One month update:
Boasting "no melt" has its way of getting back at you. C. albida is losing a couple of leaves everyday. Hopefully this will end, this is one of those few crypts I have not have any luck with. At all.
So would like to get this going right. Not sure if my water is too hard for it?
Everything else is growing, or rooting, even Aponogetons seem to have picked up speed and is now almost as fast as Bolbitis and java fern 😅 C. petchii is putting out new, low dark leaves entirely different to the old ones. Same pattern for wendtii and willisii, the latter also has send out its first runners. Willisii also have put out new leaves with beautiful red/brown edges.
Have sorted Bucephs in the right hand side. Most were just stuffed in, and I decided to get some of them glued to pebbles and placed properly. Need to get the last 6-7 individual plants sorted on the left side, no biggie.
Sir Grey Rock has left the building, leaving room for a few more crew cut java ferns. Hooray.
On the whole start up: I was halfway through first week of the usual "low light, 50% daily wc first week, every 2nd day etc" when I read
@Geoffrey Rea's New Decadence journal (again). Aside from being riddled with glorious tanks and onions, he also had some notes on his start up method. Now I'm nowhere near Geoffs talent, but the general idea made sense, so I thought might as well shoot both feet off and do something similar. I was quite certain my CO2 were settled, so after that first week I upped the light considerably, and trucked on with daily waterchanges for 3 weeks (I think I missed 2 or 3 single days, and some wcs were only 30-40% due to time constraints, but yeah...). I also started dosing full EI at the end of the 3rd week.
In retrospect, aside from the constant waterchanges, this has probably been the most troublefree startup ever. No huge algaeblooms and no en masse melt of everything. Granted, filter was already mature and a lot of the plants already settled for submerged growth. I'm going to do something similar with the 45P, see how that goes.
Issues encountered:
Melt on crypts (was expected and was over quickly, except albida)
Minute amounts of brown diatoms getting munched overnight by various inverts
Some GDA on glass when ferts got upped and on Sir Grey Rock (who has left the building) in particular...
A leech
I have hydra, although not seen one for days
Have a berried amano, so infanticide is in progress. Seeing fewer and fewer green jades, I hope they are just hidey, but not too sure if I'm not losing them slowly. They do seem to be some of the less hardy cherry types.
Mr. Oto has moved in. When I started the dismantling of the 45P, I had the chance to nab him at the front glass without drama so he moved in. Doing fine, although he is not too keen on the amanos; they are larger than he is. Just checked, and Mr. Oto has been with me 18 months. He might get a friend or 2.
Speaking of this: Adding fish is probably at least a couple of weeks out, I want everything to grow in more. That has not stopped me from considering stocking. This far I'm considering:
1. A good sized group of Emperor tetra (N. palmeri). Completely smitten with these after reading
@CooKieS Lazarus journal. Sources say that would be shrimp holocaust, others that they don't bother shrimp. I'd really like them though, so if green jades do multiply... Hmmm...
2. A big bag of neons (P. axelrodii or innesi), maybe a handful of cories.
3. Some other tetras... or dwarf pencils
4. Outsiders are something like Pseudomugils or a bunch of Boraras, Hara jerdoni, or...
Really hot on tetras this time around though...
Looking to splurge immense amounts of dough on a new camera, but for now: still crappy phone pics