Celestial Glade - 125ltr Low Maintenance

[Biulu]

I hate Portuguese for keeping all the good wines for themselves! And so they do with their other food, like cheeses and meats..... You can hardly find anything outside their own country! have Portuguese colleagues in Cameroun and they always treat me to their great food directly imported by them.

On the powerhead: since I installed a powerhead, my temperatures have gone up. Without using heating I get to 28 degrees Celsius, whereas it would normally be around 24! Iljdma, are you having this too (you are climate wise much closer to me)?

 

[SuperColey1]

I hate Portuguese for keeping all the good wines for themselves! And so they do with their other food, like cheeses and meats..... You can hardly find anything outside their own country! have Portuguese colleagues in Cameroun and they always treat me to their great food directly imported by them.

On the powerhead: since I installed a powerhead, my temperatures have gone up. Without using heating I get to 28 degrees Celsius, whereas it would normally be around 24! Iljdma, are you having this too (you are climate wise much closer to me)?

My heating is external and as such maintains a much closer to 'set' temperature therefore if the powerhead warms the water then the water will be up to temp when it passes through the heater. Should be the same or close enough with a normal heater.

Temp in the UK has been close to 28 all week and no rise within the tank. The heater is set to 26ºC and that is what my normal thermometer in the tank says.

I have to add however that my photoperiod is 4pm to 12pm so the ambient temperature has lessened by the time my lights come on. This is not for temperature reasons but for my own viewing pleasure when I get home from work but it does help not having the lights on during the hot part of the day. The powerhead is on for 24hours.

Its normally the lights that raise the temperature the most.

Andy

Here is a pic of the tank but I am finding it very hard to get pictures of the fish at the moment as they are still very skittish (getting used to a 2 and 3 year olds faces pressed against the glass all the time I suspect.)

Will post pics of the fish when I can get them. The microrasboras and Otos are stunning. The Corys come on Friday.

Andy

 

[saintly]

looks well my friend. with all this heat my tank went uop to 30c!

 

[SuperColey1]

I think the late photoperiod is my main advantage with the heat. I used to run noon till midnight until January of this year and it got up to 32ºC for 3 days last summer!!!

Andy

 

[DevUK]

Looking great andy

Do you have any plans to add any more plants? For my eye, I feel it needs something low growing in front of the middle wood to hide the stems of the plants at the rear. Maybe some mosses or something?

 

[lljdma06]

Looking great andy

Do you have any plans to add any more plants? For my eye, I feel it needs something low growing in front of the middle wood to hide the stems of the plants at the rear. Maybe some mosses or something?

I like the bare substrate. If anything, maybe a teenie bit of something in the corners, but wth cories, it's good to have bare patches of substrate.

llj

 

[SuperColey1]

Do you have any plans to add any more plants? For my eye, I feel it needs something low growing in front of the middle wood to hide the stems of the plants at the rear. Maybe some mosses or something?

Nope no mosses. Bored of them. The stems at the rear will be hidden by the Wendtii just in front of the wood. then the stems of the Wendtii will then be hidden by some Crypt Parva (low growing) which I will plant once the Wendtii starts to take shape.

This will be basically filling the corners out leaving the front centre bare for my Corys (which didn't arrive )

Andy

 

[DevUK]

Ahh cool Can't wait to see it mature! Shame about the corys

 

[SuperColey1]

a small update after my belated return from Portugal.

I had to arrange for my Dad to come round and receive plus acclimitise 6 Black Cory Aeneus/Sterbai for me and he has done a grand job. Pics below. Cant get focused pics of the group yet but these are some inividual and couple shots along with some pics of the cherry shrimp that I got last month.

Story of the tank while I was away was 8 [email protected], no dosing, no CO2, no water changes. Results were surprising. The Anubias have gone a gorgeous dark green, the needle leaf Java has gone mad, the phillipine had a few deteriorating leaves, the crypts were unphased!!! After some pruning and general cleaning up it all looks grand.

I also returned to a bacterial bloom. Am doing 25% water changes each night to remove it and the water is getting clearer daily. It is clear for the first few inches and not really that cloudy further in but its annoying when you are used to a crystal clear view to the back!! Will take pics of the tank after Ive finished.

On to the photos:

Firstly the Black Corys and then the cherry shrimps.

These fish are lovely, the shrimp are cool and all seems to be going well. The microrasboras are shoaling but are still at the back of the tank. Very hard to photograph. Still not seen the zebra Otos since I put them in!!!

AC

 

[Mr Bliss]

The tank looks great, and I love those cories! Never seen those for sale over here.

 

[SuperColey1]

From what I have read they are not a 'natural' colour of cory. They were tank bred to be this colour in the early 90s and when they have young themselves they are not guaranteed to be black. This may of course be hogwash but its what I read.

Therefore you wont get any ' wild imports'. there will be someone in virtually every country who does have some though.

AC

 

[SuperColey1]

I keep saying I will post up some new pics of this scape and never get round to it. I will make sure I do tomorrow.

One problem with tanks that are long term is that growth changes the effectiveness of the circulation which in turn of course changes how well the bubbles are moved. In this case the Crypt Spiralis in the left rear section has gone rampant!!! Much faster than the balansae in the same area. The Philippine Java in the rear right was getting a bit large too. Reminded me of Carlos Valderama!!! Therefore I have been moving it all about trying several positions within the tank for the diffuser and the powerhead.

I eventually settled on returning to the needle wheel concept!!! but with a difference in that the powerhead is now placed next to the Lily pipe and therefore both are pushing the water from the same place in the right rear corner to the same place along the back to the left rear corner. Then the diffusor is positioned near the substrate directly below the powerhead intake. From there the bubbles rise, enter the powerhead, get chopped even further to the point that you can hardly see them at all (I wondered if some were missing the intake at first) and then blowing along the back. Proof of the pudding is I can then see them traveling along the front glass so I'm pretty happy with the new positioning.

While I was getting it all sorted I took Carlos out and gave him a haircut (and beard trim - you should see the roots that I cut off!!! like a ball of wool.) As usual I got a little carried away but this plant grows like mad. When it regrows there will be a plus in that the diffusor and powerhead will be totally hidden. There will be a minus though in that it will be quite awkward getting out each week to clean. At this moment I am getting quite interested in the inline Boyu that Zig used on his mountainscape.

There are some new additions in the way of some Rotala Macrandra that I am experimenting with to see how they will grow in this 'low light' setup. Not so much as part of the scape, more of a test really.

Pictures tomorrow I promise.

AC

 

[SuperColey1]

I promised some pictures and here they are, untouched except for resizing in irfanview:

p.s. This is the first time I remembered to turn the daylight tube on to balance the pink and I think it looks much better. The pink is the tube used for the photoperiod. The daylight just for photos mainly.

This first pic just shows the tank / scape from the front. Ignore the Macrandra at the front as this is a test only. If it succeeds in growing under this light then there is some at the back which I may keep in dependent on how it looks. The Philippine Java in the right rear is about a third of what it was prior to last night when I took to it with some sharp scissors. lol

This second one show the tank from a more 'arty' angle. I think it looks fuller and a little better from this angle too as you can't see through the stalks of the crypts while I wait for them to fill out more.

One more pic of the corys 'schooling'. They are actually feeding and they tend to congregate at this time.

Now onto some fish that are darned hard to capture and even when you do get pics of them they are not very good when using a compact. I guess someone with some decent equipment and knowledge to go with it could get much much better. Unfortunately I only have pics of the Microrasboras. I haven't seen the Otos since the first week I put them in about 2 months ago and I think they must have died and been consumed. Pity because they were stunning little fish when I set them free!!

These 2 pics show males. Notice how intense the blue stripes on his side are. They are more intense in real life but again compact camera etc. His fins are red and his head yellow to go with the blue stripes. I think this is the same male. How can I tell? Each fish although having the stripes has slightly different stripes. Some are wider and less of them, some are fine like this one. the wider ones are the more spectacular as the contrast between the white/silver flesh and the blue stripe is even better than this:

These 2 pics show females. Now you can see the difference in that although they still have the red fins and yellow faces their stripes are a dullish grey/blue. Nowhere near the intense blue of the male.

Finally one more shot of the tank a few days ago in the daylight (before I trimmed the Philippine)

I was asking a while back about a top dweller to put in this tank and had several suggestions which I liked. Then while I was getting the Macrandra and Crypt Parva the other day from P@H I noticed a tank with 14 little fish in it a tiny bit smaller than the microrasboras. Very plain little fish, but together in the top third with absolutely stunning eyes like mini LEDS. Yes they were lampeye killies and I decided then and there that these will be the fish. I won't be getting them yet. They will be for the future. Maybe at christmas.

AC

 

[Mr Bliss]

Looking really nice! Very natural-looking. I'm going for a similar "controlled jungle" look and your tank is a great inspiration. I love the Anubias on the left, and this made me decide to get some more of it myself.

And I still love those black cories! <3 <3 <3

 

[SuperColey1]

I'll take another picture of the Anubias on the left tomorrow. There are actually 3 different ones but doesn't shoe very well in those pics.

The top (large) is Barteri, then there is some Barteri v Nana running down one side and then a little bit of Barteri v Nana (Petite/Dwarf) that is growing in the centre somewhere. lol

Glad you like it.

AC