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120cm Nature Aquarium

Think I have at least partly answered my own question.

I notice now that the moss towards the ends of two of the branches where I had a week ago liberally painted neat Excel and Hydrogen peroxide on to the bare wood when water level was lowered are pretty much completely dead! Brown and lifeless. At least one of these branches had very healthy moss before. So I can only assume that the liquid had seeped along the branch into the moss and killed it off. The BBA on the bare wood of these branches and the rocks has been killed, which was the objective of the treatment, but I will be much more careful if I do this again I’m the future.

Perhaps a diluted light misting of Excel/hydrogen peroxide would be ok, but I am cautious now.


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And some other update to note:
  • Moss covered lava stones and Anubias / Bucephalandra distributed around the scape
  • new Bolbitis Heudloti added, mainly the emersed grown leaves on display but a few submerged leaves have started to develop
  • Small Cryptocoryne balansae added from old aquarium
  • Left hand inlet is in rear corner and left hand outlet in front corner, but had some problems with the right hand inlet being separated from the right hand outlet as the skimmer was getting overwhelmed by floating plants and a film was developing on the surface so for now they are back next to each other about half way back. Will play further with this to see what works best
  • Bought some La Plata sand and mixed with the original Colorado Sand to lighten up the substrate
  • Started using the rear light again (TMC Aquaray Grobeam) just set at 30% for now and matching the photoperiod of the Fluval 3.0.
  • Upped TNC Complete from 10ml per day to 12ml per day
 
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Do my plants look like they are lacking sufficient fertiliser? I am not experienced to be able to read the signs but I can’t help feeling they are pale and not as vibrant and healthy as they should be. I currently dose 12ml TNC complete per day. Should I up this amount? What do others dose? 120cm x 53cm x 50cm volume
thanks
Chris
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Thanks @Siege. Okay so my tank is approx 300litres so that would be 30ml per day. Way higher than what I am currently adding.

However I wouldn’t say it’s as heavily planted as other tanks I see on here a fair amount of real estate is sand and rock.
Perhaps I will go for something in the range 20-25ml and see how we go.

is it safe to double my dose tomorrow or should I work up to that amount with a little extra each day?

cheers
Chris
 
For my records:
- TNC complete now being dosed 22ml per day
- Seachem Excel 5 mil per day, and 30ml after weekly water change (hoping to combat BBA)
- Rear Aquaray at 50%
 
Scape has been suffering from mid-low levels of BBA for a number of weeks / months, but now things appear quite improved. Still have some BBA on Bucephalandra and odd old leaves of other plants but nothing of note on new growth.

Tactics I have employed:
- reduction in filter sponges to improve flow and more frequent cleaning of the pre-filter sponges that remain (every 2 weeks rather than every 4 weeks)
- re-introduction of circulation pump to increase flow
- dosing Seachem Excel - 5ml per day then upped to 15ml per day. Dosed manually
- increase oxygenation via an airstone. firstly just at night but for a few weeks it has been on 24/7

Observations:

The flow from the filters is improved with fewer sponges, and the pre-filter sponges have plenty of plant matter and 'dirt' after just 2 weeks so I will keep up this schedule.

I believe the pump I have is too strong for the comfort of my livestock. The Eheim pump is quite powerful and the fish often appear distressed by the level of flow; they glass surf and dash around. After initially having it on 24/7 I decided to just run it for a few hours each day while the CO2 was on. However fish still looked stressed for these periods. I have unfortunately lost 2 fish that jumped. May have been linked to this but I have a number of hypothesis. Over past couple weeks or so I have removed the pump and the fish appear happy all the time now.

I was getting through my 500ml bottle of Excel at a quick rate and I failed to keep up regular enough dosing to be able to make a real judgement on this. I haven't dosed any for a couple of weeks now and things don't appear any the worse for it.

The airstone, in my unscientific opinion, has had the most positive impact. Alongside the filter maintenance tweaks, this is the only tactic in play for the last 2-3weeks when the health of the plants has looked best and levels of BBA lower. Presently I am taking one of the two airlines from my old aquarium into this one. In future I will probably buy another air pump specifically for this aquarium and run two airlines discretely into the tank, one either side. I may employ a timer so that the bubbles are off during evening viewing hours.

The Vesicularia Montagnei moss, that first took a downturn during summer heatwaves, never really recovered and was then badly affected by the BBA now looks like this. Its straggly and the parts closest to the branch are brown and dead, but the outer parts are relatively healthy new growth and there isn't really very much of the black fluff (BBA) any more. I have previously tried removing all moss from the branch and re-tying with cotton the green bits only but that method hasn't really proved successful for me. So this time I will just leave it for a while longer and I hope that eventually that the new growth will grow over and obscure the brown parts. I think a trim of this and all the most is overdue.
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I have transferred over some new fish from my old aquarium (being used for quarantine):

+11 Black line tetra (moenkhausia costae) - unfortunately one has jumped as mentioned in previous post so now there are only 10. I opted for this species as I had heard good things about their schooling / shoaling behaviour. In my brief experience they do tend to stick together as a reasonably tight shoal most of the time, and often form a tight 'picture perfect' schooling formation. When the lights are off and they are totally relaxed they will disperse separately. When they want to get somewhere fast, they really are lightning quick, almost too fast to see. And they are more eager for food and feed more voraciously than the green neons, although since their introduction, the green neons themselves have become bolder and quicker with regards to food consumption.

+5 Otocinclus, making 6 in total

+1 Panda cory, making 6 in total

Sadly the green neons now number just 17. One jumped about 24 hours before the black line tetra, and a few days ago another passed away through illness (noticed a sore around one gill, and was dead the next day).

And I have now lost all snails, three striped nerve and five clithon corona. All followed a similar pattern, active for maybe 2-3 weeks, then just stopped moving. During the active phase they would from time to time climb up the glass to the water surface, perhaps suggesting they were not happy, but most of their time they would be actively climbing over hardscape, plants and glass and seemed to be eating. Not sure of the cause of their demise. Thoughts include water thats too soft, CO2 injection not to their liking, lack of algae of the type they like to eat??

Here are a few (not great) pics of the new arrivals:
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Sadly I have lost three Amano shrimp over the past few days. I found one wedged between rocks on Friday and during today’s water change discovered two more of the poor little fellows have perished. A fourth was upturned on his back looking very sorry for himself. I netted him and positioned him in the net above the airstone. He managed to crawl out after some time so we will see how he has fared at roll call tomorrow.

Do not recall ever losing one before, in fact I still have all my originals from maybe 9/10 years ago. Although having said this I did have some non-fatal issues with what I think were CO2 fits earlier in this journal.

Anyone have any ideas?
The only things that I can think of that have happened differently recently are:
  • About a week ago placed some new potted plants in the aquarium to acclimatise. Could they have had some chemicals on them?
  • Disturbed the substrate quite a bit when moving some plants around. Might this have caused an ammonia spike? Both ammonia and nitrite tested zero today. Although thinking about it the substrate disturbance was last Friday when i found the first fatality so it cannot explain that one.

thanks in advance for any thoughts, any other reasons Amanos die?

cheers
Chris
 
Two more Amano casualties. Just the tails found. Pink / white looking just like the prawns we eat.

Nothing changed in the week.
No idea whats going on here!?
 
The plants would be prime suspect if that is all that changed :/ but no experience on the matter... hope you can figure it out!
 
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