Sam's Nano Journal

[lljdma06]

I am sorry to hear about your pygmy rasboras. Other than worrying about sucking them up with my gravel vac or sucking them up through the filter uptake, I have never had a problem with these fish. They are pushing 3 years (August!), and were there for my 15g initial setup. Too bad, because they would have been ideal for your setup, as they will make your tank look larger than it is. Though, you already accomplish this quite a bit, if you don't look at the CO2 ladder.


Great job, I can't wait to see more of your tank's progress.

 

[Themuleous]

Have just given the tank a bit of a clean, the algae wasn't to bad once i got in there and had a good look round, hopefully it'll stay that way! Touch wood!

Ahyhoo, as you can see my HM is growing quite well now, but is starting to look a bit 'leggy' any ideas as to what I should do, pruning wise? Make it fill out a bit? Or should I just leave it to grow until the tank has settled in a few more weeks? Zig?

Thanks people

Sam

 

[George Farmer]

Looking good mate.

"Leggy" is usually associated with too little light. Give it time to grow a little more toward the light and it may look better. I wouldn't prune until it's well established i.e. near/touching the surface. Maybe zig has other ideas though.

 

[Themuleous]

Ok will do, I've got around 8WPG surely that must be enough!

As you say it probably just needs a bit of time to get fully established.

Thanks George

Sam

 

[Themuleous]

Oooohhhh look at thaaat!!! It's carpeting really nicely! For some reason, it reminds me of my childhood days when we would roll around on the grass. Wait, that was yesterday jk

It's a lovely shade of green too. Where are the new fishies? Camera shy?

Cheers Dude,

Give it a bit of time and hopefully it'll look great once its had a few more weeks and once I can remove of the 'extra' plants and tidy thing up a bit.

Yeh camera shy! They are so dam fast never sit still long enough! Have noticed that one hogs ALL the food, even chases the others away when its feeding, little git! Not sure what Im gonna go about him Think Im going to leave the fish as they are for the time being, get the plant established and sort fish later.

Sam

 

[lljdma06]

Hey Sam,

Any updates? Just curious.

llj

 

[Qays]

Are you use this is a 4gl tank?

I worked it out to be a 6gl tank!

 

[Qays]

Are you use this is a 4gl tank?

I worked it out to be a 6gl tank!

It's about 4 UK gallons.

Its 5.5 UK gallons

 

[Themuleous]

Hi all, glad to see you're having fun on my journal

As to the tank volume I have put 4g as when I filled it that’s about how much it took, but yes the dimensions would come out at more like 6g. That does bring to something I’ve wondered for a while though, how should you measure a tank? When someone says say 20g is that based on the tank dimensions or the volume of water? I tend to always base my tanks stats on the volume of water as I feel this gives a better picture of how much fish I can have, so I don’t then over stock. The box my middle tank came in said it was 57lt, when in fact it only took 40kt to fill it, that’s a third less and equates to quite a bit less fish, after all they cant swim through the gravel! Even the PFK website IMO over estimates the volume, they have tried to show a 'useful volume' amount but even this tends to be more than the actual volume of water.

Hey Sam,

Any updates? Just curious.

llj

Hi llj,

Thanks for asking and being interesting in my tank

You must have read my mind, as I was going to post an update today but my sisters camera has run out of battery and I cant find the charging cable! Doh! So I'll either post it later today or tomorrow. For the moment, I think the best way to describe the tank it to say 'I am surprised the fish have any swimming room left!' The hornwort and Egeria have totally taken over! The HM seems to be doing well too and could probably use a prune but I think I'll leave it for the time being until I’m past the algae stage, which seems to be on its way out hopefully. The HC isn’t doing so well, I think the rest is blocking out the light quite a bit, so will give it a good hard thin when I do my next water change on Monday. Still some pesky thread algae on the java moss, think I may have to re do this, but will see how it goes. The fish certainly seem to enjoy the massive amounts of plants!

Did have a bit of trouble with the CO2 thou, the cylinder only lasted about 2weeks, not sure why, I put it in a bucket of water and it doesn't leak, not sure as I'm only at a rate of 1 bubble ever 4 seconds or so. Will see what happens with the new one.

I'll post some update pics once I get the camera working.

Thanks again

Sam

EDIT - I have just compared the tank to the old photos and the HC is actually doing great! Complete lie there sorry! It was for a time suffering from a lack of N (thanks Zig you saved the day there ) but I have upped it NO3 20ppm so hopfully they'll help, the new leafs dont seem to be going yellow as much so thats a goods sign. I guess the biggest thing now this that I wnat to start titing it up, I have let it grow wild to stop the algae but it doesn't look anythign like I want it to, guess I'll have to be patient!

Forgot to add anything about my EI dosing, the plants have been sucking up 12ppm NO3 and 1.5ppm PO4 every two days so they must be growing!

 

[Qays]

good question Themuleous

I think you should use the dimentions, because it is after all how much space the fish have to swim in. the internet calculators usually round it down to the nearest gallon to subtract the decoration space.

Btw, you have 15 inches of fish in there, what do you use to calculate how many fish you can have?

 

[Themuleous]

I think you should use the dimentions, because it is after all how much space the fish have to swim in. the internet calculators usually round it down to the nearest gallon to subtract the decoration space.

I guess this is my point, if you use the dimentions, it gives a figure that it far more than the actual space (or water volume) the fish have to swim in?

Btw, you have 15 inches of fish in there, what do you use to calculate how many fish you can have?

Haha, have you ever seen a dwarf rasbora? mine barely measure 2cm let along a full inch! I reckon I've got about 10inches in there, which is probably more than the 'calculators' would recommend, but I have a Ehiem 2211 classic, so vastly more than I need, I could use it on my big tank! so water quality isn't a problem and I still have to add NO3 and PO4 so it can't be overstocked, or NO3 and PO4 would be off the scale, even for a planted tank!

I found the charger, so here are some update pics. Ill post some after the clean and thin out tomorrow, but it gives you an iead of how much plants grow I get in just one week!

Enjoy

Sam

A full tank shot (still haven't got the hang of this photo lark!)

The HC. It's growing rather too much upwards, but that could be a sympton of the shading? Hopefully only a few more weeks and I can remove the 'fast growers'

Just so you can see how dense the plants are! BTW its brought out the colours of the rasboras, they look really bright now

And they go all the way back, it really is a 'block' of plants!

One of my fishes Which doesn't do justice to their colouration.

 

[Qays]

Thats dense!!!

Do rasbora's like densely populated tanks?>

Very cool btw! are you gonna cut down some of those plants?

 

[Themuleous]

Yeh they love it! I originally set this tank up to get them to breed, but I've got so involved in EI now that I’m not sure if that'll happen or not! But everything I’ve read on them says heavily planted, doesn't get much more 'heavy' than that!

I will thin the hornwort and Egeria tomorrow during the weekly water change and eventually I'll remove them completely, they are just in there at the moment for algae control. The HM at the back (will post pic tomorrow) should take over that job quite nicely, once the tank is stable.

Sam

 

[simonbrown403]

Some serious growth looking forward to the unveiling

 

[Themuleous]

Some serious growth looking forward to the unveiling

Haha cheers, so am I, seeing Justin Laws lovely HC in his tank made me very jelous and I just want to start pruning and getting it looking how I want it. Just have to keep telling myself it needs time to mature and it'll be worth it in the end (I hate that phrase, I want it NOW, dam it! )

Sam