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(NO MORE) 2,000L High tech BEAST

Finally pulled my finger out and posted. The below is also in the "for sale" section of the forum.

If anyone is interested we currently have:

Fissidens Fontanus @ £7.99 for 8x8cm stainless steel mesh - item 323749625173

Stunning Echinodorus Bleheri Mother Sword Plants @ £9.99 a piece - item 323742329122

Stunning mature Ludwigia Glandulosa 5 x 25cm massive stems @ £7.99 - item 323733761054

Rotala Macrandra 10 x 25cm stems @ £3.99 - item 323742310029

Any issues, questions or offers. Give me a shout!

Thanks
Fil
 
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Hi All,

Hope you're having a productive Saturday!

I've noticed that my snail population has gone invisible.
The tank was full of them before I put in the 3 puffers. They must have hunted them to extinction, which might not surprise some of you, but it did surprise me given the size of the tank.

My RCS seem to be relatively fine. Not as numerous as they once were, but adult shrimp are never hard to spot.
I hardly ever see an adult shrimp darting for its life away from a columbian tetra! Lol

In general, quite happy with my current stocking, might get an extra 200 neons in the next few months.

Thanks
Fil
 
Filip Krupa said:
They must have hunted them to extinction, which might not surprise some of you, but it did surprise me given the size of the tank.
Click to expand...

The little psychopaths do it for fun, biting a chuck out off every snail on their path and leaf the rest behind. Give 1 puffer 10 snails a day, it kills 10 snails a day. That is purely for the kill and not for food. I once had a pea puffer male and a pond snail 5 times bigger than him. He kept biting chunks out of it every time ha passed the snail and it was out its shell, t took him less than a week to kill that snail. And after its dead he leaves it to rot.

That's what makes them so dirty, loads of roting snails left behind.. A possible point of consern to monitor if you have loads of snails and introduced puffers. 🙂 Than after all snails are killed switch to life food such as blood worms are eaten completely. And or breed snails in the garden, common pond snail is a very rapid breeder, they can live and breed in a bucket with water and leaf litter in the garden. Gives you a constant supply with dozens of baby snails in no time.. 🙂 Plus during the summer months the bucket will provide daphnia and misqiuto larvae.

Accidently i discovered an other very tasty puffer feast meal with running water in the garden. Relative fast flowing is best. For example an piece of PVC rain gutter, a bucket and a small waterpump. Put small silica pebbles in the gutter. Than constantly pump water from the bucket to the gutter let cascade water over the pebbles and it runs back into the same bucket. Than blackflies will come and put the eggs to the pebbles. After the larvae hatch they attach to the pebble and filter the food out of the cascading water. This will go on the complete summer. Than take out a pebble full with black fly larvae and throw in the tank. The puffer will go nuts on the black fly larvae. Than put the empty pebble back to be reseeded. And you still have loads of other pebbles for the next day or the day after that. :thumbup: A simple cheap and fun way to provide healthy life food all summer long...

Here you see such a pebble with blackfly larvae on it.. And my late psycho puffy claiming all for himself.
 
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zozo said:
The little psychopaths do it for fun, biting a chuck out off every snail on their path and leaf the rest behind. Give 1 puffer 10 snails a day, it kills 10 snails a day. That is purely for the kill and not for food. I once had a pea puffer male and a pond snail 5 times bigger than him. He kept biting chunks out of it every time ha passed the snail and it was out its shell, t took him less than a week to kill that snail. And after its dead he leaves it to rot.

That's what makes them so dirty, loads of roting snails left behind.. A possible point of consern to monitor if you have loads of snails and introduced puffers. 🙂 Than switch to life food such as blood worms are eaten completely. And or breed snails in the garden, common pond snail is a very rapid breeder, they can live and breed in a bucket with water and leaf litter in the garden. Gives you a constant supply with dozens of baby snails in no time.. 🙂 Plus during the summer months the bucket will provide daphnia and misqiuto larvae.

Accidently i discovered an other very tasty puffer feat meal with running water in the garden. Relative fast flowing is best. For example an piece of PVC rain gutter, a bucket and a small waterpump. Put small silica pebbles in the gutter. Than constantly pump water from the bucket to the gutter let cascade water over the pebbles and it runs back into the same bucket. Than blackflies will come and put the eggs to the pebbles. After the larvae hatch they attach to the pebble and filter the food out of the cascading water. This will go on the complete summer. Than take out a pebble full with black fly larvae and throw in the tank. The puffer will go nuts on the black fly larvae. Than put the empty pebble back to be reseeded. And you still have loads of other pebbles for the next day or the day after that. :thumbup: A simple cheap and fun way to provide healthy life food all summer long...

Here you see such a pebble with blackfly larvae on it.. And my late psycho puffy claiming all for himself.
Click to expand...


Wow, that's a great idea.

I guess they are little psychos 😀

Thanks zozo
 
Filip Krupa said:
I guess they are little psychos 😀
Click to expand...

They all have different personality, some are somewhat dosile but never realy peacefull. Others can be absolute psychopathic killers. That one in the video was such an absolute psycho, as big as a pea but the king of the tank, he claimed it entirely. You see him attack and bite the tail from that Pumila. He hated the Pumila's and one day he started hunting them off one by one. Picking one victim and hunt it around all day long relentless pue for the kill. And only the Pumila's.. I had to rehome all pumila's. Than he was peacefull for 2 weeks but got boored i guess then started hunting the much bigger Oreichtys Barbs and hunting them off one by one. Creating havoc and stress..

I got fed up with him and rehomed Psycho Puffy to another tank. From then on he was all alone.. Frustrated little bugger panicing and going nuts when i approached the tank to feed him. One day he commited suicide with jumping out.

Honnestly i never buy puffers again.. It's a role with the dice, you never know what you get..

That was all in 110 litre aqaurium.. Obviously to small to house such a tiny monster.. In your beast there probably is room enough not to get frustrated..
 
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Ruke said:
Hi I love ur tank and getting lots of ideas for 1200lt tank I have coming.
What hard scape rocks did u use and where did u purchase 200kg without breaking the bank ?
Thanks Luke
Click to expand...

Hey Luke,

Thanks! Glad you like it!
Do you have a journal going for the 1200L? Its going to be a challenge! 😀

I got the rocks from someone's back yard. Haha
Paid them 40 quid for them. Definately not inert (a tiny bit of fizzing with the vinegar test), but my water is very soft so the rocks are probably buffering it somewhat.
You hear horror stories of people putting in random rocks, just to whipe out the fish stock, so you could say I got lucky. Or people are just good at killing fish... we never know for sure what does them in.

Hope this helps

Thanks for reading
Fil
 
Hi all,
Ruke said:
I have purbeck stone I can use but it’s limestone so probably not the best idea as I have hard water.
Click to expand...
You can use it if you like it, it won't make your hard water any harder.

Limestone (calcium carbonate (CaCO3)) is only sparingly soluble, and that solubility is dependent upon the amount (400 ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere. Actually all hard limestone rocks don't make much difference to water chemistry, even when you have soft water.

If you have hard water it can't dissolve even soft (aragonite) limestone You can tell this from the huge shell beds that form in Lake Tanganyika (from <"Nerite snails in a high...">).

shell-dweller-3-jpg.jpg

When you have water that is already fully saturated with calcium (Ca++) ions and bicarbonate (HCO3-) ions, it can't dissolve any more limestone, unless you add some more acids. Acids are "H+ ion donors" and that H+ ion will dissolve a CO3 ion to form HCO3. This is how rain-water (acid because of the dissolved CO2) creates caves, but it takes a lot of rain-water over millennia.

The reaction when you add hydrochloric acid (HCl) to limestone is <"here">.

cheers Darrel
 
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