Karmicnull
Member
Superb idea. I'm on it.
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Episode 3: A new scape
- Thread starter Karmicnull
- Start date
Superb idea. I'm on it.
Crypt balansae doesn't look bad at all! I can see new leaf grew nicely, so no concerns. Mine would also lose a leaf or two every once in a while, despite being well established. But I think you might need a few more if you want to cover the filter piping 🙂
Pleco! <3 Sorry he evicted the plants, he was behaving himself around a Bolbitis heudelotii, maybe one to try in the future? It seems to root up much quicker than Anubias from what I noticed.
I really like the group of smaller crypts in front of the purple rock on the left, they look so lush! I think doing something similar in the right would look really good, just a suggestion 🙂
Pleco! <3 Sorry he evicted the plants, he was behaving himself around a Bolbitis heudelotii, maybe one to try in the future? It seems to root up much quicker than Anubias from what I noticed.
I really like the group of smaller crypts in front of the purple rock on the left, they look so lush! I think doing something similar in the right would look really good, just a suggestion 🙂
Karmicnull
Member
Actually I'm not worried about that - The whole family is enjoying his personality. We caught him on the floor of the tank scarfing up algae pellets the other night after lights out when he thought no one was looking. He looked really put out 😂.
Yeah they've worked well and have been quietly getting on with growing. I'm going to stick with the dwarf hairgrass on the right for now - as much as anything because I'm curious to see if it will actually spread. I probably need to give it a bit of a trim really.
Karmicnull
Member
Slightly off topic - but in the spirit of encouraging vicarious learning, here's one for you all: Don't take enthusiastic photos of your tank after midnight having spent the evening in a beer-tasting event. However much of a good idea it may seem at the time.
View attachment 50419588862_0ebad70e35_6k.jpg
Cheers,
Simon
View attachment 50419588862_0ebad70e35_6k.jpg
Cheers,
Simon
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Karmicnull
Member
Shrimp update
Another long gap between updates due to work and Christmas priorities. And once again quite a lot to cover off, so I'll break into a few posts. First off I saw two more berried shrimp. One of them seemed to have frondy stuff attached to her eggs. I went off and did some surreptitious surfing during the family film night, and started worrying that this was Green fungus (Ellobiopsidae). The internet is full of horror stories of breeders having 2000 shrimp die as this ripped through their tanks. By that time, the berried shrimp had completely vanished, so I slept on it and let my subconscious work out what to do. The next morning I leaped into action, went to Tesco and bought myself a bottle of coke and a large sandwich box. Or, as I thought of them, a shrimp trap and a quarantine tank. I drank the coke, cleaned and prepped the bottle and popped it into the tank baited with a tempting algae wafer and a few granules of TA aquaculture #2 blend, which everyone in the tank seems to like. Next morning I had caught six shrimp, including a berried female, but not the one who might have Ellobiopsidae.
The six shrimp then colonised my 12L Marina plant tank as an insurance policy. Meanwhile I was questioning myself - was this just a blend of inexperience and paranoia? Especially since I couldn't see a frondy-berried shrimp, and I spotted at least one further normally berried shrimp in the main tank. Maybe I was just imagining things.
Meanwhile the six colonists made themselves at home in the Marina. I'm trying to run that very low maintenance, with just a 50% WC every 2 weeks. It had a ton of brown algae, and a bit of green thread. Within 48 hours of the cherries moving in, all the brown algae was gone. but the green thread remained untouched. My main tank is also nurturing some green thread algae, closer to the surface where the light is brighter. Clearly I have nothing that eats it - an oversight on my part.
A couple of days later, looking at the Marina, to my horror I realised that it had suddenly developed a huge population of Hydras (Hydrae? Hydri?). What had I done? In an attempt to make her safe, I'd introduced the poor berried female into a new and suddenly hostile world which would be a death-trap for her babies. Also, where had the Hydras come from? I have none in my main tank - and have had no hydras in this tank until it was settled by the six shrimp.
I channelled Arthur Conan Doyle. "“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It is clearly the work of aliens.
Or, on further reflection maybe I do have Hydras in my main tank, but something has been eating them as fast as they grow.
I frantically combed the net for info on how to eradicate hydras without offing shrimp, and ended up paying expedited delivery for some Genchem 'No Planaria', which contains extract of Betel nut. Even expedited, with the Christmas rush, it took days to arrive. Meanwhile the eggs hatched, and the Marina suddenly had a small collection of astonishingly cute little shrimp who were substantially smaller than the by now fairly sizeable hydra. I spent several unhappy hours watching helplessly and desperately willing the shrimplets to navigate routes that dodged the many hydra on plants, the aquarium floor, water lettuce roots, etc. Eventually the No Planaria arrived, and the tank was dosed. To my slight surprise, it worked, and the hydra are now all dead. I have since seen a couple of baby shrimp, and the Marina now has another berried female, so life there is looking up.
Back, however, to the main tank.
A few days later I spotted the frondy shrimp again. It was definitely not berried. Completely forgetting that the last time I'd tried to catch something (broccoli) I'd ended up almost demolishing my hardscape, I grabbed my net and flailed it around the tank. The Frondy shrimp slunk off into the undergrowth and vanished out of sight.
My daughter, Léonie, had been watching. "Can I have a go," she said.
"Sure, but the shrimp has gone back into hiding. You won't be able to see it, let alone catch it."
Léonie took the net and peered round the side of the tank, through dense bushes of Pogostomon Helferi. "Oh there it is." She gently lowered the net into the heavily planted area at the back which is completely impenetrable and stared intently. "There you are - got it!".
I felt both inadequate and pleased simultaneously. Léonie does that to me a lot.
The shrimp has now gone into the shrimpy quarantine tank, been diagnosed with Cladogonium Ogishimae and is undergoing treatment. You can read more here.
Whilst all this drama was unfolding, the other berried shrimp quietly got on with life and hatched her eggs. The day before yesterday, half a dozen reasonably large offspring suddenly materialised and now spend their days hanging out in the Pogostomon.
Also, in the middle of all this, the Pearl Gouramis arrived. More about them later.
Cheers,
Simon
Another long gap between updates due to work and Christmas priorities. And once again quite a lot to cover off, so I'll break into a few posts. First off I saw two more berried shrimp. One of them seemed to have frondy stuff attached to her eggs. I went off and did some surreptitious surfing during the family film night, and started worrying that this was Green fungus (Ellobiopsidae). The internet is full of horror stories of breeders having 2000 shrimp die as this ripped through their tanks. By that time, the berried shrimp had completely vanished, so I slept on it and let my subconscious work out what to do. The next morning I leaped into action, went to Tesco and bought myself a bottle of coke and a large sandwich box. Or, as I thought of them, a shrimp trap and a quarantine tank. I drank the coke, cleaned and prepped the bottle and popped it into the tank baited with a tempting algae wafer and a few granules of TA aquaculture #2 blend, which everyone in the tank seems to like. Next morning I had caught six shrimp, including a berried female, but not the one who might have Ellobiopsidae.
The six shrimp then colonised my 12L Marina plant tank as an insurance policy. Meanwhile I was questioning myself - was this just a blend of inexperience and paranoia? Especially since I couldn't see a frondy-berried shrimp, and I spotted at least one further normally berried shrimp in the main tank. Maybe I was just imagining things.
Meanwhile the six colonists made themselves at home in the Marina. I'm trying to run that very low maintenance, with just a 50% WC every 2 weeks. It had a ton of brown algae, and a bit of green thread. Within 48 hours of the cherries moving in, all the brown algae was gone. but the green thread remained untouched. My main tank is also nurturing some green thread algae, closer to the surface where the light is brighter. Clearly I have nothing that eats it - an oversight on my part.
A couple of days later, looking at the Marina, to my horror I realised that it had suddenly developed a huge population of Hydras (Hydrae? Hydri?). What had I done? In an attempt to make her safe, I'd introduced the poor berried female into a new and suddenly hostile world which would be a death-trap for her babies. Also, where had the Hydras come from? I have none in my main tank - and have had no hydras in this tank until it was settled by the six shrimp.
I channelled Arthur Conan Doyle. "“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It is clearly the work of aliens.
Or, on further reflection maybe I do have Hydras in my main tank, but something has been eating them as fast as they grow.
I frantically combed the net for info on how to eradicate hydras without offing shrimp, and ended up paying expedited delivery for some Genchem 'No Planaria', which contains extract of Betel nut. Even expedited, with the Christmas rush, it took days to arrive. Meanwhile the eggs hatched, and the Marina suddenly had a small collection of astonishingly cute little shrimp who were substantially smaller than the by now fairly sizeable hydra. I spent several unhappy hours watching helplessly and desperately willing the shrimplets to navigate routes that dodged the many hydra on plants, the aquarium floor, water lettuce roots, etc. Eventually the No Planaria arrived, and the tank was dosed. To my slight surprise, it worked, and the hydra are now all dead. I have since seen a couple of baby shrimp, and the Marina now has another berried female, so life there is looking up.
Back, however, to the main tank.
A few days later I spotted the frondy shrimp again. It was definitely not berried. Completely forgetting that the last time I'd tried to catch something (broccoli) I'd ended up almost demolishing my hardscape, I grabbed my net and flailed it around the tank. The Frondy shrimp slunk off into the undergrowth and vanished out of sight.
My daughter, Léonie, had been watching. "Can I have a go," she said.
"Sure, but the shrimp has gone back into hiding. You won't be able to see it, let alone catch it."
Léonie took the net and peered round the side of the tank, through dense bushes of Pogostomon Helferi. "Oh there it is." She gently lowered the net into the heavily planted area at the back which is completely impenetrable and stared intently. "There you are - got it!".
I felt both inadequate and pleased simultaneously. Léonie does that to me a lot.
The shrimp has now gone into the shrimpy quarantine tank, been diagnosed with Cladogonium Ogishimae and is undergoing treatment. You can read more here.
Whilst all this drama was unfolding, the other berried shrimp quietly got on with life and hatched her eggs. The day before yesterday, half a dozen reasonably large offspring suddenly materialised and now spend their days hanging out in the Pogostomon.
Also, in the middle of all this, the Pearl Gouramis arrived. More about them later.
Cheers,
Simon
Karmicnull
Member
Plant update
============
I'll start with the Amazon Frogbit. Several months ago mid lockdown, when I was just a few weeks into my scaping journey, @ was kind enough to trek over to my house and leave a gift of some Limnobium Laevigatum on my doorstep. I added it to my tank and it motored off and started generating the long drifting roots that characterise it. I didn't pay too much attention to it after that for a while - it coexisted with my Pistea Stratiotes and collectively they were my duckweed index. Then one day I focused in on the floating community and discovered that the water lettuce had radically outcompeted the frogbit. There is only one frogbit left. I view this as viable seed stock for a sustainable frogbit community, so I have transferred it to my 12L Marina shrimp tank, given it pride of place under the light, and am keeping the bullying Pistea well away from it. So far this strategy has worked and it is growing.
On this note @Hufsa if you want to succeed in growing a floater go for water lettuce. I'm removing about a 10cm x 10cm patch from my tank every week. I would offer to mail you some but - notwithstanding the free algae, snails, hydra and possibly shrimp that would come with it - right now it would probably sit in a lorry in Kent for a month.
I've also pruned my first few stems and replanted them. Another activity that is far easier to read about than do. The first one was one of the H. siamensis 53b. The pruning side went ok, the replanting less so. I am building a long list of hints and tips for future novices, and top of that list will be 'how to replant a stem (which is effectively a long slippery floating pole with some leaves at the top) in an area owned by a Bristlenose. The first time it lasted less than 3 hours. The second time it managed right through 'til lights out and then was evicted overnight. The third time was about 5 hours even though it was right next to the heater in a really boring part of the tank that - surely? - no fish would ever want to visit. In a fit of pique I shoved it back in to the middle of the main throughfare that the Corys use to charge around the back of the tank. Where it has happily taken root and started growing. The Bristlenose wins again.
Most of the cut stems are out of sight behind the mountain range, but excitingly the base of H. Costata that I can see is now just starting to grow two new leaves. Give it a month or two and they'll be done. There's no hurrying a low tech tank.
I have also flexed my Algae muscles and various forms are thriving. I have thread algea everywhere, but especially in my moss. I have BBA and stagshorn in my Pogostomon in the highest flow part of the tank. I have Pogostomon in my Moss. I have moss in pretty much everything.
The green spot algae is looking very beautiful on a variety of different leaves. For some reason the Alternanthera Rosaefolia now looks as if it recently guested as an extra in a James Bond fight scene. Oh, and some water lettuce have escaped under the airline pontoon, got in front of the spray bar, surfed the current down to the bottom of the tank, and are now also stuck in the moss and pogostomon in a sort of drawn out multi-day suicide. My pogostomon is also full of baby shrimp.
I had a bit of a think about why I'd suddenly got all this algae and concluded that it was because I was overfeeding the Pearl Gourami (did I mention I now have Pearl Gourami?) since it is so much fun watching them eat. I've forked out for some measuring spoons that go down from 1/2 a teaspoon to 1/64 of a teaspoon, and I'm now adding to my obssessive log* how much I feed everything. I've also taken Darrel's advice that sunset/sunrise periods are times when Algae benefit from light but plants can't, and knocked them down to 5 minutes each. And I've gone for biological control of the thread algea by adding 4 Amano shrimp to the mix.
Still, the Bolivian Chain Sword seems to have risen above everything, and remains stoically identical to the way it was 5 months ago when I planted it.
Cheers,
Simon
*I'm way better at logging that I forgot to dose ferts than I am at actually dosing ferts.
============
I'll start with the Amazon Frogbit. Several months ago mid lockdown, when I was just a few weeks into my scaping journey, @ was kind enough to trek over to my house and leave a gift of some Limnobium Laevigatum on my doorstep. I added it to my tank and it motored off and started generating the long drifting roots that characterise it. I didn't pay too much attention to it after that for a while - it coexisted with my Pistea Stratiotes and collectively they were my duckweed index. Then one day I focused in on the floating community and discovered that the water lettuce had radically outcompeted the frogbit. There is only one frogbit left. I view this as viable seed stock for a sustainable frogbit community, so I have transferred it to my 12L Marina shrimp tank, given it pride of place under the light, and am keeping the bullying Pistea well away from it. So far this strategy has worked and it is growing.
On this note @Hufsa if you want to succeed in growing a floater go for water lettuce. I'm removing about a 10cm x 10cm patch from my tank every week. I would offer to mail you some but - notwithstanding the free algae, snails, hydra and possibly shrimp that would come with it - right now it would probably sit in a lorry in Kent for a month.
I've also pruned my first few stems and replanted them. Another activity that is far easier to read about than do. The first one was one of the H. siamensis 53b. The pruning side went ok, the replanting less so. I am building a long list of hints and tips for future novices, and top of that list will be 'how to replant a stem (which is effectively a long slippery floating pole with some leaves at the top) in an area owned by a Bristlenose. The first time it lasted less than 3 hours. The second time it managed right through 'til lights out and then was evicted overnight. The third time was about 5 hours even though it was right next to the heater in a really boring part of the tank that - surely? - no fish would ever want to visit. In a fit of pique I shoved it back in to the middle of the main throughfare that the Corys use to charge around the back of the tank. Where it has happily taken root and started growing. The Bristlenose wins again.
Most of the cut stems are out of sight behind the mountain range, but excitingly the base of H. Costata that I can see is now just starting to grow two new leaves. Give it a month or two and they'll be done. There's no hurrying a low tech tank.
I have also flexed my Algae muscles and various forms are thriving. I have thread algea everywhere, but especially in my moss. I have BBA and stagshorn in my Pogostomon in the highest flow part of the tank. I have Pogostomon in my Moss. I have moss in pretty much everything.
The green spot algae is looking very beautiful on a variety of different leaves. For some reason the Alternanthera Rosaefolia now looks as if it recently guested as an extra in a James Bond fight scene. Oh, and some water lettuce have escaped under the airline pontoon, got in front of the spray bar, surfed the current down to the bottom of the tank, and are now also stuck in the moss and pogostomon in a sort of drawn out multi-day suicide. My pogostomon is also full of baby shrimp.
I had a bit of a think about why I'd suddenly got all this algae and concluded that it was because I was overfeeding the Pearl Gourami (did I mention I now have Pearl Gourami?) since it is so much fun watching them eat. I've forked out for some measuring spoons that go down from 1/2 a teaspoon to 1/64 of a teaspoon, and I'm now adding to my obssessive log* how much I feed everything. I've also taken Darrel's advice that sunset/sunrise periods are times when Algae benefit from light but plants can't, and knocked them down to 5 minutes each. And I've gone for biological control of the thread algea by adding 4 Amano shrimp to the mix.
Still, the Bolivian Chain Sword seems to have risen above everything, and remains stoically identical to the way it was 5 months ago when I planted it.
Cheers,
Simon
*I'm way better at logging that I forgot to dose ferts than I am at actually dosing ferts.
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Hi
I'm sorry to say that the H Pinnatifida and some other plants are destined for the big compost heap in the sky.....some plants really do need Co2 or they are destined to fail and cause a organic mess and that affects water quality!
Using some species of substrate plants as epiphytes is doable but once again they do need Co2 in the water column!
hoggie
I'm sorry to say that the H Pinnatifida and some other plants are destined for the big compost heap in the sky.....some plants really do need Co2 or they are destined to fail and cause a organic mess and that affects water quality!
Using some species of substrate plants as epiphytes is doable but once again they do need Co2 in the water column!
hoggie
Karmicnull
Member
Yeah, you may be right. I'm finding it's far from black and white, though. Statistically I've had a higher success rate with 'easy' plants, and a lower one with 'medium' plants, but there's definitely a distribution. I have killed off my Hottonia Palustris and Ludwigia Palustris. Both nominally 'easy', plants. I've also killed off a Crypt Crispatula, which should have been perfect for low-tech, low-light hard water, but my second attempt is doing ok. At the opposite end of the spectrum, one of my most successful plants is Alternanthera Reineckii (rated 'medium'), despite PH, Hardness, Lighting and CO2 all being nominally wrong. So the fact that my Pinnatifida has lasted for four months and actually grown some new leaves is, on balance, a success, and I am rooting for it.
[The boring stats bit: I have 19 'easy' plant varieties of which 73% (14) are doing well, 5% (1) are hanging in there and 21% (4) are dead or on their way out. This compares with 6 'medium' varieties of which 50% (3) are doing well, 33% (2) are hanging in there and 17% (1 - the Pinnatifida) is probably on its way out.]
Cheers,
Simon
GreenNeedle
Member
This journal has been (to date) a thoroughly entertaining read and a joy to see the enthusiasm of someone not trying to go all guns blazing from the get go. Which can be quite uninteresting both when it fails spectacularly or it succeeds immediately and a new "star" is born.
Love the evolution of your tank, your knowledge and the expansion of your knowledge through the journal and more importantly that you are enjoying the journey, moving along at a pace that lets you enjoy what you have rather than what you could have and not focusing on a showpiece.
In terms of the scape I like the look of the scape from the start to finish anyway and it is nice to see a non CO2 setup, complete with problems and problem solving. Keep going. It really is the way to go because you then learn so much on the way.
🥇⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Love the evolution of your tank, your knowledge and the expansion of your knowledge through the journal and more importantly that you are enjoying the journey, moving along at a pace that lets you enjoy what you have rather than what you could have and not focusing on a showpiece.
In terms of the scape I like the look of the scape from the start to finish anyway and it is nice to see a non CO2 setup, complete with problems and problem solving. Keep going. It really is the way to go because you then learn so much on the way.
🥇⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Big G
Member
Just to play strawman for a moment but I have H. Pinnatifida in my one 'always low energy' tank and a second in my 'used to be high energy- now low energy' tank. Ok, it's no Triffid but does ok. The frond in the original tank in fact threw off a 'baby' which is now doing ok if having a protracted infancy. What they all do have going for them in this less-than-ideal tank is quite a good amount of PAR due to their location & proximity to the light source- so making the inverse square law favour them? Just a theory.
As an aside
A. Yes, super-hots should be accorded the respect of the wrong end an RPG. Made the fundamental error of seed saving from a Carolina Reaper/Orange Habanero hybrid (unplanned) without using gloves and/or sufficient care.
Several hours later I had the temerity to scratch my eyelid. The next hour was....emotional. The subsequent 4 were unpleasant. The next 24 or so were uncomfortable.
B. Do you have the ability to manually adjust f stop and shutter speed on your camera? Change lenses? Happy to offer a few simple tricks to add depth but bottom line - (in relation to a standard 50mm lense in a full-frame 35mm SLR or equivilant);
The further you move towards telephoto from 50mm i.e., say 150mm, the more flattening or sense of compression you'll feel between visual elements at different distances in an image. The reverse is true.
A shallower depth of field will compliment a less compressed feel but if overdone, comes at the expense of depth of focus.
This can be previewed and compensated for by the 1/3rd, 2/3rd rule of focal depth at given plane.
In practice - using a 35mm (length not format) lense, focussed at about 2/3rds into the front to back(depth of the tank) and shot on f4 or f5.6 and placed on a tripod to counter shutter-shake should give you what you want. Turning down/up the intensity of your light will give you the f stop/shutterspeed combo you want (about 100th of a second).
I'm not a pro but used work in the industry. Pro's here might say I'm full of merdè. Caveat emptor.
C. This journal is a complete hoot to read and chimes on many levels. Bravo
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Attachments
Yea, not a problem were all here to expand our aquatic plant keeping knowledge In all different water parameters😉
I have tried on a number occasions to grow H P in hard water just doesn't like it eventually for me.....withers away and goes in the compost bin!
Ive got some on order from our 👑King of Pinnatifida growing Konrad.....I will give it another attempt😤
hoggie
Karmicnull
Member
You have no idea! Father Christmas arrived with a 40cm Optiwhite cube for the room that acts as my home office, and I have now planned out my Aquascaping budget spend well into 2022. February will be the light, March, the hardscape, April the filter, and so on. You would have thought that having the cube sitting there (currently acting as a very expensive stand for my
Karmicnull
Member
I think this is the nub of my problem. I tend to shoot at user defined shutterspeed and f stop, with ISO varying as the automatic parameter- but from experience doing other low-light photography I don't go above ISO 64000 as the resolution makes it not worth it. At the moment even with my tank light at 100% I'm stuck at f4, 1/50th of a second - which is well into blurry fish territory. I do a fair bit of flower macro photography (example here). The flowers don't see you coming and then spend the time deliberately avoiding your focal point and laughing.
Big G
Member
Interesting. The only things I can suggest off the top of my head is to turn the pump/filters off, use a tripod and bracket on shutter priority, dial up the quality and hope for the fish to have a senior moment on-plane.
Belt and braces? - HDR if you've got it.
Is there a way of feathering in another stop or two with a second diffuse point source like a lamp with a pearlescent bulb? A grow lamp perhaps? Something that's not too directional.
Get the angles right and you'll kill and internal spectral reflections. Maybe throw on a moderate polariser if its proving difficult.
If the kelvin of this second source is different from your tank light you should get some amazing, punchy saturation and colour balance/palettes too.
I might also check out something like dpreview and take a look at your lenses curves for abberation. Some are not quite 'cooking' where you expect them to be in my experience.
Guess this is how I might approach it. Really surprised your getting back f4 at 1/50th. At such a high ISO too. Maybe the lights are deceptively low. You're getting that ballpark back off spot, zone and matrix?
I daresay I haven't brought a thing to the table you haven't already tried or already know well.
I like to picture a little community of fellow aquascapers round the world all having a little knowing chuckle over this journal and a cup of tea. Certainly allows me pleasantly step out of what occasionally feels like something from The Purge franchise for a moment.🙂
Peace
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Karmicnull
Member
Oh I wouldn't say that at all - you are many f-stops ahead of me in terms of photography depth-of-knowledge!
I'm going to use your post above as a reference point for ongoing experimentation. In the first instance I've cottoned on to your 'diffuse light source' or, translated into the vernacular 'make it brighter you plonker'. I think the key here is 'diffuse'. I've been religiously closing all my curtains to stop reflections off the glass. But if the light source is in the right place, that problem should go away. Also I'm wondering if a polarizing filter would help with glass reflections?
Anyhow I did a quick experiment and went upstairs to the Marina, with it's cheap and cheerful Chinese LED lighting from Ebay, and that was way brighter (F7, ISO 4K, 1/60). So my Nicrew is definitely underpowered even at full strength.
So I'm going to play around with extra ambient lighting and see where I get to. I will also at some point play around with proper tripod-etc shots - inc. HDR - but that involves a degree of organisation that usually escapes me.
On the plus side - as these photos show - I've cracked the shrimp-rejecting-my-offerings problem! It turns out all you have to do is starve them! I'd got so used to the shrimp just magically sustaining themselves that it only belatedly occurred to me that with at least half a dozen offspring and no handy pooping fish, they might need some nutrient. so I dipped into my near infinite supply of frozen marrow cubes, more out of hope than expectation, and to my utter astonishment found that they had turned into shrimp magnets - with the first diner arriving in less than five seconds.
This is the marrow after about 30 seconds. I think they were hungry.
That was a few days ago - at the moment they are thoroughly enjoying some sweet potato, and the - it turns out around 30 or so - babies in the main tank downstairs are all feasting on nettle. I feel I have justified the huge bag in the freezer and the last four months of flak! I also have a tentative plan to use the quantity of shrimp on the marrow in the main tank as an overfeeding index. If there are none, I'm almost certainly overfeeding. If I can't see the cube for jostling red bodies, my fish have probably already expired from starvation.
Cheers,
Simon
Karmicnull
Member
Fish update
Did I mention that I now have Pearl Gourami? The past few weeks have been a fascinating demonstration of Pavlovian conditioning. When they first arrived, they sprinted from their plastic bag as soon as acclimatisation was over and vanished behind the mountain range. I didn't see them again for a long, long time.
Blaise joined me the day after they arrived, when I was tankwatching.
"Where are they?" he asked.
"You only get to see them through a telescope. Any time something big approaches the tank they're like 'Right - I'm out of here' and they don't hang around to see whether the big thing is friendly or dangerous,"
"Actually that's pretty sensible. Extras in action movies could learn a thing or two from Pearl Gouramis."
Which, whilst true, wasn't great for the passing viewer. Thankfully, however, familiarity does a great job of overriding sensible. Over the next couple of weeks, the Gouramis gradually realised that the looming shape and consequent clattering and banging in the cabinet were a precursor to food. When they relaxed a bit and hid less, nothing bad happened. As an added incentive they weren't getting the Cherry Barbs' seconds. Now the situation has reversed to the point where Léonie dipped her finger in the tank and it was mobbed by speculative Gouramis on the off chance that it was a particularly large and pink bloodworm.
I had planned to have three (one male, two female), but the LFS had four, and I felt guilty leaving one behind, so I took all three females. According to the tank builder at aqadvisor.com that puts me at 101% capacity, so the tank is now offically full.
Now they have relaxed, they have started to exhibit their natural behaviour. I think it's a good thing to have 3 females, as the male thinks he is a warthog. More specfically, he thinks he's the grumpy warthog who is the lead character in 'Sniff Snuff Snap' by Lynley Dodd. For those of you who don't frequent the same highbrow literary heights that I do, the grumpy warthog spends the day chasing other animals away from the waterhole, only to have them sneak a quick drink whilst his back is turned. When he finally stops chasing them and returns to the waterhole for a drink, all the water is gone. And so it is with the male Gourami. As far as I can tell, his mission in life is to chase all the others out of the top part of the tank. And this becomes twice as important when food arrives. The females won when the intelligence genes were handed out: they tag team, so one leads him on a merry dance whilst the other two eat their fill. When he finally gets back to the food, another will pick up the baton and allow herself to be chased around the tank, and so on. They only stop when all the food is gone. He hasn't starved to death yet, so there must be some point at which he stops chasing and starts eating, but I haven't spotted it yet.
Some photos from the 30 mins or so when the tank catches the winter morning sun.
Cheers,
Simon
Did I mention that I now have Pearl Gourami? The past few weeks have been a fascinating demonstration of Pavlovian conditioning. When they first arrived, they sprinted from their plastic bag as soon as acclimatisation was over and vanished behind the mountain range. I didn't see them again for a long, long time.
Blaise joined me the day after they arrived, when I was tankwatching.
"Where are they?" he asked.
"You only get to see them through a telescope. Any time something big approaches the tank they're like 'Right - I'm out of here' and they don't hang around to see whether the big thing is friendly or dangerous,"
"Actually that's pretty sensible. Extras in action movies could learn a thing or two from Pearl Gouramis."
Which, whilst true, wasn't great for the passing viewer. Thankfully, however, familiarity does a great job of overriding sensible. Over the next couple of weeks, the Gouramis gradually realised that the looming shape and consequent clattering and banging in the cabinet were a precursor to food. When they relaxed a bit and hid less, nothing bad happened. As an added incentive they weren't getting the Cherry Barbs' seconds. Now the situation has reversed to the point where Léonie dipped her finger in the tank and it was mobbed by speculative Gouramis on the off chance that it was a particularly large and pink bloodworm.
I had planned to have three (one male, two female), but the LFS had four, and I felt guilty leaving one behind, so I took all three females. According to the tank builder at aqadvisor.com that puts me at 101% capacity, so the tank is now offically full.
Now they have relaxed, they have started to exhibit their natural behaviour. I think it's a good thing to have 3 females, as the male thinks he is a warthog. More specfically, he thinks he's the grumpy warthog who is the lead character in 'Sniff Snuff Snap' by Lynley Dodd. For those of you who don't frequent the same highbrow literary heights that I do, the grumpy warthog spends the day chasing other animals away from the waterhole, only to have them sneak a quick drink whilst his back is turned. When he finally stops chasing them and returns to the waterhole for a drink, all the water is gone. And so it is with the male Gourami. As far as I can tell, his mission in life is to chase all the others out of the top part of the tank. And this becomes twice as important when food arrives. The females won when the intelligence genes were handed out: they tag team, so one leads him on a merry dance whilst the other two eat their fill. When he finally gets back to the food, another will pick up the baton and allow herself to be chased around the tank, and so on. They only stop when all the food is gone. He hasn't starved to death yet, so there must be some point at which he stops chasing and starts eating, but I haven't spotted it yet.
Some photos from the 30 mins or so when the tank catches the winter morning sun.
Cheers,
Simon
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mort
Member
- Joined
- 15 Nov 2015
- Messages
- 2,381
Love pearl gourami, definitely a shy fish to begin with but once settled they really colour up. There was a good article about them in last month's practical fishkeeping where they were kept as a large group in a biotope tank, the males in particular looked stunning.
Karmicnull
Member
Last weekend, I decided, was time to tame the Pogostomonster. I've spent the last 6 months reading tales of people with high tech tanks having to remove or replant 50% of their biomass whilst my lot of plants trundled along not really getting the hang of the whole growing thing. Until one day I suddenly realised I could no longer see my mountains. The Pogostomonster was sprawled all over them like a squat frondy beast from an H.P. Lovecraft novel. So I dedicated last Sunday afternoon to a leisurely session of pruning and rehoming, accompanied by plentiful quantities of Shipyard IPA. I took most of the Pogostomon out, and then with the aid of my trusty reel of black cotton, resettled it into - I think - a more aesthetically appealing arrangement. I have discovered that I have a LOT of Pogostomon.
I also relocated my Java moss and my Spiky moss to be lower in the tank - my working theory is they don't need as much light, so if they're lower, they'll also get less thread algae. One week on that seems to be working, ish. When I cut back the spiky moss I discovered to my surprise that my Hydrocotyle tripartita was actually doing ok - if not growing as aggressively as some of its neighbours. Well, not growing at all to be honest. I've moved all the stuff around it so it can be better lit. Hopefully that will help.
Here's a before and after:
Cheers,
Simon
I also relocated my Java moss and my Spiky moss to be lower in the tank - my working theory is they don't need as much light, so if they're lower, they'll also get less thread algae. One week on that seems to be working, ish. When I cut back the spiky moss I discovered to my surprise that my Hydrocotyle tripartita was actually doing ok - if not growing as aggressively as some of its neighbours. Well, not growing at all to be honest. I've moved all the stuff around it so it can be better lit. Hopefully that will help.
Here's a before and after:
Yeah mine have definitely done that. They are absolutely stunning now!
Cheers,
Simon
mort
Member
- Joined
- 15 Nov 2015
- Messages
- 2,381
They will continue to improve as well Simon. Have a look at the adult pair here https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/trichopodus-leerii/ and I've seen more red/orange in some mature males before.
I'm guessing yours are still small going by the fact your snail in the first update pic looks about the same length. They will continue to improve over the next 18 months or so. They really are a lovely underrated fish.
I'm guessing yours are still small going by the fact your snail in the first update pic looks about the same length. They will continue to improve over the next 18 months or so. They really are a lovely underrated fish.
