I thought I would do an update as there have been some developments this week.
Firstly some bad news in that on Wednesday I noticed 1 of the Cory Schultzei floating at the top!! From people’s suggestions on planetcatfish it seems it could be a internal bacterial infection. The others seemed OK so I did a 10% water change and then left the tank as it was.
Then on Thursday I noticed one of the microrasboras at the filter outpipe. Must have been dead a couple of days as it was already half eaten. Maybe this was the cause of the cory dying?
Anyway have been doing a 10% water change each night and everyone else seems OK. Will keep on the daily water changes for another week and see how they go.
On the planted front I have made several changes to the equipment.
I have been having a few problems with BBA in the centre of the tank on the needle ferns.
Due to the increase of plantmass in this tank and a large quantity of it being ‘substrate free’ I have now doubled the original dosing. This is not because the original quantity was wrong as the tank was going along very well with that quantity for quite a while. Its just that as the plants have grown in so well they are now using the original amount very quickly and is probably the reason for the small algae outbreaks.
Firstly I decided to try out the Boyu inline diffuser that Zig has used in his mountainscape V2 scape. Its not because I’m not happy with the Rhinox. More a case of not having to clean it as often which was a bit troublesome because of the new position I had had to put it in as the plants have grown. I bought 2 as they are really cheap and that way I can swap them every couple of weeks.
Here is a pic of the diffuser in Situ:
The initial observations were good. Very small bubbles, however this led me onto another debate.
I have been using glass in and out pipes for a long time and I started a discussion on wether these tubes due to their smaller intake capacity (the intake on stock tubes is a large strainer, whereas on glass tubes are small slits) and also that as they are quite thick they reduce a 12/13mm to 8mm. The screw on connector for hoses of course reduces the diameter but not as much. I decided to put the pipes that came with the filter in to see. This is the spray bar and intake strainer:
There is a noticeable difference between the flow. Therefore I have decided to return to the spraybar and inlet originally supplied with the filter. The microbubbles are now blasting all over the place. I still have the powerhead in there but I may ‘trial’ not using it and just having the 6 x volume filter running.
Here is a front shot of the tank (picture in the daytime I’m afraid and with only the 0.9WPG on so the colour is a little pink.) I haven’t reduced the size of this picture as much as usual so that if you want you can take a much closer look and try and find the algae. Lol. (Its starting to look like one of LLJ's scapes. lol)
So a week where I lost 2 fish and took 3 pieces of glass out of the tank. Heartbreaking but the fish seem OK and the circulation is much improved!!!
AC