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Above And Below Water

You will not....Snail population only explodes due to overfeeding and that's a fact. Why encourage the multiplication of useless carnivores assasin snails in order to kill detritus and algae eating snails in a planted tank? I don't get it. :p I don't see my snails that much at all :)

I'm paranoid that they will eat into my precious plants lol! Plus assassin's don't eat plants and don't really reproduce unless there is an abundance of snails\food for them, it wouldn't bother me if they did because they have attractive shells. I've done some research into if they eat algae or not and I only came across one site that said it's in the snails diet, the fishkeeper website flat out said no it doesn't consume algae. It's just one of those things I'll have to find out myself. Hopefully they will be a good clean up crew addition and make my life a little bit easier. I might buy some at the weekend.
 
Update time. A mad one!

The tank really is above and below water now and there's some serious plant porn happening. So 2 days ago I did my tank maintenance and while I was at it I added my peace Lillie and palour palm from my small indoor water garden that the lucky bamboo came from. I changed the led over to my aqua one aspire 130 led and I think the lighting now looks better without the blue in it. Also gave the glass a real good cleaning. So here's some pics to start things off.
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The Buce got un rooted so I wedged it into the roots hanging down, its been 2 days and what's poking above the water hasn't went crispy yet. Fingers crossed.

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The madness started shortly after doing all that, my partners waters broke! So off she went to the hospital to confirm it actually was her waters braking. I stayed at home to get my son Jacob to sleep and then 3hrs later I got a phone call waking me up, saying the kraken has been unleashed and get to hospital right now. Fast-forward a wee bit and its 1.43am and baby Isaac is here! The midwives were worried because after every contraction Isaacs heartbeat dropped a lot, then all of a sudden he's here! Sucks that he needs to stay in hospital for 48hrs. Looks like I'll be taking more days off work now. Ah well that's just life.

Over the past few days I've been having some right good ideas. Shame I cant act on them because I've been having some troubles in my fancy goldfish tank. Nothing bad like disease, just breeding behaviour. Basically Blink my big female is getting harassed to much by my Black moor. Its been this way for months and Blink just doesn't seem interested and won't drop any eggs. So for the sake of her health and so she can chill out more I'm separating my fancys into 2 pairs. That's means finally getting my aqua one aspire 130 out of its box. I'll need to buy some filtration and since I've been impressed with the Asap filter on this tank, I'm going to get its bigger brother and some Esha fish health booster mainly for Blink but I'll also try it out in this tank.

Plant porn! Man this crypt bullosa is on fire.
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I like to name my character fish so I've named my DTHM betta Aloofy. I did say I fancied getting some Heranda Formosa to finish off the fishy side of things. Now I'm imagining some sort of other show fish that can match the betta. I would love a paradise fish but I'm sure it would make short work of my betta. Been thinking something along the lines of a single Apistogramma Nijsseni or Panduro. Not sure yet but I would love some suggestions. I like the name Bazooky for whatever this fish is.

I did want to add more pics but it keeps messing up so I'll try again some other time. Take it easy.

Cheers.
 
Update time. A mad one!

The tank really is above and below water now and there's some serious plant porn happening. So 2 days ago I did my tank maintenance and while I was at it I added my peace Lillie and palour palm from my small indoor water garden that the lucky bamboo came from. I changed the led over to my aqua one aspire 130 led and I think the lighting now looks better without the blue in it. Also gave the glass a real good cleaning. So here's some pics to start things off.
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The Buce got un rooted so I wedged it into the roots hanging down, its been 2 days and what's poking above the water hasn't went crispy yet. Fingers crossed.

View attachment 114166

The madness started shortly after doing all that, my partners waters broke! So off she went to the hospital to confirm it actually was her waters braking. I stayed at home to get my son Jacob to sleep and then 3hrs later I got a phone call waking me up, saying the kraken has been unleashed and get to hospital right now. Fast-forward a wee bit and its 1.43am and baby Isaac is here! The midwives were worried because after every contraction Isaacs heartbeat dropped a lot, then all of a sudden he's here! Sucks that he needs to stay in hospital for 48hrs. Looks like I'll be taking more days off work now. Ah well that's just life.

Over the past few days I've been having some right good ideas. Shame I cant act on them because I've been having some troubles in my fancy goldfish tank. Nothing bad like disease, just breeding behaviour. Basically Blink my big female is getting harassed to much by my Black moor. Its been this way for months and Blink just doesn't seem interested and won't drop any eggs. So for the sake of her health and so she can chill out more I'm separating my fancys into 2 pairs. That's means finally getting my aqua one aspire 130 out of its box. I'll need to buy some filtration and since I've been impressed with the Asap filter on this tank, I'm going to get its bigger brother and some Esha fish health booster mainly for Blink but I'll also try it out in this tank.

Plant porn! Man this crypt bullosa is on fire.
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I like to name my character fish so I've named my DTHM betta Aloofy. I did say I fancied getting some Heranda Formosa to finish off the fishy side of things. Now I'm imagining some sort of other show fish that can match the betta. I would love a paradise fish but I'm sure it would make short work of my betta. Been thinking something along the lines of a single Apistogramma Nijsseni or Panduro. Not sure yet but I would love some suggestions. I like the name Bazooky for whatever this fish is.

I did want to add more pics but it keeps messing up so I'll try again some other time. Take it easy.

Cheers.
Congrats for becoming a father

Envoyé de mon SM-G935F en utilisant Tapatalk
 
Day 2

Went to my LFS today and bought 2 shrimp because I don't want my precious plants getting covered in algae.

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They were sold to me as Japonica shrimp which I'm hoping is another name for Amano shrimp.

Current total - £99.76

Hello! i believe their shrimp isn't amano / yamato shrimp which are hard working algae cleaning crew. They look more like ghost / glass shrimp.

They should help with algae but not as effective as a amano shrimp
 
And congratulation on another child! And a hitch hiker snail, which hopefully the ghost/glass shrimp will find and devour it.

Cheers man, the baby is coming home today. :) Actually it's not a hitch hiker, I introduced the MTS to help out with algae. To start with I added 6 adults and now have loads of babies dotted around. I'm not sure what the shrimp are either. Last night I took some really good pics of them tho, so when I get time I'll add them here and maybe you could ID them for me? Sticking with the baby theme, I got a right good pic of the female that's berried! So good to know i have one male and one female.
 
I had a real impulse to go to my LFS today. Came back with 4 Assassin snails and a new shrimp. Not bad with only £8 to spend.
 
I've started making my own wizards brew! This whole brain storm started a few weeks ago when I seriously considered getting into pressurized co2 for the first time after years of putting it off. When I finally made a thread on here about it, and did some research, I was astounded by how technical and scientific it all was. I need to properly learn the whole science behind it all before actually taking the jump and that's going to involve a bit of homework. So that's a bit off-putting, as well as how expensive it will be to buy all the kit needed and the refills... but maybe one day. But before then I'm going to try out an alternative to high tech. I like to think of it as an alchemy recipe for success. Not sure what this will be classed as, maybe mid tech? What I'm aiming for is fish and plant vitality and a really good ecosystem. So I did some research and came across quite a few suitable products for what I have in mind. I ended up buying 3 different things that I wasn't aware of before, so it'll be good to bring the spotlight on to them.

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The first is Seachem Flourish Advanced. It's a natural phytohormone that does all sorts for plant health, but what I mainly want it for is that it enhances mineral absorption. I'm dosing it every day for the first two weeks, like it says on the bottle to do, for root-growth, and then after that, I'll probably bring it down to once or twice a week.

Next up, I bought two products from a company called Envii. The first is their Aquarium Water Treatment. It's basically a de-chlorinator on steroids. It's got the whole vitamin B complex; helps fishes slime coat; and also stimulates filter bacteria. Lastly is the Aquarium Core Elements, which is interesting because it helps both plants and fish be heathy by containing 21 micro-elements, trace elements, and vitamins.

Along with these products I just bought, I'm using Dennerle's Nano Carbo Elixier BIO and Tropica Premium Fertilizer. I'll probably swap these out in the future and try something else, especially the carbo as it's intended for small tanks, so I end up needing to put 25 drops into my tank, which isn't the hardest thing to do but I would rather not have to.

Anyway that's the update.
Cheers.
 
I'm a donut. I did a water change last night and cleaned out the Asap. When I put it back together and back in the tank it didn't do anything. Puzzled after taking it apart a few times and trying again, I thought it was broke. So I put my DIY sponge filter in the tank and hooked everything up. Then once that's all done I notice the Asaps impeller is on top of the tank! Super big fail right there. So now since I've added the media from the Asap to the DIY sponge filter I need to add some media from my fancy goldfish external in order to use the Asap again. I think I'll still keep the DIY sponge filter in the tank for surface movement and the Asap for circulation in the bottom end of the tank.

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The plants have really taken off since day 1, looking a lot more fuller.
 
Just a quick pic update from my phone. I'll do a proper update soon and share everything new.
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I wouldn't have thought it but Aloofy took a few bites from the algae pellet.
 
That's like one of those "How many critters can you see in this pic?" competitions ;)

I see 5.

Did I win? :lol:

Lol yeah that's what I was going for. And you did win, you'll receive a prize of a kick ass update in the next few days. It's surprising how hard it is to be motivated to do good updates while looking after a newborn and toddler.
 
Dropping bombs in 3...

2...

1...

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Long over due update. There's way to much for me to update on since my last post so I'll keep it short and sweet. The plants are on fire, java fern is now in the tank, bought 10 otos and 5 are still with me. Also there's x2 Red lizard catfish and x10 adult Assassin snails, both ghost shrimp are fine, in fact the female is berried again. Aloofy the Betta is as chill as ever. Still rocking a DIY filter. My motivation is awful and has been for a good for months now, LIFE, that's all I'm saying. I'm really not feeling it anymore so I plan on selling everything pictured, even as a full set up plants, fish etc, if someone is that crazy. I'm very proud considering this is my first planted tank, not bad eh?
 
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