and then there were two

[seangee]

Yesterday I turned out the lights on the 20G (#3) for the last time so I should probably stop updating A tale of 4 tanks. The individual threads on the tanks are probably no longer relevant as the themes no longer exist. So I'll start again.
First there is the community tank. I did not have to do a lot here except rip out all the plants and start again, recycling cuttings from itself and the other tanks. I recently got rid of the duckweed (at last!) and I have also replaced the lid. I also made some minor structural changes so I could maintain the "dark side I had in the past. I also put back the HOB which has recently been in the 20G.
Its around 180 litres and currently home to some cardinals, pencilfish (nannostomus marginatus), lambchops and an Albino BN known as her ladyship. Currently using TNC lite at about the recommended dosage to kick start the plant growth.
Here it is on day 1.

 

[Naughts]

Very colourful! I love the large shoals, much more impactful than small groups.

 

[seangee]

The nano (Flex 15) is looking rather sad - but that is still at day 0 (or -1).

Ignore the ugly mug holding the phone.
As you can see this one has quite a lot of algae. Easy to deal with so not really a problem - I may just send her ladyship across for a week's holiday. I suspect the reason is a few months ago I started taking out duckweed at every water change and forgot to turn the lights down. I have done this now. Re-planting is another easy fix - that's mostly down to neglect. I replace around 30 liters of water every week but have literally done nothing else besides rinsing the filter sponge.
But the substrate ...
That is actually black limpopo sand. I'm pretty sure the white comes from dead MTS shells collected over the last 10 years.. This is the only tank where I regularly have to go on an MTS culling spree. I assume it because the RO water in this tank gets re-mineralised and the pH is neutral. All my other tanks have been acidic. The MTS have always been in them but they are not prolific, and I guess when they die the shells disintegrate far quicker because of the acidity. Also after 10 years of no vacuuming its pretty <coff> nutrient rich. I always say I never vacuum sand (and I don't) but in the other tanks I do run a rake through it a couple of time a year and let the mechanical part of the filter deal with what comes out. I haven't done that on this tank because of the shrimp. Now I'm nervous about touching it for fear of killing the shrimp - and it really needs replacing. I actually shrimp proofed the filter inlets in the community tank last night and was all set to move everything I could find - but DUCKWEED! Getting that tank clear has been a major pain and took infinite patience - I am not going to mess it up now!!! If they did move they would be in the community forever (which is OK) as there is no way I would ever catch them to bring them back. The Red Rilis are all pretty low grade as the group has been self sustaining for around 10 years with no new genetic input, but I can't bring myself to just wipe them out for the sake of replacing the sand. And they are still fun to watch. Getting rid of the duckweed completely will be much easier in this tank because of the design.
But what to do about the substrate?

 

[seangee]

Cleaned the canister on the community today. Not due for a few months but I figured with all the planting and unplanting it would be pretty mucky. The sponge in the HOB was very mucky at todays water change, but that was expected as I use fairly dense Poret foam in there. Since it gets rinsed weekly its never going to get clogged and does a great job of "polishing" the water.
The canister was not as bad as I expected. Yes the water was black but the sponges were fairly clean. This is by design (mine), I only have coarse mesh in there as for me the filters main job is to clean out the muck and flow the water. Of course bacteria does grow in there and it is effective for bio filtration but I am always amused at the number of people who spend money on super expensive alternative media or try to cram as much media as possible into their units. I'd rather it just did its job without having to worry about reduced flow between my quarterly cleans. The same goes for the obsession with over filtration.
I did discover that the inlet tap is leaking. Fortunately I always have a bucket and towel to hand when I do this job. It leaked about a liter of water in the time it took for the clean, and most of that time was refilling the canister with RO to reduce the amount of priming. I checked the Aquaone site (its an Ocellaris 850) and the tap or seals are not even listed in the UK, by Aquaone or any other suppliers - even though the filter is still on sale. I also saw for the first time that they recommend changing the impeller and main O ring every year. Mine are at least 10 years old . Oh well if its any worse next time I'll pull the tap apart to make sure theres no crud (or MTS shells) trapped in the seal. If not it will be new filter time.
I removed my intake pre filters. They were really mucky after just 24 hours. I'll put them back if I do move the shrimp into this tank but until then I'd rather the muck ends up in the filters than staying in the tank.
Since I have spare smartplugs from the decommissioned tanks I now have everything attached to this tank controlled from my phone so I never have to dive into the cabinet to turn things off.

 

[seangee]

That is actually black limpopo sand. I'm pretty sure the white comes from dead MTS shells collected over the last 10 years

Nope that was wrong. Today I carefully cleared out the crypts from the corner and removed most of the loose pebbles which don't add to the tank in any way. Since the crypts are well established the root network is quite extensive and I couldn't do it without some disturbance. Good news is the sand beneath the surface is healthy and black. Shrimps are also fine . My current theory is that the white stuff is just sediment from the mineralising salts. So the new plan is to lightly vacuum a small section every day followed by a large W/C. The shrimps and crypts are already used to large weekly changes so this should not affect them. Then I'll replant in the newly cleaned areas. Like the other tank I will follow a less is more approach in terms of plant density. Frogbit will come once the duckweed has gone completely. Then I'll probably add some caradina in a few months time. Haven't decided yet if the embers will stay in here or if I'll move them to the community and keep this one as shrimp only.

 

[seangee]

I still have shrimp
I just completed round 2 of the gravel vac and water changes. Around 50% of the surface is done. Not going too deep or intensely so it will be slow.
I haven't touched the algae or plants although I have shoved these around to reach the substrate.
Oh and I installed a mini BN today. Only 2.5 cm and so cute. Seen chilling on a leaf in the uncleaned half of the tank immediately after the WC

Don't panic - I have a permanent home ready from him (or maybe her?) when the Flex gets too small.

 

[seangee]

Facing off!

 

[seangee]

This afternoon I took the 20G down to the recycling centre so now it really is two.
The plants are coming along nicly in the community

I have thinned out the hygrophila and also removed some of the limnophila sessiliflora. Nothing has been trimmed. The crypts on the far right have appreciated the addition of root tabs. The frogbit has almost doubled its coverage. Fingers still crossed for the alternanthera rosaefolia as the outer leaves are showing some melting. hoppfully in a couple of weeks the frogbit will provide sufficient shade for the anubias and crypts for me to turn the lights up.
The box in the back is home to a single aponogeton ulvaceus bulb. It went in yesterday and last night walked across the tank and hid in the corner. I wonder who is to blame ...
Over the course of the next week I will thin the anubias, remove the ceramic pot and put the anubias on wood (currently hiding behind the big bunch of anubias) in its place. Location is important because its the landing zone for where I pour water in from the top. I will most likley add another piece of wood without plants at some point. I do have more acrylic boxes in case I decide to create a terrace / shelf across the back, but for now I'll wait and see how the aponogeton gets on.
Water change tomorrow but I'm out for the day so no further attention.

 

[seangee]

Progress in the nano is slow as expected. We are still not at day 0

The substrate is looking much better and fairly clean. The algae you can see is on the glass rather than on the sand. I did thin out the crypts, which are actually fairly healthy. I will remove another plant / bunch. I thought I had only left 2 but there is a third behind the other two. These will probably stay. The rest of the plants just got moved around when I cleaned the substrate (and plenty more thrown out).
I will probably just re-do the log as I will have plenty of anubias rhizomes left when I thin out the other tank. But I think I will try to save the mini coins as they are well suited to a nano tank. The scratches on the back are me poking around with a stick to see how much algae is there.
I cleaned the substrate over 4 nights followed by big water changes. Since then I have been doing daily 25% changes using cold water which drops the temp by 1-2 degrees.
My stock of embers has declined over the last year and I noticed the females are full of eggs so I am trying to reinforce the change in season. Apparently they live for 2-4 years and its 5 years since I bought mine. I occasionally saw fry when they were in their last tank so these are probably not all the original stock. I never actively tried to breed them (and still won't), but I'm happy to encourage them to do it by themselves.
The surface is now free of duckweed. There is still some in the rear compartment (where its completely dark) and I will continue to fish them out during the WCs. They don't appear to have a route back into the tank so I will throw a piece of frogbit in tomorrow and start adding ferts in here.
Oh and plenty of saddled shrimps. I've not seen any berries yet but I suspect they are only days away - mine never seem to breed over winter.

 

[seangee]

Its been a very mixed week. First high was I discovered 3 miniature lambchops in the community tank on Tuesday. Then on Thursday I saw my first berries of the season in the other tank. Then I discovered that I had obviously missed some earlier because I have shrimplets. But then a downer. While watching I thought the baby BN looked a bit sluggish and sadly by nightfall he was dead. Less than a week after being shipped so I'm just putting it down to bad luck - but still quite upset about it
Both tanks are pretty much where I hoped they'd be now so I won't bore you with more photos that look nearly the same. But I did enter a state of moderate panic when I arrived home tonight, after a weekend away, to discover that her ladyship has a new favourite resting place

She's absolutely fine and has returned there a few times

 

[seangee]

I'll start with the nano this time. I have been slowly slowly attacking the algae. Only the bottom of the right wall to go. What you see on the left is reflected from the rear and that can stay as it is. In real life the tank is now looking good. I cut all the leaves off the alternanthera rosaefolia and gave it a root tab. Wasn't too sure it would survive that but its responding nicely. No tabs for the crypts because they seem to be fine after their trim. I have started adding liquid ferts. One afternoon I watched a big shrimp settle on an anubias leaf. The leaf was (IMO) beyond redemption and due to be cut. But she stayed on it for 10 minutes and in that time half the leaf was sparkling. So I did the logical thing and removed the plant hoping it would focus the attention of the shrimps and snails on the mini coin anubias (now at the back of the wood which has been rotated). They have started recovering nicely so my plan was good ... but maybe a little too good!
My secret weapon against duckweed was to remove the shrimp guard from the top filter inlet so it gets sucked into the back. Once I started on the algae the shrimps discovered they could get into the first filter chamber where the food source is far richer. Now at any time there are way more shrimps in the back than in the front - but they do seem to move between the two areas at will. In real life the tank is starting to look quite good. Still change around 25% every other day and I now re-mineralise to the level that caridinia need with the dGH at 3 and dKH at 0. Haven't tested yet but in time this will also lower the pH. The neos and embers will be quite happy with that - but I will replace the shrimp guard before adding caradinia. Probably only in summer though.

 

[seangee]

Not too much to report in the community. The fast growers have really begun to take off so I think its time to halve the liquid ferts. I have upped the lighting (from 40-45%) to encourage the red. I haven't re-planted anything but have already had to thin the hygrophila. I may trim the tops this weekend because they are bushing out nicely at the bases. I also trimmed quite a lot of the anubias and the frogbit marches on - although its not yet providing significant shade. The aponogeton is still waiting but is now content to stay in its box (most of the time )

 

[seangee]

Own up! Who has been digging?

 

[seangee]

And a double banded rili in the other tank, Haven't seen him, or this pattern before. But he is quite big so obviously just a bit shy ...

 

[seangee]

This one can go into maintenance mode now. I replaced the sponge in the filter as it was beginning to fall apart - but after 10 years I can't grumble about that. The hygrophila will need trimming / thinning soon. I think I have finally got all of the shrimp out of filter compartment 1. Siphoning them out was pretty much to only option . They are not terribly visible at the moment as most are behind or under the wood, but with several berried girls I expect that will change in a few weeks.