So this weekend I decided to clean up my outdoor ceramic tank in order to remove all the Clea Helena snails that have eradicated my snail population. I though it was a good idea to have those snails. I was wrong. I also decided to remove some of the plants and add a few new ones. Also added a thin layer of river sand, perhaps ~2cm. I was not sure about it but thought I would try. Here are some pics.
Here is how the tank looked like a few months back. I do not have any recent picture. I used to have a homemade filter attached to an air hose but got rid of that long ago. Was a pain to maintain:
Here after dismantling everything:
The reason for dismantling. I was able to pick out at least 50+ of them:
The mollies:
Mystery fish. No idea what they are. They do have a black stripe along the body but due to stress during water change those trips faded. One looks pregnant or perhaps is obese . Used to have 3 but one jumped out a few month back and I only saw it in the morning. He was hard as a stick. These fish are jumpy by nature. Other than that, no casualties, except for the snails.
5 seconds tops out of the water:
After filtering all the sludge. Snail graveyard.
A gift from an aquascaper friend to whom I gave all the Clea Helena snails. I was not expecting this. For those who don't know these are eriocaulon but I am pretty sure most of you guys know. He could not tell me what species exactly they are since there are over a 1000 different species (all about eriocaulon) and he bought them from a farm in Udon Thani province, NE of Thailand. There are in fact 2 different species in the pot. If you look closely the one at the back right is not the same than the others:
Some pictures of how they look in the farm he bought those eriocaulon from:
And the final look of the pond:
Nothing spectacular nor beautiful. I mostly use that pond to throw in the cuttings from my tanks and for testing how long they will survive in these conditions. So far the most resilient plants have been the Vallisneria and some Rotala (which is not in good condition but has managed to survive several months like this). The Hornwort and floating plant are just there as filtering aids because I do little maintenance on that tank. Once every two or three weeks.
Here is how the tank looked like a few months back. I do not have any recent picture. I used to have a homemade filter attached to an air hose but got rid of that long ago. Was a pain to maintain:
Here after dismantling everything:
The reason for dismantling. I was able to pick out at least 50+ of them:
The mollies:
Mystery fish. No idea what they are. They do have a black stripe along the body but due to stress during water change those trips faded. One looks pregnant or perhaps is obese . Used to have 3 but one jumped out a few month back and I only saw it in the morning. He was hard as a stick. These fish are jumpy by nature. Other than that, no casualties, except for the snails.
5 seconds tops out of the water:
After filtering all the sludge. Snail graveyard.
A gift from an aquascaper friend to whom I gave all the Clea Helena snails. I was not expecting this. For those who don't know these are eriocaulon but I am pretty sure most of you guys know. He could not tell me what species exactly they are since there are over a 1000 different species (all about eriocaulon) and he bought them from a farm in Udon Thani province, NE of Thailand. There are in fact 2 different species in the pot. If you look closely the one at the back right is not the same than the others:
Some pictures of how they look in the farm he bought those eriocaulon from:
And the final look of the pond:
Nothing spectacular nor beautiful. I mostly use that pond to throw in the cuttings from my tanks and for testing how long they will survive in these conditions. So far the most resilient plants have been the Vallisneria and some Rotala (which is not in good condition but has managed to survive several months like this). The Hornwort and floating plant are just there as filtering aids because I do little maintenance on that tank. Once every two or three weeks.
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