Slimmed Down Fish Room Journal

[WhistlingBadger]

That's going to look amazing when the plants all fill in!

 

[Boundava]

Thanks Tom, I hope so.
Tank brings back memories of prior tanks...both small and big. Recently purged my Google photos otherwise I would post some pics of tanks of fishy past.

I had found some blyxia japonica and blyxia red in my local fish store and I remembered how well the japonica did in the shrimp tanks I had about 10 years ago. I also remember having pogostemon helferi in another tank and loving it. Then I saw the lagenandra meeboldii and it brought back memories of my 75 gallon CO2 and dry fertilizer tank.
The substrate is a mix of Eco complete and some red flint small gravel/large sand.
I kept some of the other plants I already had in the tank (along with the Igawazo 2000) including a small lace plant (a. madagascariensis) what looks like a baby a. ulvaceous and two a. crispus "red" and a small bulb or two of Egyptian lotus.

I have some shrimp safe thrive fertilizer that I need to be better about dosing, lol.

Am excited to see how this little tank progresses.

 

[Boundava]

Shrimp be shrimping...

then there is Caspian

Comfy cozy

 

[Boundava]

Some relatively short feeding videos.

She is in the fishroom so she counts, lol

 

[Boundava]

So got the new shrimp today. They (and I) are still at work but don't have too much longer. They should be acclimated and in the tank before 3.

 

[Boundava]

Oops I forgot the video...

 

[Boundava]

We got 2 Borneo Python eel juvis last weekend from Nationwide Aquatic. That led me into think about swapping the eels back to the 125 and rearranging/homing some fishies.

This weekend would be perfect for that...
Also a update on the 20L shrimp tank, love seeing them so busy in there.

 

[Boundava]

It begins.

So stopped at local grocery and got two 2L bottles of brisk tea simply because I wanted something I could put into another container and I stopped drinking the carbonated stuff.

I was unable to empty both of the bottles, so whoops. I did get the one empty so I decided to build my contraption. Can I say the bottles are supper flimsy compared to the last time I did this. When I cut the top to invert the only way I could get it to seal was by cutting slits and cable tying the two parts together. Guess in hindsight I should have gotten the Coke brand and they used to lock together once cut if I remember correctly.

This is done with the ultimate goal of catching the cory I have in the 125 and moving them into the 120 without having to destroy the 125 in the process...why am I doing this? Well you see I am a glutton for punishment and I am moving the eels (if you follow my prior post you would know the majority of these were already in) to the 125.

So just to make it a bit clear here is the stocking for the tanks currently:

125
6 Buenos Aries tetra
2 diamond tetra
~6-8 harlequin rasbora
~5 dwarf rainbowfish
2 panda barbs
1 Odessa barb
5 SAE
4 Gudgeons
2 thick lip gourami
~ 4 honey gourami
1 snakeskin gourami
1 moonlight gourami
6 clown plecos
~5 red lizard whiptail catfish
5 ancistrus plecos
1 L330 royal panaque (pleco), ~7" (my avatar)
1 upside down catfish, adult
1 parrotfish (Marigold)
~17 cory, majority Venezuelan
...believe that is it...

120
3 congo tetras
~12 giant danios
4 Borneo python eels, 2 adult and 2 baby (at 6" and 8")
1 unicolor fire eel
1 tapir eel
2 maculatus eels
1 eel I don't remember the species name-not common at all, was a bycatch find
~12 pepper cory
4 angelfish
1 black ghost knifefish
1 Three beacon pleco
1 sailfin pleco
1 L027 royal panaque (pleco)
Spotted syno catfish

These fish will be caught and taken to our LFS, unfortunately no credit, but they will find good homes.
These fish will stay in their respective tanks
These fish will be moved from the 125 to the 120
These fish will move from the 120 to the 125

The others will stay in there respective tanks.

I put the trap in about 2 hours ago and caught 5 cory, 2 SAE, a diamond tetra and a rainbow. I opened the trap and put the last 2 back into the 125 and moved the rest over to the 120.

I set the trap up again and when I am done posting I will see what I caught.

I have a newish job and I just was upgraded to FT which means I work Saturdays now so it kind of throws a monkey wrench into my timing a little bit as the LFS is open till 6 pm, I work till 12:30 (stare at 4am) so when I get home I have to catch all of the "dither" fish (danios, tetras, barbs, rasboras) so I can take them to the LFS. I will see what/if I want to continue with the breakdown, (I will have been up since 2:45am) or I will wait until Sunday to catch/swap the remaining. There is a large SW in the 120 that Loki, my L027 uses that I will be moving into the 125 so I will be moving some of the other DW around to accommodate it. The eels just love the large anubias in the 120-they sprout from it like betas like to lie on leaves, I will be putting that into the 125 as well.

I am hoping that the two royal female plecos will play nice as Belle has never been aggressive toward any other plecos and Loki leaves the other two large plecos in her tank alone as well. The only pleco that gave Belle any grief in the 125 was my Ghost (BN)-he was such a spectacular bully and food monger, I miss him RIP . The other plecos in the tank play nice with each other.

When I got the baby Borneo eels at Nationwide aquatics I saw these very neat rasboras that get to be just shy of 4" so I am strongly leaning towards adding them to the 125 as the only dither fish. Yes the gudgeons are staying, but they don't really dither, lol.
If I decide to add these guys to the 125 I can go either Sunday or Tuesday to get them. Nationwide aquatics is a bit of a drive from the house though so it will take up a good chunk of the day, about a 3 hour drive there and back.

Well you know me I will have a video up when its done, lol,

 

[Boundava]

So total catch today was 15 cory, 5 SAE (all of them), two rainbow fish, one diamond tetra, one thick lipped gourami, and one red lizard catfish. The first two went into the 120, everything else went back into the 125. This trap is doing such a great job that I am hoping once I add a second one it will actually catch more of the dithering fish in the 125 so that we don't have to manually catch them by chasing them around the tanks like nuts and losing our minds. Chasing little fish around in a 6 ft tank is not fun, especially when you're trying not to destroy everything in the tank in the process of catching them.

Also talking with my sister I decided that I'm not going to keep the rainbow fish. The dinner fish and the 125 are going to be those rasboras and the angels will be staying in the 120 because previously we had angels with the Gouramis and they like to harass them. So the dithering fish that we're going to have in the 120 with the angels is going to be a large school of emperor tetras and a large school of penguin tetras. Going back to when I had my carbon infused crazy planted 75 gallon.

I will be doing a rinse and repeat tomorrow when I get home and hopefully trap a whole bunch more cory...well I hope the remainder of them.

 

[Boundava]

So with the traps I was able to get all but two of the cory out of the tank. If anyone said fish are not smart then they are wrong because by the time I tried to put the traps in for the sixth time the fish knew what they were and we're staying away from them like the plague. This made it extremely hard for us to catch the dithering fish when we needed to.
The issue Saturday was that I had to work an extra half hour and the pet store closes at 5:00 so by the time I came home close to 2pm and got a little bit more energy to go downstairs and start wrangling the fish, it took us a little over 2 hours to get all the fish out of the tank.
You got to remember this is a 6-ft tank and you're chasing two to three inch tetras. The hardest ones to get were the two Panda barbs and the 4 Buenos Aires tetras. Unfortunately we did have to tear out all the plans and pull out all the Driftwood so the tank is a hot mess now.

We had just had enough time to throw everything back into the tank and race to the fish store with 5 minutes before they closed in order to drop off those fish and the vals I pulled out. My goal had been to also pull out the fish from the 120 (the three Congo tetras and the unk#s of giant danios). However we ran out of time. So for now those fish are going to stay in the tank and to be honest I may just try to catch the three Congo tetras and rehome them and just leave the giant danios.
When I got back from the fish store the only energy I had left was to pull out the glass braces that had been holding the corner matten filter in the 125. Fortunately that wasn't too hard since I had a scalpel from work, however the thing is a little sharp so I kind of nicked myself twice on my thumb. I wanted to remove the braces because I didn't want an eel to get stuck in the corner. I also don't know if any of you watched the Friday new fish sections on the wet spot, but they got two Starligh eels in stock and we have been waiting for years to get another one of those so I snagged one. So that would be a new addition to the tank that we're hopefully going to be getting on Thursday.

I was originally going to put the Royal pleco in the 125 with the other Royal pleco, however the sailfin pleco is fighting with the syno catfish so he / she will be moving into the 125.

First will be a quick grocery trip before the memorial Day shoppers come out, and then I'm going to go ahead and rescape and do a quick gravel clean on the 125 before I pull out all the driftwood from the 120 and start catching eels. I'm hoping the nuts are still big enough for the two large ones.

 

[Boundava]

Shopping and breakfast done, it's time to get the tank reset up and move some eels.

 

[Boundava]

Well the tank is rearranged and redone. I don't have the energy right now to be chasing eels and breaking down the 120.

The day is not over yet. Still may wind up going downstairs and removing the Driftwood out of the 120 and try to catch the eels.

 

[Boundava]

Well I think I caught the majority. Had to pull out the DW, rocks and pots with plants in them. I think there are 3 left and the knife fish but I can't see anything right now. Am going to give it an hour to clear and try again. It's hard because they will bury themselves when stressed. This is why I can't see anything now as I had to excavate three of them.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Well the tank is rearranged and redone. I don't have the energy right now to be chasing eels and breaking down the 120.

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The day is not over yet. Still may wind up going downstairs and removing the Driftwood out of the 120 and try to catch the eels.

Wow, that pleco/panaque/whatever it is creeps me out. Looks like a job for @CaptainBarnicles . Other than that, though, beautiful. I don't envy you trying to catch eels in that stuff, though. I pretty much have to drain my tanks to catch anything in them.

 

[Boundava]

Lol Tom.
The watermelon panaque? That's Belle (my avatar), she's a sweet heart. Ghost used to push her around, lol.

Yeah I wound up tearing the 120 down. It was a bit chaotic, lost track of what I caught in the mess of it all but I believe I got everyone. The 120 is a mess. I just put the DW in and pulled the plants out of the pots I had them in and left them floating over night. Will finish the layout today sometime...I think