Jake's fix for the worst withdrawal symptoms

[Jake101]

Moving to an another country and going back to a student lifestyle, meaning changing apartments frequently and living on a student's budget, made me to empty my aquariums. I am currently looking for a long-term solution for apartment since I got back to labor force. Hopefully I soon have a place to set up my other tanks.

Nevertheless, a zebra and its stripes etc, so I lost the last pieces of my self-control about 2 months ago. Now there is a 30 litres of water in Dennerle nano on my desk. Since I am not a much of a scaper, I went along a quite traditional style.

It has a second-hand Dennerle SkimFilter, Aquael Easy Heater 25 W, Dennerle Daylight nano 11 W (6000 K) light and an Eheim air pump.

Water is rather soft (GH ≈ 5 dH) and EC is around 250 uS/cm. I use DIY fertilizers, since I can get chemicals and distilled water from work. I use low-tech weekly EI style dosing. At the beginning of the weekly cycle I aim for 15 ppm NO3, 1 ppm PO4 and 10 ppm K, 0.5 ppm Fe and 8 ppm Mg and 25 ppm Ca. Lights are on 8 h per day. I add 3 drops of Easycarbo on a daily basis.

Since I am not used to nano scale tanks, I selected easy species for plants. Rotala rotundifolia, egeria densa, hygrophila polysperm, anubias barteri 'nana', cryptocorune parva, java moss and moss ball were my choices. Otherwise the plants are doing fine, but some stems of egeria dense melt their leaves easily. Some have had same experiences with Excel and Easycarbo, but I am not sure whether 3 drops are enough to cause it.

Currently there lives 8 boraras naevus and 6 caridina cantonensis sp. crystal red shrimps. Another 6 neocaridina heteropoda var. red are coming during the weekend. Then the livestock is completed. I feed my rasboras with basic flakes and some freezed cyclops. The shrimps eat spirulina crumbs and some boiled vegetables.

Sorry about the quality of the picture. Even less of a photographer than a scaper .

 

[tim]

Nice jake, not sure you need the easycarbo though for those plants, certainly will melt egria, cladophora ball and moss can react badly ime too, some floating plants and run it fully low tech would be my approach.

 

[Jake101]

Thanks for the comment. Do you mean with "fully low tech" that no Easycarbo, fertz once in a week or fortnight with a skip once in two months or so, gravel vacuuming rarely and water changes only when there is a special need (rescaping etc.)?

 

[tim]

Thanks for the comment. Do you mean with "fully low tech" that no Easycarbo, fertz once in a week or fortnight with a skip once in two months or so, gravel vacuuming rarely and water changes only when there is a special need (rescaping etc.)?

Hi jake, by low tech I meant no carbon and lower intensity lighting, I dose ferts, water change at least once a week on both of my low tech tanks.

 

[Jake101]

Thanks, I'll try that. Any suggestions for the floating plant? I would like to try something else than lemna minor (I think the name 'common duckweed' is used often as a commercial name).

 

[Jake101]

I got today couple of floating plants for testing how they like my tank. One limnobium laevigatum (frogbit) and some phyllanthus fluitans (red root floater) are on the surface now. They seem to have found their places in the current. I try to keep the actual (not only theoretical) water circulation over 5 times / hour, so if they are really sensitive for a small spin, then it might be a problem for their success.

 

[Jake101]

Seems that I need to give my rasboras to someone with a bigger tank, since I do have only this one at the moment. When the males have their territorial disputes every now and then, it is a rough scene. Too rough, I think there is not just enough room for them in those times and I do not feel good about keeping them like this. Luckily they leave at least shrimps alone.

I decided to take white pearls instead of cherry shrimps, so I got 10 snowballs. In the bag was a piece of a stem plant came with, which I haven't recognised yet. Decided to put the stem in the tank and see if it starts to grow.

Hygrophila polysperm seems to suffer potassium deficiency. Brown spots in old leaves with yellow edges. I am trying to find potassium sulphate somewhere. Not too easy here, because I do not want to buy 25 kilograms from agrimarket.

 

[Jake101]

Reading the journals and seeing all these amazing scapes did the trick. I got to take a high-tech scape as my next project. Nevertheless, not before we move to a new apartment in few months. Ok, I _almost_ believe myself when reading that sentence over and over again.

My aquarium hobby has not been that much about the plants over the two decades. Plants were mainly a nice thing in tank. I read some info about the nutrients etc etc, but never really got in to plants. But a half year ago I picked my old high school biology notes while visiting my dad's house. I spent about two hours that evening with my old notes and school books reading about plant biology. I was hooked. The last months I have been reading and reading whenever I have some free time.

Somehow one tank just doesn't feel enough, even though one aquarium is definitely a never-ending source for learning. But maybe I can enhance that learning having two different types of planted tanks... or three...

 

[Jake101]

Rasboras didn't settle down, so I decided to give them away. Now they are in a bigger tank as a part of a larger shoal.

Otherwise I am happy with this basic setup and outlook, but egeria is not thriving as good as other plants. After I stopped using liquid carbon egeria has been better, but only two stems are growing good. It seems that when they reach half of the aquarium height they start growing well, but shorter stems grow extreme slowly. Frogbit is spreading really fast. After I started adding KSO4 for potassium, hygrophila is producing healthy looking leaves instead of twisted and wrinkly.

Shrimps are ok as inhabitants, but I do not find them as interesting as fishes. Maybe I have not yet got into the shrimps properly, but when I had rasboras I enjoyed more watching them. So the next step is to find a suitable fish species. I haven't had any killifish earlier, but after reading a bit more about them I got interested. Apparently putting them in the same tank with shrimps is not a good idea, for the shrimps, so they are not an easy option here.

This tank runs quite smoothly at the moment, so 30 % water changes twice a week is about all I need to do. This in naturally good.

 

[Jake101]

Lately been trying different plants in the tank. Basically the tank is now just a test site for plants. I added some pogostemon helferi, staurogyne repens, riccia fluitans and taxiphyllum sp. "peacock". I also got rid of egeria densa, since it never really adapted to my tank for some reason. I added EasyCarbo in the tank earlier and egeria didn't like it at all. After stopping EasyCarbo it seemed to recover, but suddenly it quitted trying and melted away. I didn't change any routines in the tank in several weeks before it died, so at the moment it is a mystery what happened.

I also hired few Amanos as janitors. They seem to be doing fine. The largest Amano has amazing sense (probably smell) of food. Whenever I drop a small piece of spirulina flake into the water, it bulldozes to the scene under five seconds. Two anentome helena snails are also in the ranks keeping their smaller relatives in decent numbers.

A small amount of couple different algae are announcing their presence in the aquarium. Nothing disturbing yet, but again, I haven't changed anything knowingly. One possible explanation is the change in the amount of light here in Stockholm in last few months. Since I started the aquarium in February, the length of the daylight time has increased from 8 hours to 18 hours. Even if the aquarium is in the furthest corner of the living room, it naturally gets more light now. This is not an unknown phenomenon here in the nordic countries, afaik. I have heard many aquarist saying the same thing. Late spring and early summer is the more common time to get a bit more algae in your aquarium than other times of the year. I might build a cardboard cover, which I remove before heading to work and put back as soon as the tank's lights turn off in the evening.

 

[Jake101]

The day of the small setbacks. After buying an used RO unit, I ordered a new membrane to it. It has been on the shelf for a month, since the 2.5 year old membrane worked for a while. Today I was taking the new membrane from the container bag, when I noticed that there is a cut. I do not know whether I made it accidentally or if it was there when I got it. Now I am hoping the new one is not dried. There were some drops of containing solutions left in the bag, so if I am lucky...

Nevertheless, one should always check the purchased product carefully. These are expensive reminders.

Also, I noticed, while moving my filter and connecting longer hoses, that one of the plastic locking nuts in my filter has cracked completely. The hose seems to be connected tightly at the moment, but hunt for a spare part starts.

 

[Jake101]

Time to change the apartment, finally.

We'll get the keys to our permanent apartment in August and we need to leave this one now, so temporary apartment waits on Monday. Since the apartment situation is not the best in Stockholm, we were forced to take one without official rental agreement and tenant's rights. So the landlord's message was clear - No aquariums. We really didn't have any other decent choices, so my nano is spending the summer in my friends apartment.

The good thing is that we are away 3 weeks during the July, so there now there is a natural caretaker for my tank.

I will also change the substrate during the process. I have now 2 layers, Dennerle Nano Deposit and Sulawesi Black. I am not a big fan of trying to separate two layers in order to use them again, so I'll put the ECS (Easy Care Substrate) clay substrate. I can use the same substrate easily after the second moving.

Also, the permanent apartment allows me to get the larger tank(s). I'll probably get an open top low-tech dirt tank (approx. 120-150 l) as a main tank and smaller (54 l) high-tech optiwhite tank in the "rack" I am planning. Good days coming, hopefully.

 

[Jake101]

We finally got the new and permanent apartment and moved our stuff in. Nano is now next to the kitchen sink, which happens to be also a perfect place regarding water changes etc. The tank is doing now ok, after getting to somewhat questionable condition with the summer caretaker. Cryptos are slowly bouncing back, but rotalas and staurogynes went to the biowaste bin. I found a unknown stem plant from IKEA. It is growing fine and replaced rotalas. I was thinking to get some sagittaria subulata on the mid-ground between cryptos and unknown stems.

As time goes the plans change. I got a shallow tank as planned, but there was luckily room for a bit bigger tank, so now my new 220 l tank is waiting to get some water. It will be a South-American clearwater stream for sterba's corys. A bit unimaginative choice, but these corys have been my favourite a long time, so I couldn't (and didn't want to) help myself in this matter.

This low-tech tank has 3 TMC mini led 400 tiles above it (thanks to UKAPS's psantos) and JBL e1501 as an external filter. I probably need to get a circulation pump or a smaller filter with a spray bar to the other end of the tank, close to the substrate, to create a nice circulation.

The stand also have a space for 60x40x35 tank, which hopefully will see a high-tech scape tank in the coming years.