided to treat the tank with Melafix, and after doing that the rest of the tank began to suffer. I don't find anything published about Melafix being harmful to anything but labyrinth fish, so I did not expect this, but the Boesemani rainbows began to act oddly, gasping at the surface, and over the course of about 2 days the entire tank was doing this. I cannot find any abnormality on multiple test kits - no ammonia, no nitrite and only trace nitrate. This tank was essentially cycled silently due to the same decor and the same fish, along with the powerful filter from the 55 running in concert with the new filter. I did not detect any blip in the water params after adding the cories. I have been testing over and over, since the fish seem to be acting like nitrite poisoning. I did a PWC and lowered the water level, and now I have even added a bubble wand at the filter outflow, since they seem to be struggling.
For insurance, the tank had a dose of BioSpira added when I added the cardinals, and I trust that stuff to cycle any tank - I've done a lot of personal study on this product, and engaged in many online debates on the fish forums in years past about this stuff when it first became widely available. I am sold on it and am very grateful to have it available, though with multiple tanks I have not had to use it in many years. I had taken down several tanks at the same time, revamping my collections across the board, and found myself without a supply of bacteria. As long as you add the correct amount for the fish load (this needs to be carefully thought out) it will cycle your tank.
I have lost 3 Boesemanis and a couple of cardinals. A couple of the Endler's look bad but the majority of them, as well as the guppies, are acting normally. The cories are acting normally.
Last night I did a 50% PWC and am no longer adding Melafix, and the fish seem happier, as if the water was somehow toxic. I still have one rainbow that appears to be heading for the end, but 2 are acting normally now. I can't think of what I have done, but adding too many fish too soon is ultimately the reason. There are too many possibilities, even though the typical issues associated with overstocking are not present. From now on I will quarantine new fish, and add them more slowly. I erroneously thought that with this large of a tank, with this much water volume, I could add more fish at a time than I would have in a smaller tank, but something has upset the equilibrium, and the premature addition of new fish has got to be related.
Incidentally, the ailing cory was found dead, wedged against the heater. This was something that had occurred to me when I saw the nature of the left-sided wound/ailment. I thought it might have been stuck against the heater. There is no reason for this - I know that sometimes plecos have this happen, suctioning themselves too close, but why the cories would be crowding around the heater is beyond me. The thermometer is currently mounted at the other end of the tank, in the front, as far from the heater as possible, and the temp is at about 76. I have moved the thermometer around, up high, down low, one end to the other, and cannot find a spot that measures any different than the next spot. The tank seems to be quite evenly heated, in other words, so that the cories would not tend to huddle around the heater.
I have a crazy theory about the cory cat ailment. Cory cats tend to move around the tank in little gangs, following certain paths. Up over this rock, down behind that plant, following along the back glass, and around again, like that. Maybe they would travel under the driftwood arch, which hides the filter intake basket (a very large object) and the heater. If they were moving through there and were startled, they might choose to dart behind the filter intake basket, encountering the heater, and get stuck there. This is what came to mind when I had to extract the dead cory from between the glass and the heater, with the left side (same side as the wounds found on two cories) pressed against the heater. I moved the heater away from there, needless to say.
There is nothing to do but speculate. Repeated water parameter testing is normal - dead normal.
Now on to the Surprise Blessing. Speaking of revamping my tanks, I had taken down my 40-gallon ARLC (African Rift Lake Cichlid) tank, and sold off the Africans, along with the Buenos Aires tetras I had for dithers. Since the tank had a history of cyanobacteria issues, I removed all of the old substrate, sterilized the tank, put the rocks out on the deck for a week in sub-freezing temperatures after scrubbing, and sterilized the filters. Starting over from scratch, I used Play Sand for substrate, a few of the rocks from the old setup, taken from the deck, and a few plants from the 150. I purchased several other plants to go in this tank, and I decided to sit on it for a while and let the plants get established while I decided what to do with it. I believe this is going to be a South American Puffer tank, so I wanted to have time to get a snail colony going in another tank to supply crunchy food for the puffers.
After it had been set up for a couple of weeks I decided to test the water, just for the heck of it, and what do you know, off the chart nitrite, and high nitrate. Why? I had not added anything but plants and some clean rocks and driftwood. This was odd, but something must have been in there decaying to provide ammonia to create this cycle. I still do not know what it was, though it would have had to be something significant to get those levels of nitrite. Very toxic levels. Oh well, I could not get an answer to that, so I kept waiting. The levels came down, finally, and I added some ramshorn snails since I had so many extras. They have been tooling around in there happy as can be, and now the cycle seems to be complete. No nitrite and trace nitrate. Perfect.
Yesterday I was looking over at the tank and thought there was more floating debris than usual, and what do you know, I recognized that the debris was fry! There are six wee tiny fish fry in this tank, near the surface, darting around. They are glass clear, though today I am starting to see the hint of coloration. One seems to have a stripe running down the side, like a zebra danio would, and another has the merest suggestion of a triangular dark marking on its side, like a Rasbora heteromorpha. I am really pushing it, since these are so small, but it is fun to wonder what they are. I would love some Het rasboras.
Rasboras are a good possibility, since they lay adhesive eggs on crypt leaves, often, and they do not scatter their eggs. I think eggs rode in on some plants (snail shells?) and were able to hatch. I don't have another explanation. When I discovered them they had obviously been hatched only a few hours, possibly a day.
I feel like such a newbie now - making newbie mistakes and having so many mysteries to solve that should not be mysteries, but there you have it. At the end of 2008 I was bored with my same old tanks that had been chugging along, stable for years, and wanted something new. Now I have it! Fish are dying off mysteriously, and fish are hatching mysteriously. Lots to keep me interested.
I therefore decided to treat the tank with Melafix, and after doing that the rest of the tank began to suffer. I don't find anything published about Melafix being harmful to anything but labyrinth fish, so I did not expect this, but the Boesemani rainbows began to act oddly, gasping at the surface, and over the course of about 2 days the entire tank was doing this. I cannot find any abnormality on multiple test kits - no ammonia, no nitrite and only trace nitrate. This tank was essentially cycled silently due to the same decor and the same fish, along with the powerful filter from the 55 running in concert with the new filter. I did not detect any blip in the water params after adding the cories. I have been testing over and over, since the fish seem to be acting like nitrite poisoning. I did a PWC and lowered the water level, and now I have even added a bubble wand at the filter outflow, since they seem to be struggling.
For insurance, the tank had a dose of BioSpira added when I added the cardinals, and I trust that stuff to cycle any tank - I've done a lot of personal study on this product, and engaged in many online debates on the fish forums in years past about this stuff when it first became widely available. I am sold on it and am very grateful to have it available, though with multiple tanks I have not had to use it in many years. I had taken down several tanks at the same time, revamping my collections across the board, and found myself without a supply of bacteria. As long as you add the correct amount for the fish load (this needs to be carefully thought out) it will cycle your tank.
I have lost 3 Boesemanis and a couple of cardinals. A couple of the Endler's look bad but the majority of them, as well as the guppies, are acting normally. The cories are acting normally.
Last night I did a 50% PWC and am no longer adding Melafix, and the fish seem happier, as if the water was somehow toxic. I still have one rainbow that appears to be heading for the end, but 2 are acting normally now. I can't think of what I have done, but adding too many fish too soon is ultimately the reason. There are too many possibilities, even though the typical issues associated with overstocking are not present. From now on I will quarantine new fish, and add them more slowly. I erroneously thought that with this large of a tank, with this much water volume, I could add more fish at a time than I would have in a smaller tank, but something has upset the equilibrium, and the premature addition of new fish has got to be related.
Incidentally, the ailing cory was found dead, wedged against the heater. This was something that had occurred to me when I saw the nature of the left-sided wound/ailment. I thought it might have been stuck against the heater. There is no reason for this - I know that sometimes plecos have this happen, suctioning themselves too close, but why the cories would be crowding around the heater is beyond me. The thermometer is currently mounted at the other end of the tank, in the front, as far from the heater as possible, and the temp is at about 76. I have moved the thermometer around, up high, down low, one end to the other, and cannot find a spot that measures any different than the next spot. The tank seems to be quite evenly heated, in other words, so that the cories would not tend to huddle around the heater.
I have a crazy theory about the cory cat ailment. Cory cats tend to move around the tank in little gangs, following certain paths. Up over this rock, down behind that plant, following along the back glass, and around again, like that. Maybe they would travel under the driftwood arch, which hides the filter intake basket (a very large object) and the heater. If they were moving through there and were startled, they might choose to dart behind the filter intake basket, encountering the heater, and get stuck there. This is what came to mind when I had to extract the dead cory from between the glass and the heater, with the left side (same side as the wounds found on two cories) pressed against the heater. I moved the heater away from there, needless to say.
There is nothing to do but speculate. Repeated water parameter testing is normal - dead normal.
Now on to the Surprise Blessing. Speaking of revamping my tanks, I had taken down my 40-gallon ARLC (African Rift Lake Cichlid) tank, and sold off the Africans, along with the Buenos Aires tetras I had for dithers. Since the tank had a history of cyanobacteria issues, I removed all of the old substrate, sterilized the tank, put the rocks out on the deck for a week in sub-freezing temperatures after scrubbing, and sterilized the filters. Starting over from scratch, I used Play Sand for substrate, a few of the rocks from the old setup, taken from the deck, and a few plants from the 150. I purchased several other plants to go in this tank, and I decided to sit on it for a while and let the plants get established while I decided what to do with it. I believe this is going to be a South American Puffer tank, so I wanted to have time to get a snail colony going in another tank to supply crunchy food for the puffers.
After it had been set up for a couple of weeks I decided to test the water, just for the heck of it, and what do you know, off the chart nitrite, and high nitrate. Why? I had not added anything but plants and some clean rocks and driftwood. This was odd, but something must have been in there decaying to provide ammonia to create this cycle. I still do not know what it was, though it would have had to be something significant to get those levels of nitrite. Very toxic levels. Oh well, I could not get an answer to that, so I kept waiting. The levels came down, finally, and I added some ramshorn snails since I had so many extras. They have been tooling around in there happy as can be, and now the cycle seems to be complete. No nitrite and trace nitrate. Perfect.
Yesterday I was looking over at the tank and thought there was more floating debris than usual, and what do you know, I recognized that the debris was fry! There are six wee tiny fish fry in this tank, near the surface, darting around. They are glass clear, though today I am starting to see the hint of coloration. One seems to have a stripe running down the side, like a zebra danio would, and another has the merest suggestion of a triangular dark marking on its side, like a Rasbora heteromorpha. I am really pushing it, since these are so small, but it is fun to wonder what they are. I would love some Het rasboras.
Rasboras are a good possibility, since they lay adhesive eggs on crypt leaves, often, and they do not scatter their eggs. I think eggs rode in on some plants (snail shells?) and were able to hatch. I don't have another explanation. When I discovered them they had obviously been hatched only a few hours, possibly a day.
I feel like such a newbie now - making newbie mistakes and having so many mysteries to solve that should not be mysteries, but there you have it. At the end of 2008 I was bored with my same old tanks that had been chugging along, stable for years, and wanted something new. Now I have it! Fish are dying off mysteriously, and fish are hatching mysteriously. Lots to keep me interested.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Snails
I have acquired a batch of lovely ramshorn snails, which are mostly residing in my 10-gallon planted Endler's tank with a large batch of baby Endler's. They are making short work of the algae in that tank. This is algae that is not really a nuisance, but has grown on a couple of the rocks, and is slightly attractive and natural looking.
I put one in the 150, and several in my 40-gallon breeder that will ultimately house South American Puffers (Colomesus asellus). I am hoping to establish a thriving colony of snails in their own setup as food for the puffers.
Algae, Water Quality & Ferts
I have always had algae in my tanks. Sometimes more than others, and at times I have allowed things to get completely out of hand. Obviously I have never gotten a good handle on the relationship of plants, light, nutrients and fertilizers.
The bottom line is that I need to find a way to get the plants growing so well and utilizing the available nutrients that algae is starved out of the picture. I have phosphate in my tap water, and for a while I was wanting to blame that for algae, since that is a popular theme on the internet, but what I need to determine is why are the plants not using up available phosphate? I don't generally have much excess nitrate, and have had to dose that from time to time, so I know excess nitrate is not the culprit, either. If I increase the lighting, then I will often forget to dose ferts, and algae reins supreme. I want it all - great lighting for the plants, but I don't want to have to fuss with dosing ferts and in general testing and calculating additives every day. I don't have time for that.
I have posted pictures of a high light set up (4.75 wpg) on my 55-gal, and that was great fun but I wound up cutting back the light dramatically because it was so much work to maintain this setup.
On the 150 I am running a Coralife 4x65-watt CF fixture, but I wonder if the depth of the water makes this a bit less light than one might think. Currently, even the lower light plants are not growing, and I need to figure this out. I put Seachem plant tabs in the substrate around the crypts and the swords, but so far no noticeable results after at least a week. The plants are not dying, but they are not growing. Phosphate in the water column is off the chart and the #2 reagent turns the sample water black immediately, without having to wait the usual 5 minutes. Are new tanks prone to phosphate spikes? I have not done anything different than I did with the tank where most everything came from - i.e. not overfeeding, not dosing anything but Flourish Excel on an intermittent basis.
I have added a dose of regular Flourish and will see if that helps. I need to be careful and not make too many changes, since I won't know what was the cause of any improvements/deterioration in the plants. I need to sit on things and decide if the Flourish helped, and if so how much and in what way, and determine if anything else needs to be done. I'd like to avoid setting up the pressurized CO2 system I have, since I am trying to keep things relatively simple, but I might go ahead and do that if it means a dramatic improvement in plant growth.
The bottom line is that I need to find a way to get the plants growing so well and utilizing the available nutrients that algae is starved out of the picture. I have phosphate in my tap water, and for a while I was wanting to blame that for algae, since that is a popular theme on the internet, but what I need to determine is why are the plants not using up available phosphate? I don't generally have much excess nitrate, and have had to dose that from time to time, so I know excess nitrate is not the culprit, either. If I increase the lighting, then I will often forget to dose ferts, and algae reins supreme. I want it all - great lighting for the plants, but I don't want to have to fuss with dosing ferts and in general testing and calculating additives every day. I don't have time for that.
I have posted pictures of a high light set up (4.75 wpg) on my 55-gal, and that was great fun but I wound up cutting back the light dramatically because it was so much work to maintain this setup.
On the 150 I am running a Coralife 4x65-watt CF fixture, but I wonder if the depth of the water makes this a bit less light than one might think. Currently, even the lower light plants are not growing, and I need to figure this out. I put Seachem plant tabs in the substrate around the crypts and the swords, but so far no noticeable results after at least a week. The plants are not dying, but they are not growing. Phosphate in the water column is off the chart and the #2 reagent turns the sample water black immediately, without having to wait the usual 5 minutes. Are new tanks prone to phosphate spikes? I have not done anything different than I did with the tank where most everything came from - i.e. not overfeeding, not dosing anything but Flourish Excel on an intermittent basis.
I have added a dose of regular Flourish and will see if that helps. I need to be careful and not make too many changes, since I won't know what was the cause of any improvements/deterioration in the plants. I need to sit on things and decide if the Flourish helped, and if so how much and in what way, and determine if anything else needs to be done. I'd like to avoid setting up the pressurized CO2 system I have, since I am trying to keep things relatively simple, but I might go ahead and do that if it means a dramatic improvement in plant growth.
Stocking, Plants & Light
The 150-gallon aquarium is up and running, with some very happy fish, which formerly resided in a 55-gallon. Plants are in place, consisting of Anubias sp., Microsorum sp., Vesicularia dubyana, Cryptocorine walkerii and a bit of Hygrophila polysperma. I also have plant bulbs from Walmart, which turned out to be Nuphar stellata, or dwarf lily. Very pretty. Sometimes you get Aponogeton with those bulbs, so you have to wait and see. The residents are predominantly Boesemani rainbows (Melanotaenia boesemani) and Endler's livebearers (Poecilia sp.), though I do have 4-5 white cloud minnows (Tanichthys albonubes), rather aged, whose numbers I had not replenished.
No background on the tank at this point, but I decided I would like to try a mirror. Cursory investigation indicated that this would be costly, and tricky to position on the back of the tank safely. I am keeping my eyes out for a 2' wide acrylic mirror, the cheap kind you can get at Walmart, but until then I put up some mirror-finish aquarium background paper. This does reflect a little but it is hazy and irregular, like a fun house mirror as seen through a cloud of smoke. It will do for now.
After things were running for perhaps a week, my friend Deborah and I made a trip to Azalea Aquariums, where we spent a very long time examining their fish and chatting with the owner. I wanted to buy a few fish but was not sure what - a few more Boesemanis? enlarge the school of white clouds? catfish? I spied some Corydoras trilineatus (or C. julii as they were labeled - less likely though, as I understand what is typically sold as julii is almost always going to be trilineatus). These looked very nice and I decided to get them all - 9 in total. I was looking forward to seeing them school together across the sand dunes. Well, that is exactly what they did.
However, after about 3-4 days (maybe a week?) I lost one. This was the first fish loss I have had in a long time, but I should not be surprised - you don't know what they come in with, and since I don't generally quarantine I need to be prepared for this type of thing. I know I should quarantine, and have written articles on setting up quarantine/hospital tanks, and recommend it to others, but I am far too impatient. I'm not proud of that, but there you go. Then, a few days after that I lost one of my female Boesemanis. This, too, should not be such a shock, since these fish are not young by any means, but it gave me pause. This was probably a pretty stressful move for these fish that had been in the same tank for so many years, and she was the smallest of them.
OK, fast forward about two weeks and I was in PetsMart looking for plants and a mystery snail for the tank I set up in my daughters' room. What do I see, but a nice collection of cardinal tetras (Paracheirodon axelrodi). I was in sort of a cranky mood, and like some might do with shoes, alcohol, chocolate or cookies, I bought myself a treat - 9 of the cardinals.
I know how these fish are, believe me. I have kept them (or not) before, and their reputation is absolutely correct - most times you're gonna lose the lot of them when you bring them home. Many shops just don't stock them due to their reaction to the stress of being transported and moved out of their native waters. Apparently most available specimens are wild caught in the Amazon River basin, and don't appreciate the wildly different water params they will ultimately be subjected to in our tanks. I figured, however, that this tank at PetsMart has water much closer to that in my tank than to the 6 pH that they apparently prefer, so I took a chance. I was feeling reckless and cardinals make me happy, so there you go.
So far, so good with the cardinals. The mood has definitely changed in the tank with the addition, even though there is plenty of room for everyone, but they all have to figure out a new dynamic. We will see how it goes. I must promise myself to leave things be for a good month, maybe longer, before adding anything else. I ultimately want a couple of angels (Pterophyllum scalare or altum, if they are nice) but I do not want a pair. I have kept angels before, as well as many African cichlids, and like most cichlids, once they pair up they become territorial and can cause problems in a community setup. Angels are extremely mild-mannered, as cichlids go, but it can get ugly, in my experience. When they are not paired up they are excellent members of the community. Now, how to avoid getting a pair? I am not sure. I was thinking getting 2 or 3 and hoping they are all the same gender. We will see, but I will wait a while on this.
Next up, algae, water params, plant ferts.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The Freshwater Aquarium Blog
I am a suburban work-at-home mom with an abiding love for aquarium fish and aquatic gardening. In the recent past I've kept a 55-gallon mixed community aquarium, heavily planted, a 40-gallon "breeder" tank with African cichlids from Lake Tanganyika, and a 10-gallon desktop planted tank with Endler's livebearers.
These tanks were all basically no-brainer setups, requiring weekly water changes and feeding of the fish, and not much else. Remove dead plant leaves from time to time, and the tanks ran themselves. It was necessary to remove some of the Endler's from the 10-gallon from time to time to control populations, and these would *brace yourself* be placed in the African tank as live food, or into the 55-gallon to either be eaten by the Boesemani rainbows or to survive amongst the plants. There were no shortage of Endler's in the 55-gallon, as the rainbows had only a mild interest in live food, but no Endler's survived with the Africans.
After several years of maintaining these tanks on auto-pilot, I realized that I was no longer enjoying them or even really looking at them, with the exception of the 10-gallon tank on my desk where I work. That provided some welcome visual distraction after staring at my computer screen for hours.
The 40-gallon African tank, also in my office, had some serious cyanobacteria issues (a perpetually recurrent problem in this tank, even after moving house and not having anything in the tank for 6 months, sitting dry) that I was slowly combating, but I was bored. The N. leleupi were gorgeous in this tank, with that sought-after Kodak film box orange color and producing babies on a regular basis. These fish often go dusky, looking like they came out of a coal mine, when kept in a tank with a dark substrate, and this often does not go away if you lighten their surroundings. This tank had light cichlid sand (aragonite) and base rock for their caves, and I believe a superior diet also contributed to their vivid coloration.
I also had two N. brevis shelldwellers that were very interesting in their digging and posturing behaviors. Put a hand in the tank or do a water change and they dove into their escargot shells. Neat. These fish previously resided in a 10-gallon, as tenants in the "desktop cichlid" setup popularized on the web, but I soon discovered that these feisty fish are small but have remarkably large territories, and they were very unhappy in such a small tank. You could keep one alone in a 10-gallon, but even the mated pair I had in mine fought incessantly and the male actually killed the female as I watched, horrified and disappointed. I replaced her (turns out it was a him) and moved them over to live with the Leleupi and they were much, much happier, each choosing one end of the tank and owning the substrate all around them. Not a pair but the two males were fine in that tank for several years.
Also in the 40-gallon and complementing the somewhat shy rockdwelling cichlids was a small school of Buenos Aires tetras, marvelous companions to testy cichlids, providing the Africans with a sense of security to draw them out of their caves from time to time. "Dither fish" are useful in this situation, as the cichlids are programmed to trust schooling fish to alert them to danger. If the schooling fish are out and about, things must be okay. I highly recommend BA tetras in African setups. They are tough and fast, but do not compete with the cichlids and there were never any problems between the two species. These are plant-eating tetras, however, and as I did not realize this, it did not take them long to mow down the Anubias sp., java moss and java fern I had previously grown in this tank. The plants were toast in the presence of these sparkling tetras.
As for the 55-gallon tank in the living room, it was so heavily planted that the fish hardly had room to swim. 6 Boesemani rainbows, robust and about 6 years old, could only swim back and forth, back and forth, though this species seems to do this together anyway in their posturing amongst themselves, no matter where they reside. The Endler's were doing well in this tank, with babies hiding in the plants, though huge population overgrowth was prevented by the rainbows. I had a few white cloud minnows in there as well. No bottom dwellers - I believe the plant-friendly iron-rich gravel substrate was not a good environment for catfish. I had an Ancistrus (bristlenose pleco) for many years but I lost him about a year ago and was not replaced.
I have never been particularly happy with the dimensions of the typical 55-gallon aquarium, ubiquitous as it is. Most would consider this a relatively large tank, as I did so many years ago when I got mine. However, this is a very narrow tank, only about 13" front to back, and when you add rocks, driftwood and plants that uses up a considerable amount of space. There are many fish that ought to be fine in a 55-gallon aquarium in terms of the fish size/gallons of water ratio, but they do not do well without being able to turn around freely.
Let me also list the other tanks that I have stored away, waiting for inspiration. I have a 37-gallon tall, a 15-gallon tall glass Eclipse, 12-gallon acrylic Eclipse, two 10-gallon tanks, a 6-gallon acrylic Eclipse, a 5-gallon glass tank and a 2-gallon footed bowl. All of these tanks have previously had fish in them, maybe several different times, and all returned to storage for whatever reason. I have kept Altolamprologus calvus in the 37-gallon, probably my all-time favorite fish, but lost them in a tragic accidental cycle (see below regarding "symbol of failure" tanks) and put the tank away, since 3 tanks in my office was a bit much, even for me. I have kept bettas, guppies, dwarf puffers, crayfish, dwarf frogs, etc. in the smaller tanks from time to time. The 5-gallon was a so-called "natural" aquarium, with no filtration other than plants, with, you guessed it, Endler's livebearers. The tank was very heavily planted and well lit, with a relatively light load of fish. This type of setup is easy and I am surprised at how few people have tried it. You should.
These tanks take up some room in storage, but I cannot part with them, and am glad I have not. I also have box after box of HOB filters, very large to very small, internal filters, air pumps, power heads, substrate, fake plants, rocks and driftwood, filter cartridges and other filter media, air hoses, valves, tubing, heaters, lighting of all sorts, light bulbs of all sorts, glass tops, etc. This is a collection covering many years of keeping fish, 26 to be exact. You never know when you might need something. I also have all of the required equipment for pressurized CO2 injection, including the 5-pound tank, regulator, meter and diffuser. I have a full array of plant fertilizers and test kits as well.
I have been interested in a large tank for years, and figured a 75 or a 90-gallon would be next. I wanted to be able to keep larger fish that I'd previously been unable to have. I had the 55-gallon in a 5' space next to my fireplace, and I wondered how big of a tank I could get that would fit there. Well, one day I was in PetsMart and discovered a 150-gallon tall that is 5' wide. Wow! How cool would THAT be? This was a huge expense for me, though, so I figured I'd just bide my time and see if I came across one used. This was somewhat of a pipe dream, however, since this is not a very common size, and you don't often see them. Much more common is the 6' 120-gallon, but, snob that I am, I am not much of a fan of this long, skinny configuration. These tanks generally sit low, also, and when you view them you need to be seated or you crouch down to look at the fish. Also, I do not have a 6' space in my home for this size tank.
About a year ago I missed by a hair obtaining a free 150-gallon aquarium that someone had posted in the Free section of Craig's List. Phone tag was to blame and someone snagged it before I could reach the guy. When it comes to larger aquariums, when people have difficulty maintaining them they become an extremely large and useless symbol of failure, taking up a tremendous amount of room and serving no purpose, not to mention spouses and families getting tired of looking at this big glass box. They may even be relegated to the garage, where they continue to take up valuable space. You forget how much money you put in to the original endeavor and you just want it gone. I always keep an eye out at yard sales for such tanks, but never saw one that was more interesting than what I already have.
Meanwhile, every day I would faithfully check Craig's List for aquariums, not only in the Free section but also in Pets. I was in such a habit of doing this that I would forget why I was even looking, but it was fun to see what people are giving away, or what interesting pets people have, etc. One day, lo and behold, I saw an Oceanic 150-gallon reef ready tank, 5' x 2' x 2', with hood and stand. The picture looked good - this was a clean tank, ready to go. The price was not free, but so cheap as to be suspicious, quite honestly. If you Google that tank you will see how much they cost new, and Oceanic is a much respected manufacturer of aquariums. They generally cost more than an All-Glass tank of the same dimensions, for example. Long story short (just kidding!) I got this tank this past January 2009. Ostensibly this was for my birthday, but I probably would have gotten it anyway - it was that cheap.
Next post will get into the moving and setting up of this huge aquarium.
These tanks were all basically no-brainer setups, requiring weekly water changes and feeding of the fish, and not much else. Remove dead plant leaves from time to time, and the tanks ran themselves. It was necessary to remove some of the Endler's from the 10-gallon from time to time to control populations, and these would *brace yourself* be placed in the African tank as live food, or into the 55-gallon to either be eaten by the Boesemani rainbows or to survive amongst the plants. There were no shortage of Endler's in the 55-gallon, as the rainbows had only a mild interest in live food, but no Endler's survived with the Africans.
After several years of maintaining these tanks on auto-pilot, I realized that I was no longer enjoying them or even really looking at them, with the exception of the 10-gallon tank on my desk where I work. That provided some welcome visual distraction after staring at my computer screen for hours.
The 40-gallon African tank, also in my office, had some serious cyanobacteria issues (a perpetually recurrent problem in this tank, even after moving house and not having anything in the tank for 6 months, sitting dry) that I was slowly combating, but I was bored. The N. leleupi were gorgeous in this tank, with that sought-after Kodak film box orange color and producing babies on a regular basis. These fish often go dusky, looking like they came out of a coal mine, when kept in a tank with a dark substrate, and this often does not go away if you lighten their surroundings. This tank had light cichlid sand (aragonite) and base rock for their caves, and I believe a superior diet also contributed to their vivid coloration.
I also had two N. brevis shelldwellers that were very interesting in their digging and posturing behaviors. Put a hand in the tank or do a water change and they dove into their escargot shells. Neat. These fish previously resided in a 10-gallon, as tenants in the "desktop cichlid" setup popularized on the web, but I soon discovered that these feisty fish are small but have remarkably large territories, and they were very unhappy in such a small tank. You could keep one alone in a 10-gallon, but even the mated pair I had in mine fought incessantly and the male actually killed the female as I watched, horrified and disappointed. I replaced her (turns out it was a him) and moved them over to live with the Leleupi and they were much, much happier, each choosing one end of the tank and owning the substrate all around them. Not a pair but the two males were fine in that tank for several years.
Also in the 40-gallon and complementing the somewhat shy rockdwelling cichlids was a small school of Buenos Aires tetras, marvelous companions to testy cichlids, providing the Africans with a sense of security to draw them out of their caves from time to time. "Dither fish" are useful in this situation, as the cichlids are programmed to trust schooling fish to alert them to danger. If the schooling fish are out and about, things must be okay. I highly recommend BA tetras in African setups. They are tough and fast, but do not compete with the cichlids and there were never any problems between the two species. These are plant-eating tetras, however, and as I did not realize this, it did not take them long to mow down the Anubias sp., java moss and java fern I had previously grown in this tank. The plants were toast in the presence of these sparkling tetras.
As for the 55-gallon tank in the living room, it was so heavily planted that the fish hardly had room to swim. 6 Boesemani rainbows, robust and about 6 years old, could only swim back and forth, back and forth, though this species seems to do this together anyway in their posturing amongst themselves, no matter where they reside. The Endler's were doing well in this tank, with babies hiding in the plants, though huge population overgrowth was prevented by the rainbows. I had a few white cloud minnows in there as well. No bottom dwellers - I believe the plant-friendly iron-rich gravel substrate was not a good environment for catfish. I had an Ancistrus (bristlenose pleco) for many years but I lost him about a year ago and was not replaced.
I have never been particularly happy with the dimensions of the typical 55-gallon aquarium, ubiquitous as it is. Most would consider this a relatively large tank, as I did so many years ago when I got mine. However, this is a very narrow tank, only about 13" front to back, and when you add rocks, driftwood and plants that uses up a considerable amount of space. There are many fish that ought to be fine in a 55-gallon aquarium in terms of the fish size/gallons of water ratio, but they do not do well without being able to turn around freely.
Let me also list the other tanks that I have stored away, waiting for inspiration. I have a 37-gallon tall, a 15-gallon tall glass Eclipse, 12-gallon acrylic Eclipse, two 10-gallon tanks, a 6-gallon acrylic Eclipse, a 5-gallon glass tank and a 2-gallon footed bowl. All of these tanks have previously had fish in them, maybe several different times, and all returned to storage for whatever reason. I have kept Altolamprologus calvus in the 37-gallon, probably my all-time favorite fish, but lost them in a tragic accidental cycle (see below regarding "symbol of failure" tanks) and put the tank away, since 3 tanks in my office was a bit much, even for me. I have kept bettas, guppies, dwarf puffers, crayfish, dwarf frogs, etc. in the smaller tanks from time to time. The 5-gallon was a so-called "natural" aquarium, with no filtration other than plants, with, you guessed it, Endler's livebearers. The tank was very heavily planted and well lit, with a relatively light load of fish. This type of setup is easy and I am surprised at how few people have tried it. You should.
These tanks take up some room in storage, but I cannot part with them, and am glad I have not. I also have box after box of HOB filters, very large to very small, internal filters, air pumps, power heads, substrate, fake plants, rocks and driftwood, filter cartridges and other filter media, air hoses, valves, tubing, heaters, lighting of all sorts, light bulbs of all sorts, glass tops, etc. This is a collection covering many years of keeping fish, 26 to be exact. You never know when you might need something. I also have all of the required equipment for pressurized CO2 injection, including the 5-pound tank, regulator, meter and diffuser. I have a full array of plant fertilizers and test kits as well.
I have been interested in a large tank for years, and figured a 75 or a 90-gallon would be next. I wanted to be able to keep larger fish that I'd previously been unable to have. I had the 55-gallon in a 5' space next to my fireplace, and I wondered how big of a tank I could get that would fit there. Well, one day I was in PetsMart and discovered a 150-gallon tall that is 5' wide. Wow! How cool would THAT be? This was a huge expense for me, though, so I figured I'd just bide my time and see if I came across one used. This was somewhat of a pipe dream, however, since this is not a very common size, and you don't often see them. Much more common is the 6' 120-gallon, but, snob that I am, I am not much of a fan of this long, skinny configuration. These tanks generally sit low, also, and when you view them you need to be seated or you crouch down to look at the fish. Also, I do not have a 6' space in my home for this size tank.
About a year ago I missed by a hair obtaining a free 150-gallon aquarium that someone had posted in the Free section of Craig's List. Phone tag was to blame and someone snagged it before I could reach the guy. When it comes to larger aquariums, when people have difficulty maintaining them they become an extremely large and useless symbol of failure, taking up a tremendous amount of room and serving no purpose, not to mention spouses and families getting tired of looking at this big glass box. They may even be relegated to the garage, where they continue to take up valuable space. You forget how much money you put in to the original endeavor and you just want it gone. I always keep an eye out at yard sales for such tanks, but never saw one that was more interesting than what I already have.
Meanwhile, every day I would faithfully check Craig's List for aquariums, not only in the Free section but also in Pets. I was in such a habit of doing this that I would forget why I was even looking, but it was fun to see what people are giving away, or what interesting pets people have, etc. One day, lo and behold, I saw an Oceanic 150-gallon reef ready tank, 5' x 2' x 2', with hood and stand. The picture looked good - this was a clean tank, ready to go. The price was not free, but so cheap as to be suspicious, quite honestly. If you Google that tank you will see how much they cost new, and Oceanic is a much respected manufacturer of aquariums. They generally cost more than an All-Glass tank of the same dimensions, for example. Long story short (just kidding!) I got this tank this past January 2009. Ostensibly this was for my birthday, but I probably would have gotten it anyway - it was that cheap.
Next post will get into the moving and setting up of this huge aquarium.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
