Try for the "blackwater" look

Good haul...all looks good

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I'm heading to the pet store again tomorrow, this time I'm taking in a bunch of Africans. I'm really liking the mystery snail, he/she is fun to watch, I think I'll pick up a couple more of different colors and maybe 2 more black kuhlis for my sorority tank. I'm itching to get the girls moved into the 20 and Otabke into the 10. The ludwigia is growing rather gangling and less than great, but the Rotala is doing surprisingly well in both tanks. Not much change in the dwarf tears, but the micro swords have mostly got all their leaves oriented up.

I haven't talked much about that hybrid pleco, but he's doing good. Not much growth on him yet, but I have high hopes for him. I don't ever see him out and about but he comes out during the evenings. I'm watching him chewing on the new piece of driftwood, I love his dappled pattern. I'll try getting a decent pic of him sometime.

I added a HOB filter to the 20gal, it took some thinking and fiddling to get it so the duck weed isn't being pushed under and sucked up the filter. Luckly someone else made a thing and I just copied their idea. This is what they (and I) did.
http://imgur.com/a/iQzis

I did some experimenting with those two new pieces of driftwood. I'll add pics tomorrow of whatever I get and the plant growth.

video, we want video

Hmmm I need to figure out how to upload a video via Youtube. I have all day tomorrow so I will try figuring it out. If I don't do it tomorrow you can keep nagging me so I don't forget

You need a account, Its free.

Click the arrow as shown here


Then click the big arrow and browse to the file you want to upload

I take videos and pics with an iPod so its a bit different. I already have an account but had to download the app, now I'm just waiting for the video to upload. Seems like it's going to take about half and hour.... I apologize before hand about the shakiness.

There we go, let's see if it works. I'll be uploading vids for the other tanks from now on too

Perfect

They didn't have any more kuhlis, and I want to wait for them to get different colors of snails. I asked the lady about lighting for planted tanks and she said she would talk to the boss and see if I can buy one of the used ones they aren't using at the moment.

Here's how I fixed the output of the HOB filters to stop the duck weed from getting sucked up. Ignore the bits that are in the filter floss, those are there from before.

Finally got to take a pic/video of the little pleco

Mystery snails in action are pretty cool. My guy/girl was very meticulously eating some duckweed. He would go to the surface, make a "funnel" shape then trap a few pieces of dw under its foot. Then it just reaches down and starts eating on the trapped pieces.

Can you see the pleco?


How about now?


I'm going to try sexing the snail tomorrow, I'm guessing it's a male but we'll see. Supposedly males have a flap of flesh on their right side that the females don't (penis sheath). I'd like to get a few more and see about getting some pretty colors out of them.

Yes I can see the pleco

Going to the LPS tomorrow, hopefully they have some sand. I plan on dirting the 20 long, planting it and then waiting for the levels to go stable after what will probably be an ammonia spike. Otabek and the pleco + all the snails get to chill in the other 20gal with the corydoras till things get settled. Once the tank is good to go the girls will get moved to the 20 long with the corycats and lil pleco while Otabek (or Grey idk yet) gets moved to the girls' tank. I might just split the planted 10 and see about getting my sister's plakat a proper home.

I'm not too sure how the mystery snails will do with the girls, so I'll try it out and hope they don't bite their feeler/smeller things off. Forgot to mention that last time I was at the LPS I picked up 2 other mystery snails, one gold (might actually be an apple snail?) and one light brown. I was skeptical about the brown one as it didn't want to move for over a week. I thought for sure it was dying on me, but it finally starting coming out a few days ago and eating cucumber slices. The pleco is not too shy at all anymore, he comes out all the time and finally seems to be growing a bit.

So yeah, hopefully I get some sand, if not I have no problem taking sand out of the African tank. Then again, I might just "borrow" the bag my sister's been saving for "later use".

Pictures to come

It's finally done. I have it dirted, capped and planted. No fish in it yet, they're still in a 5gal bucket with the heater and sponge filter. I pulled 5 more little crypts and planed them, also took apart one of they pie pan planters and have the dwarf baby tears planted (hopefully). Dealing with the duckweed was a night mare, it sticks to everything.

I bought a used light for super cheap. It's a bit longer than the 20gal long, has two florecent tubes, each one seems to be 39 watts. The plug looks pretty iffy so I might have my dad splice on a different plug. It looks pretty great though for only 50$, and it works. I'm not using it for this tank ATM. I traded it for my sister's 7500K LED light as it was doing awful with her 36 bow front. I'm hoping the plants like it


Top view if tank w/o all the duckweed, the crypts look pretty scraggly from being so crowed in the 10gal

Improvised way of keeping the duckweed out of the filter. The bowl works far better than the plastic "slide"



The pie pan in an eyesore, it will be dismantled or moved after a bit.


After putting the duckweed back in, filtered light looks better


Dwarf baby tears and a few micro swords, fingers crossed they stay put.



A work in progress, but we're getting there. Will be keeping an eye on the ammonia and nitrite levels, once things are settled the corydoras will be added and then the female bettas.

Very nice