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5ft Bookshelf Aquarium - River Scape

Hi all,
Thats 2 loaches I have lost in the past month or so, hopefully no more.
Probably just co-incidence, but has the room temperature risen with the change in seasons? Also your Frogbit looks really healthy, which is usually an indicator of high nitrogen levels.
Have you considered Esha Gastropex?......Dose it then you are just left with the empty shells to suck up.
I wouldn't go down the chemical route in this tank, because you have fish with a high oxygen requirement and a lot of snails.

You run a risk that the extra ammonia (from the dead snails) will reduce the dissolved oxygen level.

cheers Darrel
 
I know @Tim Harrison uses Gastropex for snail eradication and he seems to know his stuff.
Do you not use fertilisers in your tank; these are all chemicals. :eek:
You could always just pick them out, I didn't find assassin snails that helpful either.

Thats true, I do use ferts, not much but a few squirts of a weak all in one mix each week. So far I have to agree the assassins dont do much, I watched a pest nail crawl right across one while it was half buried in the sand :p Still the Assassin snails do look nice. I need to start picking out more pest snails, just after I feed the fish I can see 100s - 1000s of snails...

Hi all,Probably just co-incidence, but has the room temperature risen with the change in seasons? Also your Frogbit looks really healthy, which is usually an indicator of high nitrogen levels.I wouldn't go down the chemical route in this tank, because you have fish with a high oxygen requirement and a lot of snails.

You run a risk that the extra ammonia (from the dead snails) will reduce the dissolved oxygen level.

cheers Darrel

Good point RE chemicals / snail die off causing ammonia spike, I dont think I will add the Gastropex, while the snails are not the most attractive they probably do more good than harm.

RE room temp, it has gone up a few degrees, now sits at about 22c, while not to long ago it was more around 18-20c, summer is going to be a true test of how much dissolved oxygen I am getting in the water, and if the loachs cope, the tank will probably rise to 25c up to 28c on hot days, I have purchased some fans to mount on the tank, not sure if they will help much. Will run the AC in my apartment as much as possible to keep the temp down.

I will see if I can test nitrogen levels, have not tested since setting up the tank.
 
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Also your Frogbit looks really healthy, which is usually an indicator of high nitrogen levels.

Tested Nitrates, they where high, maybe 50ppm or so, hard to say with the basic test kit, still way higher than I would want, explains why the frogbit is growing like crazy, to many fish perhaps and to much food? Need to increase water changes and give the filter a good clean i think.
 
Added two single fans to either end of the tank as the weather is heating up in Perth, hopefully they help.

Cleared out most of the frogbit, amazing how much brighter the tank looks, gotta try keep on top of clearing it out. The flowers from the Cyperus helferi now pretty much stretch the length of the tank.

Updated photo below. I noticed lots of dead flickr links in some posts, I tried to apply a watermark to my lightroom library and re-publish the photos, which in-turn broke all the links, crap thing is I then decided I didnt want a watermark and re-published again, lesson is if you have flickr images published on forums etc dont re-publish the images as the links with break.

30605432297_24cae8a6fe_h.jpg
IMG_3693.jpg by Colm Doyle, on Flickr
 
Tried to capture a timelapse of the last hour or so of my light cycle, didnt really turn out how I wanted... probably better of just capturing a few hours when the light is more powered... will give the timelapse another go soon.

 
Hi all, They don't look like Cyperus flowers, they look more like Vallisneria.

cheers Darrel

Interesting, could be Vallisneria, I didn't realise they also put out flowers!
 
Hi all,
Interesting, could be Vallisneria, I didn't realise they also put out flowers!
They have small female flowers on a very long, thin, wavy stalk. I think some have petals (three and white), but some are petal-less.

The male flowers are bizarre, they are released from the bottom of the plant and then float freely to the surface, where they open. They are really small.

cheers Darrel
 
Here is a short video I shot this afternoon, the fish and loaches are gathering around an algae wafer, this kind of wafer seem to be the loaches favourite food (Tropical 3-Algae)



@dw1305 cheers for the description, sounds like Vallisneria flowers to me!
 
Recorded this 4K time lapse today, works much better than recording the fading light... It is about 1 hour compressed down to 40 seconds, watch in 4k on youtube for extra detail.



One of the loaches just gets onto the glass at the end of the video, would be cool to see what they do when on the glass... but the SD card could only hold about 1000 photos... I plan to try take a longer time lapse some day soon, need to figure out best way to managed file size, perhaps I could tether the camera to my laptop or something, also need to keep the camera powered, at the moment just runs from the battery and wouldn't last any longer than 1000 photos either way.

Also i should have put some food in the tank to louer the loaches out a bit more, you get the odd glimpse of them.
 
The time lapse I shot yesterday was in a weird white balance so today i shot a new sequence of images, I think it looks better, much more natural to how the tank actually looks, again in 4k if you want wnat to see the details / algae :p I like that you can see tiny shrimp or maybe snails crawling on the big rock also this one captures a bit more loach activity

 
Quick snap with a new lens (purchased for astrophotography 12mm f2 Samyang) love that I can fit the whole tank in very easily with this wide angle lens, and going down to f2 is great for hand held low light, such as the photo below, the light would be ramping down to about 5% or less this time of the evening but still managed to get a hand held photo...

IMG_4785.jpg


Check out the green algae on the sand, green algae has gone crazy, the glass is covered, tho hard to tell in the photo, seems the loaches do a good job munching it down but never fully remove, if you look closely you can see the pattern they leave in the algae, kind of like qtr moon shapes, will have to see if I can get a macro shot of it.
 
Nice to see the videos in high quality! What did you do to reduce the amount of snails in your tank?
And do you do something special to grow the right amount of algae for your loaches? Great tank!

Thanks, I had added some assassin snails, tho I do see many empty snail shells now I still have a heap of pest snails. I dont do much to control the algae, I do dose "Brightwell Aquatics SPONGEXCEL - SILICA SOLUTION" https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/spongexcel-silica-solution-brightwell-aquatics.html

It really promotes the green algae / diatom growth, tho I still got a lot of BBA, which is probably due to over feeding in the early stages of the tank, tho I cant see to kick the BBA out of the tank.
 
Quick update, tank is chugging along, with minimal maintenance, green algae is going hard, I havent bother cleaning the black glass for ages... as you can see, I occasionally clean the front glass but that is a bit green in this photo, the fish seem to like it, tho all the loaches where hiding when I took this photo.

Also I shut down all my tanks apart from this tank and my 12g bookshelf blackwater.

IMG_5999.jpg
 
Anyone have a sure fire way to kill BBA, its getting out of control in this tank (green algae is also out of control but I dont mind that as the loaches feed on it) Only on the hardscape is effected by BBA, plants are algae free, I dont want to remove the hardscape because the rock are heavy and kind of hold up sand where the val is planted. Tho it could be an option to remove all hardscape and either rescape or treat all hardscape out of the thank and re-build the scape.

Problem is I want to keep the green algae and I assume using the 1-2 punch method will wipe out green algae also, also going to look into no more black beard, but I am pretty sure thats just glut / excel.

I also wonder if Glut / Excel or high levels of h202 effect loaches, pretty sure they are considered scale-less fish?!

Will post a full tank shot tonight.
 
Kind of cleaned the glass the other week, couldn't be bothered removing pipes to do the side glass, I tired spot dosing the biggest rock with h2o2 to kill BBA and ended up spot dosing a loach who died about 2 days later... So for now I will live with the BBA until I do a rescape or pull out the rocks and soak them in a h202 solution over night.

Interestingly the loaches seem to prefer "cleanish" glass as opposed to green algae caked on, perhaps as the green algae grows its softer / attracts them more.

I removed small stones from the left of the scape as they attracted the most BBA, also removed the jet nozzles from the filter outlets, sand has since moved and exposed a cavity under the biggest rock, this is now where most of the loaches live.

33498342568_9889726ae3_c.jpg
IMG_8816.jpg
by Colm Doyle, on Flickr
 
Hi Colm.

I don't have BBA in my high flow tank and I think it's due to low intensity light. My LED is on for 12 hours but it ramps up and down slowly with a peak of 20%.

The rocks still have an algal film and I only have a few plants. The java fern does OK but crypts and Hygrophila are stunted. I used to have much higher light and lots of Bucephelandra. However, the sand would start to go green within a week of doing a water change and the Buce got BBA quite badly. I would dip the Buce in liquid carbon and they would look as good as new. However, the BBA would always come back.

P
 
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