Recent content by Tonalscape

Mine usually surf in pairs or trios and based on results, it is a mating pattern in my case. The females are larger and being chased if I look at the behaviour closely. I've seen glass surfing from other fish in the past, solo. There wasn't a source of stress that I could point to in those...

Congrats!

High nitrates was a bad time to introduce some new buce from a tissue culture - all leaves melted, perhaps some rhizome survived. Also lost a few leaves from one variety of buce that was well established, but it's recovering. Refilled my bubble counter, and it leaked CO2 afterwards which I could...

Tested nitrates - they were at 40ppm :oops:. Based on my drop checker, I'm probably not going to be increasing CO2, but I'll do a profile soon anyway. Did a small early water change, decreased the macros in the fertilizer schedule a bit. Put some APT Fix Lite on some algae - found a bunch of...

The anubias is quite curly at the front. Even the one on the right, which is pretty low in the tank. Also found a bit of black brushy algae on the edges of one leaf on the big one on the left. Reducing light on the front fixture from 45/60 to 40/55. Cut tops of AR Mini and replanted. Narrow...

You could play with propagating your anubias to other areas of the hardscape. It looks great as it is, though!

Three weeks later, and things continue to improve, with no changes to any of the maintenance. I transferred some mauritiana grass from forest, and some hair grass that was floating by a rock into the meadow and it hasn't died after a week or so, and perhaps there's some growth. BBA on buce...

Three original corys and one born in the tank, here. We started with seven and now have about 12, I think. You can see the poor state of the AR Mini on the right; the tops of other AR Mini in the back are looking in better colour these days since I brought ferts back up and I look forward to...

Keeping with the "warts and all" theme of this forum section ... here's an update on an ordinary day, after getting through the Christmas season, sickness, adjusting to having all those fish in there longterm, and letting the meticulousness of maintenance find its place in life's priorities...

@Rondon1973, that's a beautiful vision I'm sure you have. Even at this stage, I would be interested in your overall thoughts on the whole package. Given that Seiryu stone (which is very different from dragon stone) is not an inert stone and will in many cases raise your pH and kH, and an...

Tis the season :) 12 cardinal tetras now; their first photo op. In other news, been treating some staghorn algae with 2hr aquarist Fix Lite. Good response, not comprehensive eradication yet.

Lighting schedule (hasn't changed in a few weeks): Foreground: 10:00 45% 11:15 60% 03:15 45% 04:30 3% 08:00PM 0% Background: 10:00AM 60% 11:15AM 80% 03:30PM 60% 04:30PM 4% 08:00PM 0%

So far so good, the corys seem to be well. I imagine some dither fish will bring more of them out more often. I usually see 2 or 3 all the time, and these days will see all 7 in a focused feeding area. They seem to get used to us over time, as well. The moss on the wood branch at front came...

I really like the changes! Just to relate, from my experience, I wish I had been a bit more comprehensive in setting boundaries between soil and sand. The hardscape design is a point where you can create the most impassible boundaries. I was also glad that I kept the volume of hardscape in...

@_Maq_ I definitely appreciate your perspective. I think a lot of aquascapers share your disgust for many of the things you're disgusted by :) On the other hand, aquariums are unnatural to begin with, since we first brought an argonaut out of the sea to study it. You have to make tradeoffs...