Dark & Dreary to Light and Lovely: Mistakes et al

My 120ltr AquaOne had been thrown together a good amount of time ago, to correct various previous problems that resulted in the death of around 100 yellow sakuri shrimp and had the fish all at the water surface gasping for air. I wanted some sort of aquascape setup with lots of plants for the fish, mainly small one such as Emporer Tetras, to feel safe in. It sort of looked OK at the time but as time went by I became dissatisfied with it. The mini harigrass that was intended to cover the bottom didn't go well at all and in fact was pushed out mostly by my panda cories. The other plants just become a curtain of greenery that was so dense that the fish couldn't swim freely among them. It looked dark and dingey so biting the bullet I got to work on it.


My first task was to remove all the fish and shrimp. As it was very warm I put the fish in a 65 litre container in my back yard with all the plants taken out of the tank, along with the original tank water to make them feel more secure.

The shrimp were put in an unused ciano 28 tank with a few plants too. These were both left in the backyard overnight without any filtration, heater or airstone. Well they survived that night at least as the water temperature was still at 19 C in the morning.

Then calamity. No, not the fish. My wife. She took really bad. She had been brought back from work the day before unsteady on her feet, confused and unable to remember much. Off to the doctor. She had to be walked in being supported by myself and a nurse as she couldn't put a foot in front of her and fell down a few times. Then she vomited several times while being checked over, couldn't walk, was really in another world with her mind as she couldn't even remember the most basic things, then was also stricken with halucinations. Doctor was thinking of cerebral stroke so off she went to hospital. He refused my offer to drive her there as he was concerned she may need urgent medical attention on the journey so an ambulance was brought in.

Things didn't go better at hospital and her problems worsened that afternoon. She had a CT scan, various tests etc and was also booked for a MRI scan the next morning. As you can imagine, fishkeeping was the least of my worries at that time. Anyway, a week later and she's free and safely back home. I still haven't had word as to what the problem was except to say that the scans didn't show any indication of a stroke. It was suggested that it was a water infection and several people say they know others with the same symptoms for that. She took another 3 or 4 days to get back to where her health was prior to the incident and has decided not to return to work. She owns the business so she won't be sacked anyway.
Oh, just for the attention of members who are in the US and other places where such treatment would need a second mortage, IT WAS ALL FREE ON THE N.H.S.

So the fish thing was restarted. They were all still alive and swimming around so at least the extra warm weather did me a favour there.
The tank emptied completely. The dark substrate was removed and put in a bucket for potential use some other time. The external canister filter was cleaned out thoroughly and to be honest when I finished I must have removed at least a half litre of gunge. No wonder the water flow had been very slow. I also removed 2 live sakura shrimp that must have been living in the filter from being small enough to be sucked into it.

Now having already done a couple of aquascapes such as this one that was wrongly entered into TOTM I had learned a few lessons.



Problem 1 was that putting everything together to give a stable result was difficult. The bits of wood were really just freestanding in the lava gravel and substrate to trying to work inside them for planting etc was difficult.
The next problem was/is that several pieces of hardscape were close to the tank sides so cleaning the glass also became something of an issue as the wood was being knocked and moved unintentionally.
Another problem is grasscutting time. Not enough room to use the scissors on most of the grass,
The other thing that I became aware of was that the panda corys prefer to nose about in sandy substrate rather than snuffle through grass.

I put the new improved version together with these things in mind. With the stability thing in mind I got a kitchen floor tile and glued everything in place on it then lowered the whole shebang onto the glass floor and then put the substrate over the top of it. Dead easy and solid as a rock.
The tank is now (almost) finished.



I only want to put some moss onto the wood and to get myself some better inlet and outlet pipes.
I let the water clear then put the fish back. Naturally they seemed stressed at first but settled down in a couple of hours and the dwarf neon rainbowfish became so lively with them swirling around each other either in pre marital sex dances, or imposition of territorial rights, though they are shoaling fish so that isn't really the reason.

As is always the case, my filter cleaning was done in rainwater. No chlorine - just in case anyone brings it up. It's great to be able to just do something like this and immediately after, just dunk the fish back in.

The wood still had some algae on it so I dropped a couple of amano shrimp in to clean it up.

Oh, just to mention, the wood I took out of the original setup that was small enough and covered in all sorts of algae, I just microwaved for 4 minutes. Can't beat that method of algae eradication.

Just to give an update on my wife. She's fine at present but sort of bored not being able to continue at work right now. I see some painting and decorating coming my way shortly .........

So sorry to hear about your wife, I worked with the elderly and a lot of them had symptoms like you described when dealing with water infections...glad she's on the mend!

Tank looks great, can't wait to see it fill in! Brilliant idea with the floor tile, that's one I will definitely remember next time I'm in the same situation

Ooh, super nice, good change, glad to hear everything is ok with your wife.
Reg the fishtank, I feel it may be too bright now, I would add some surface plants, maybe not forever but for a while. If you dont want to go with surface plants, I had a good time keeping hornwort laying on the surface to create a dimming effect for a little while, you would just have to have to filter output point downwards to not disturb the surface.

This was just my example of the surface hornwort

I adjust the light to around 50% so it isn't too bright but I need to keep it at full for a couple of hours each day until the plants start growing. Mini hairgrass to front left, split towards the back with rotala that generally grows pretty quickly to form a cluster in the rear left corner. The middle is just left as sand and the right is planted with mini hairgrass again with a mixture of taller plants along the back. I have planted microsorum and microsorum narrow at the base of the wood.
The tall grass plant is just something I grew emersed from seed as are the other odd plants dotted around and on the wood pieces.

There is a patience thing you might consider. If you get plants that grow very tall and overhang, you will get shaded areas without needing to add light cutting floaters. The fish like it, and often adjust their colours. It takes time though - a good scape (not one of those unsustainable Japanese stylized tanks) takes at least a year to grow into itself.

I'm glad your wife is doing better. It can be a roller coaster sometimes. My wife has been in remission for over a year now, but while most people tend to figure that means everything's sorted out, there is a long and bumpy recovery process. My radar is never off, and things happen. It's happening less and less as time goes on. Hang in there, both of you.

Thanks for that. Recovery is also down to patience. Unfortunately my wife doesn't have much. She insisted on going down to the shop this morning. I mean.......
It was a slack day though so she just chatted with the girls mainly. Far better than watching me try to work out spray bars and inlet pipes to suit the tank I guess.

I've also used the old tank covers that are absent the middle light panel. That gives a width of around the exact width of the overherad light to shine through. As it sits about 5 inches above tank height there's plenty of shaded area, but I do have a myriad of taller plants outside in my daphnia tub I can use if needed.