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Consistency Deficiency

I reckon that if UKAPS was a large multinational corporate, Hufsa would be SVP, advanced moss research.
On a different note, which are you finding easier to grow: Cryptocoryne striolata 'mini' or the Cryptocoryne striolata 'Tiger'? I love the look of both of them, but I'm getting really stingy about new planty additions as I'm running out of room. Ok technically I probably ran out of room a while back, but, hey, the fish don't really need all that free swimming space I'd set aside for them, right?
 
Karmicnull said:
I reckon that if UKAPS was a large multinational corporate, Hufsa would be SVP, advanced moss research.
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Only if I got the job by lying heavily about my qualifications! 😂

Karmicnull said:
Cryptocoryne striolata 'mini' or the Cryptocoryne striolata 'Tiger'?
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Right now I would recommend neither of them, all literature states that they are not good aquarium plants, and I am frankly astonished that I havent killed them off, given my track record. The mini variety I have only had for a few days as well, very early days still.

If you want a strongly patterned crypt I will suggest Nurii, the Rosen Maiden variety is beautiful and high on my wishlist. This one is established in the hobby and something that can be propagated.
I will for sure keep the journal updated with how these exotic crypts do, if for nothing else than to document why no one should buy them.
Im also going to keep my eyes open for any alternatives to striolata that has this attractive pattern but is easier to grow.
There is still a few specimens of Cryptocoryne ferruginea in the LFS, which is said to be slightly less impossible to grow, and some populations of this species seem to have patterned leaves as well. Im just absolutely skint right now 😅
 
Been working on getting the tank into shape for the past few days, filter cleanings on friday, last night I got a fair bit of the gunk in the sand out, and did a very large waterchange. I felt uncomfortable disturbing the substrate so much, but it didnt feel like I had many options for getting it all out. Ive never really had an issue with particles in the sand, but I have always had digging corys, so they would have wafted away the particles before they built up at all.

I need a better system for vacuuming the sand lightly every now and then. Im thinking it should be done every time I replant an area at least. I tried doing it using my long python hose but that did not work very well. Buckets and a short piece of hose works, I know, but the bucket fills up so fast and you risk overflowing if you arent paying very close attention to it.

In desperation I ended up just stirring the crap out of the sand and then doing a 80% water change right after to get all the cloudy water out.
My otos were unsettled after the water change, which didnt help the nervous feeling I had in my gut. I tested the water for ammonia, but there wasnt a reading. I would rather take their word for it than the test though. It was getting very late at night and the second batch of change water was not warm enough yet, so I decided to get up really early today and do another big waterchange. In the morning no otos were on the glass or swimming around, a good sign. I did the waterchange anyway, and just like last time they became active. They react a fair bit to the water level getting lower, I think they are scared of being stranded in a small puddle. They always do this, and the lower the water goes the more upset they get. This is before any new water has even entered the tank. When I started refilling they were restless but seemed ok, sometimes they like to sit on the mesh cover of the refill pipe, maybe they even like it? So I think the change in activity level was just them reacting to the disturbance I caused and that there was a water change at all. That it doesnt neccessarily indicate that the change was a bad thing, just that they noticed change, if that makes sense.

I will continue to monitor them closely, ive got another batch of water warming up so depending on my gut feeling I will do another large waterchange either later today or at some point tomorrow. The balance of the tank has no doubt been disturbed by me taking all the plants out and in and doing all these things.
I should have planned to do the filter cleaning after the substrate gunk instead of before, that was not very smart of me.


On friday I also finally got the courage to connect the regulator to a CO2 tank, it went much better than I feared. Pressurised gas makes me very uncomfortable but this wasnt so bad. I followed the CO2Art "Aquarium Regulator Leakage Detection Procedure" and have left the tank alone since then.
friday.jpg saturday.jpg
Friday and saturday respectively

It seems to be holding steady, although I feel like maybe working pressure (second dial) has gone down overnight, is that supposed to happen?
I didnt get a good picture of the working pressure on friday, so I will purge the regulator now and set the experiment up again, and take better pictures of the second dial to compare before and after.

Sorry about the boring post folks, I will try to get some pics and write about something more interesting once the proverbial dust has settled 😅
 
I like a good wordy post.
I never intended to have one, but having a “farm” tank where I can test out plants before putting them into scapes has been super valuable for me. My issue is I am a hoarder by nature so throwing out species I no longer have space/use for is always a painful one. If more space for tanks were at all possible I’d have something easy to handle like a 60x30x30 only for testing and holding onto species.
 
Garuf said:
My issue is I am a hoarder by nature so throwing out species I no longer have space/use for is always a painful one. If more space for tanks were at all possible I’d have something easy to handle like a 60x30x30 only for testing and holding onto species.
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Ugh I feel you on the hoarding, I have a solid copy of the hamster gene (thanks dad :rolleyes:).
My tank is already running horribly low on space, I feel like I need at least 2 meters more of tank to put all my precioussess in.
Karmicnull said:
I am so with you on this. Even though I know it will be easier - and cheaper - just to buy it again if it's a common species. It goes against every instinct.
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Tell me about it :rolleyes: I struggle just throwing out individual sprouts of Sagittaria, I ran into a lot of problems yesterday when I was trying to replant everything. I was happily replanting every single bit Sag into cute little streets in the foreground when I realised I had forgotten entirely about the bucket full of mossy rocks that I needed to fit in there :oops: My space-induced panic increasing sharply, I managed to just about squeeeeeze in the last mossy pebble, when I realised once more I had forgotten some plants, all the buces were still waiting for me on the coffee table 😭 I ended up just shoving them into random bits of java fern, and leaving the problem for another day, otherwise I think I would have cried 😅

I generally feel like I have to keep every single bit of plant that grows in my tank, which then builds up to untenable levels and then suddenly the plant is overtaking the tank so much I sometimes throw the entire species out, which I do not really want to do. So I have to keep repeatedly telling myself "Its ok if you just have 5 stems of Pogostemon helferi in there", "You dont actually need 500 kilos of Bolbitis".. :lol:

I would have made it much easier for myself if I threw out 2/3 of the Sag yesterday and kept just a little bit for detailing. But as the americans say, hindsight is 20/20.
 
Ive been playing with a few ideas, I thought I would write them out in the journal to get it all sorted in my head.

Being the last bit of equipment I need, the CO2 reactor is estimated to arrive around feb 10. This is an aliexpress estimate, so means it can arrive around then, arrive 6-12 months later, not arrive at all, or arrive and turn out to be a pair of sunglasses. But like a physics problem, lets assume friction = 0 and that it arrives around that time.
The tank probably wont be optimally stable by then, but then again theres not a lot of things in life that is optimal so thats just gonna be how it is ;)

A few weeks ago I noticed how much the banked sand had slid down and settled at the front of the tank, no doubt this process was accelerated by the digging activity of the fishsticks. The sliding of the sand planted a seed of annoyance within me, which was watered further by @erwin123 and @plantnoobdude having fun experiments with lean dosing and rich substrate without me :grumpy:
So I started thinking what if I redid my substrate a bit, and I could go for Tropica soil in mesh bags in the bottom, and then cap it with a decent layer of sand, which I would spruce up a little bit by adding some percentages of the larger grain sizes.
In addition to my current 0.1-0.5mm there is available 0.3-0.8, 0.7-1.2, and 2.0-3.5mm.
Whenever I see someone's tank has mixed sizes of sand and gravel I always think it looks really nice and natural, so maybe I should just dive in and go for it..
Having some rich substrate in the bottom should make it more probable with success on lean dosing.

Having a few issues with OCD, I immediately figured that I will need to calculate the exact percentages to add of the different sizes, probably in a sort of exponential way, to make the result look the most natural. Yes, I can also see the wonderful irony in that line of thought :lol:
I have also been thinking of going for a slightly less steep slope, to make it a bit easier for the sand to stay in place. 0.1-0.5 is about as fine as you will get for aquariums, and it moves very easily. When I set up the tank I went for a slope that banked up to 1/3 of the tank height, this was in hindsight totally outrageous and looked very strange without equally dramatic hardscape to go along with. Needless to say its not banked up to 1/3 any more. I shuffled it back a bit when I was getting the gunk out yesterday, so we will see how it does in a slightly more moderate slope and no "help" levelling from the fish.

I kinda want to keep the main basis of the sand the 0.1-0.5 size, mostly to spite people who say plants dont grow in it.
I think there is something wrong with my personality, because as soon as someone says you cant do something, my response is immediately:

"OH YEAH?! ..We'll see about that!"

I just cant help it.

But I definitely want to do CO2 + inert substrate for a while first, based on the same contrarian principles mentioned above. Im thinking to make things simple I will just go full EI when I turn on the CO2, otherwise im going to have to play whack-a-mole with deficiencies for ages and the fun of doing that has somewhat fizzled out.

Another unrelated idea that has been swirling around in that noggin of mine is gradually increasing my GH to see if it helps my shrimp tolerate large waterchanges better..
Lots of things to try in the future! Im excited :happy:
 
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Hufsa said:
I have also been thinking of going for a slightly less steep slope, to make it a bit easier for the sand to stay in place. 0.1-0.5 is about as fine as you will get for aquariums, and it moves very easily.
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I feel your pain - I tried banking the silver sand in my tank, and it only took about a month for it to go flat. Lesson learned, I'll place it flat from the get go next time.

Hufsa said:
I kinda want to keep the main basis of the sand the 0.1-0.5 size, mostly to spite people who say plants dont grow in it.
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I suspect that is one of the many aquarium myths. My silver sand is quoted as being 150-250u (0.15-0.25mm), whilst being clearly too light to stay banked, it appears to have no problems growing plants in it - though I do have a nutrient rich base layer, however I suspect that has little to do with a plants ability to grow in it.
 
Banking only works if you have something holding it in place, case in point I did have a very nice bank in my 45f until I put in amanos before the carpet was established and within a month it was flat.
 
Hmm if a month of "successful banking" is the average, then 9 months with digging fish suddenly doesnt seem so bad 🤔😁
Just about everything we add to an aquarium requires some kind of maintenance, substrate unfortunately not an exception, though I wish it was 😄
If it only slides down a bit over around a years time I think I can live with it, but if it doesnt last that long then the effort is not worth it to me and I will need to go for something else.


Ive been working on new spraybars, and last night after extensive finangling I got the new top spraybar of ~80 cm into the tank, it was a pain in the butt with the two crossbeams this tank has, my next tank is going to be completely unbraced I dont care what it costs I dont want to live like this any more 😂
I went for 20mm pipe as it has an internal diameter of 17, compared to the 13.5 of the 16mm pipe. The hose is 16mm internal, so I figured the 17mm was actually closer and should be better for flow. A few extra milimeters shouldnt hurt anyway, it will get occupied by a layer of that brown film that all plumbing gets.
So I got it connected to the Aquael, plugged in the filter and immediately cried out "Oh no!!"

..I accidentally made a singing spraybar 😩

I had read about this phenomenon before, and immediately knew this is what had happened when the spraybar started humming a low oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-

From my foggy recall this has something to do with pressure, harmonics, fluid dynamics and im sure also plasma coil field regulators and some other stuff that goes way above my head. The bottom line is that it will continue its whalesong until I change something about it. I covered a hole with my finger, and this made the singing go from ooo to OOO, so im mildly hopeful that drilling a couple more holes will make it stop being so extra.

I just left it to sing in the tank and went to bed, fixing it will be a problem for future Hufsa and not me
 
Singing is better than the trick I did once and mix up the in and out and pressure washer jet all the substrate in a 20cm circle straight into the water column covering all my lovely sandforeground in a time before we knew that aqua soil was magnetic.
 
This is why soil is bad and if you have to use it it should be shameful and hidden away 😂 Just kidding
I really hate those little persnickety black spheres tho, dont like the look and the spheres dont like my rough handling them like gravel 😁
Put them in bags and cover them with sand I say :lol: (Disclaimer: I have no idea if this works long term but I will probably find out)
 
Hufsa said:
This is why soil is bad and if you have to use it it should be shameful and hidden away 😂 Just kidding
I really hate those little persnickety black spheres tho, dont like the look and the spheres dont like my rough handling them like gravel 😁
Put them in bags and cover them with sand I say :lol: (Disclaimer: I have no idea if this works long term but I will probably find out)
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I agree tbh, in the future I'll hide it away it is UGLY, just doesn't look natural and gets all mixed up in my lovely sand. Also a nightmare to plant into unlike lovely lovely sand. In bags and then with extra root tabs is what I'll try with the next big tank (whenever that is 😅).
 
Yeah. Can’t agree with you there. I’m a soil user through and through, once you know it’s tendencies it’s just unmatched and if you don’t have decorative sand it’s just a dream.
 
You know @Garuf every time I see you post I think about the helpful unplanting amano you showed us, and every time the image gets a little bit more detailed in my minds eye. Im not a proffesschhional artist but I have wanted to draw the unplanting amano for a long time now, to realise my vision, if you will. Today I finally just grabbed a pen and jotted it down on a post-it. Today helpful amano is unplanting Sagittaria.

20220201_132211.jpg
 
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Hrmm :sour:
Tried fixing my singing spraybar, I had a bit of extra pipe at the end of it so I drilled two more neatly spaced holes and put it back in the tank.
Sound went from quite noticeable tinnitus to faint tinnitus. Not fixed entirely :grumpy::grumpy: There is more sound than I am willing to live with on a permanent basis.
I would like to try adding two more holes to the bar, the only problem is that they will have to be added between two existing holes, messing up my very carefully and orderly measured pattern. This annoys me immensely :rage:
Another option is to use the second and last piece of pipe I have, and make a brand new one with 20 evenly spaced holes, but there is a risk that the problem could still be there.. it seems like a small risk based on how much the sound was reduced by going up to 18 holes, but what if its not enough..? Then ill have two noisy spraybars :shifty:
Its possible at least one of the noisy spraybars could be used as the bottom bar going right along the substrate, the Eheim is a different pump so might not sing with that filter..

I remembered a second problem I need to figure out that I had forgotten about, which is that I dont know where to place the CO2 tank inside the cabinet and various complications regarding that. I then spent 30 minutes sitting and staring intensely at the open aquarium cabinet, wrote a long section consisting of 0.001% interesting information and the rest was just me incoherently overthinking and being very unhappy, then I realised no one would be able to follow anything I was writing and deleted the whole thing.

Basically I think im gonna have to remount the autodoser at the right side of the cabinet, and I will put the spraybar making on hold until the reactor arrives, so I can see how much it reduces the flow.

I have a headache :sick:
 
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