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90x30x30 low maintenance

Short update. I went home after work last night resolving to isolate the sickly CW51 only to find him dead. The one that died is the one in the photo I shared just before I left for my holiday. His stomach appears sunken in. Am a little heartbroken as I started medicating immediately after I noticed that he was a little skinny looking and he still showed interest in food. I feel like I have been reporting deaths quite often recently. The last time I added fish was in September 2024 (5 G. hastatus, 3 H. concolor and 1 H. caudimaculatum) and there have been no additions or changes to this tank since then. Of course the G. hastatus did not do well at all and only 1 survived and is living in another tank in a larger group of conspecifics and is doing terrific now. The rest of the Corydoradinae are still active and appear well fed, including the new concolor and caudimaculatum.

The ember tetra with popeye appears to be doing better, the swelling has reduced considerably. Curiously this happened without any intervention on my end. But I'll still be keeping an eye on him for a while.

I think I lost an ember tetra recently so I'm down to 4 at the moment. I don't really know how long their lifespans are, but most sources online seem to suggest that they live around 2 to 4 years in captivity. I've had different batches of ember tetras since 2018, with the most recent batch of 5 added in the middle of 2022. I never know how old they are when I first buy them but I guess it is about time for them to start naturally expiring.

I did plan to buy some Hyphessobrycon sp Muzel or whatever they're called now, but will be shelving this plan for at least 2 months given the recent death. I did not notice any sign of infection on the body with the main symptom being a sunken in belly, so my main suspicion is internal parasites. For now will be focusing on maintenance, copious water changes, regular feeding and perhaps a few rounds of parasite medicine. They always get a big water change of at least 70% once a week, but I will aim to do one more 30% to 50% water change in the middle of the week and more if I can manage, at least for a few weeks. Any fish I do get will be for the other tanks and they will go through quarantine first.
 
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Sorry to hear about your hastatus and cw51. Hope you can get on top of it with water changes and medication! Good luck ❤️
 
megwattscreative said:
Sorry to hear about your hastatus and cw51. Hope you can get on top of it with water changes and medication! Good luck ❤️
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Thank you!

Did maintenance on Sunday and removed a good chunk of Java fern and rearranged a bit. Still looking a bit messy but I had spent so much time on the tank that day that I decided to stop for the day. I'll continue tidying it up this weekend. It still looks pretty much the same and I'm not sure when I'll rescape this, if ever. Any rescape would probably involve a big piece of wood and vastly reduced plant mass in the tank (maybe half the plant mass) so that there's more swimming space on the bottom and the addition of floating plants and botanicals. However the number of fish in here, the small size of the tank and the fact I'm only using 1 Biomaster 600 for filtration makes me a little hesitant. When stocking quite heavily, more plants are always good, right?

Anyway, just sharing a picture of what the tank looks like now. The fish are out to eat as well. Still need to clean the glass and tidy up the java ferns this weekend.

2025-01-20_10-32-24 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
G H Nelson said:
Looks good! :thumbup:
Personally, I would add a black background.
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Little said:
Shame maintenance is higher than you hoped as the tank has a really nice vibe.
Can you risk a little less light to slow the growth more?
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Thank you both.

I'd like to add a background too but can't be bothered at the moment.

Normal weekly maintenance for this tank doesn't actually take up too much time, since the only thing I do is scrape the glass and do a big water change. But every couple of months when the Java ferns get too big and dense, that's when it gets really tedious.

I've not measured the brightness before but I think it is quite dim already. I forget the light settings but I'm quite sure it's lower than 20% output. So it's not the plants that are growing too fast, it's my own fault for letting them get so unruly.

I am happy with this tank, but it's been more or less the same for years now so something new and more natural looking would be nice. But still, no plans to change anything at the moment! I'm mostly just dreaming for now.
 
Hello everyone

Just wanted to share how the tank looks like. Basically tried to go back to the island style scape before. I really like how the tank looked in my post on 2 June 2024. I think it looked better back then, when the Java fern wasn't so dense and overgrown and I had more Anubias coffeefolia. I still like how it looks right now though. The tank also looks a bit more spacious than it was a month ago before my holiday.

I definitely still need to trim my Java ferns. I'd also like to split my Anubias coffeefolia into two because of how long it's gotten, but I'm am a little wary as my last couple of attempts did not go well at all. Not sure if it might be because my scissors were too blunt. Perhaps I should try using a sharp kitchen knife.

Not sure about my future plans for this tank. More fish would always be nice though. Perhaps a small group of Gastrodermus guapore but we'll see. I did say I wouldn't get any more fish for this tank for two months at least!

Anyway here's a picture from yesterday. Did a big water change and cleaned the glass as best as I could. I did miss a few spots near the bottom but i'll get to those next time I do a water change.

2025-01-26_10-23-49 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
Added a bit of Hydrocotyle leucocephala to this tank as I wanted to see how they grow here. I quite like the bright pop of green and hope that I will be able to contain and grow it between the Java fern and Anubuas.

No immediate plans to change this scape up. I know I've mentioned wanted to rescape before but rescaping is quite a big undertaking so I might want to keep things the way they are instead. I might make small changes such as removing a bit of the Java fern and growing one of two Echinodorus cultivars in here. I want to get more fish for the smaller tanks, so the extra filter on the top right will be moved to a quarantine tank after I've bought them.

It's been almost a month since I lost that CW51. No new fish have been added since then and thankfully no further losses either but I am a bit wary because of all the fish that I lost in the past year. I think I've had one or two CW51s jump out of the tank, one that died shortly after my holiday in Hong Kong, and a CW155 that disappeared in August last year, not to mention the 4 G hastatus that died shortly after I acquired them. I've also not been able to get Loricariids to thrive in this tank. I've only been able to keep two Otocinclus macrospilus for about two or three years before they passed, so I've had a little bit of success there, but the few other Otocinclus and Parotocinclus I've tried all start to die off after a couple of months in the tank.

But in any case, I will not be getting new fish for this tank at all until April at the earliest, and that is also provided that the current inhabitants here remain healthy and the fish I want are actually in stock (still thinking of Hyphessobrycon muzel and Gastrodermus guapore).

For the moment at least I am happy to report that my 27 or so Corydoradinae are doing well, eating voraciously everyday with nice full bellies.

2025-02-12_10-16-28 by Lenny Lim, on Flickr
 
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