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Parva Beach - Where Corydoras Holiday

Well I enjoyed a pleasant Saturday afternoon tweaking this scape. Some zen time was spent picking loose white bits of gravel out of the aqauasoil one by one with my prized ADA long pincettes. Next up was dealing with the birds nest of riccia and rather than discarding it as I'd first planned I decided instead to superglue it the pebbles at the front of the scape and create carpet. I rather like the effect and the colour contrasts but I'm not convinced that it's a long solution due to lack of light down front there.
It will probably get a bit thread bare and leggy but we'll see... I'm using the red rotala to shade the ferns on the wood but I'm sure it would look better trimmed to a more bush like design. All in good time...

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Had to try an arty B&W version...

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Not forgetting some of the crew...

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And...

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tim said:
Can't beat a nice riccia carpet, interested to see how it does superglued not seen that method used for riccia before, nice images too Chris.
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Thanks, yes glueing riccia is new for me also so we'll see how it goes. I'm thinking that if I trim it pretty low so that the light continues to get in then the glued part may stay put for some time. However I suspect I may well have to swap it out with some kind of moss in due course...
 
Well it's been some time since an update...

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At this time of year with long daylight hours it becomes very hard for me to take a photo without lots of reflections from the windows opposite the tank showing up. The above is on of few angles that work but doesn't really do the tank justice. Anyway as you can see it's a bit of a jungle but there's plenty of luxuriant growth and little in the way of algae issues beyond a bit of BBA on the some of the older anubia leaves and parva leaves.

Fert wise I've made up a batch of James' planted tank All In One Solution and put it an old ADA dosing bottle. One pump a day seems to do the trick.. plus a little extra Fe occasionally.

The dense planting has given the tank a rather sleepy feel with much less water movement and the water has developed a very slight glow or milkiness to it which is something I've had before and also something Dennerle used to say was an indication of a healthy well established system....

It's certainly going to be time for a trim v soon. I am plotting a new scape in the next couple of months though when I should have more time on my hands..

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Great stuff. Very peaceful. What's the plants right and middle right at the back?
 
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Well then...

This is following a generous trim yesterday. All is growing well and BBA has gone from everywhere! I didn't have a big BBA issue but it was always tending to grow on the edges of the ferns and anubias as well as in the parva. What have I changed?

Ferts, I was dosing pinches of KNO3 and adding traces or Fe here and there primarily according to how pale or yellow the plants looked. Some weeks back I switched to James's Planted Tank All In One solution and again dosing that according to the look of the plants which is currently working out at around 3ml a day.

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The other thing that I mentioned is a slight milkiness to the water well this developed further into a full blown bacterial bloom by about 20 mins after a water change

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Interesting! This was happening regardless of whether I'd done any trimming or tank disturbance or not and initially took around 12 hours to clear back to the originally slightly milky look. So I added some drops of ADA Green Bacter, as I happened to have a bottle sitting around doing nothing, and went off to read up on bacterial blooms.

The Green Bacter certainly sped up the clearing process. It seems strange that my nice filtered Cornish tap water should be adding organics for the bacteria to get all excited about but who knows, so I installed a fresh high quality filter cartridge into the under sink unit and also added Prime to my water change water and rinsed the first pre-filter sponge in my sump, and put a carbon pad and a new fine sponge in the final output section and kept adding Green Bacter daily. Still got the initial bloom but it then cleared within 3 hours.

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My somewhat excessive filter post cleaning!

Now as everything seemed so happy in the tank and with no algae issues I've been a little loathe to do much else in case I inadvertently upset the balance but heck nothing ventured nothing gained and as I haven't actually cleaned all the levels in my filter since it was built over a year ago it might be time for some work!

So yesterday I used my water change water to rinse out everything except the final output layers of foam, carbon and floss. Fresh Prime treated water was then added and I then had the merest of blooms that quickly cleared to leave the water looking more sparkly than it has for some time. Hopefully the balanced growth continues.

Moral of the story...rinse your filter media more often than annually!!

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Ok so I've had a lazy summer aquarium wise and just let things grow in mostly... with this scape the effect was been quite soothing with he dense grow apparently contributing to a pretty complete absence of my longtime host BBA

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Finally however something had to be done and a minor trim turned into a massive removal of mostly mosses and old growth stem plants. Evidently that massive change in plant biomass caused a shock to the aquarium balance and I got a mega outbreak of BBA that I don't have a photos to show the full magnitude of but anyway I decided to leave it largely be and see what happens. My theory being that the algae had turned up for a reason and that that reason may not necessarily be "bad" it could just be that it had a job to do and that with patience the tank should return to balance with minimal algae... This approach seems to be working because the BBA is in decline with fresh new growth being far less susceptible

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It's not a good photo but you can clearly see the BBA down in the Parva and Micranthemum

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New growth

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When the tank was chocker with plants I was dosing 6ml daily of PMDD+PO4 but now I'm back to the 3ml level I was using previously.

Frankly I'm bored of this scape!

My "Lazy Asian" tank is a delight for me and I'm seriously contemplating how to create similar type of fast moving type scape in this tank but life is also rather full just now so it may be a while yet...plenty of time to visualise however..
 
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Chris, in last months I've turned one of my tanks (pet shop one) to mainly crypts tank, inspired by your lazy jungle. What a breeze is a tank without much stem plants!
 
Alexander Belchenko said:
Chris, in last months I've turned one of my tanks (pet shop one) to mainly crypts tank, inspired by your lazy jungle. What a breeze is a tank without much stem plants!
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Great, thanks,
Indeed. Stem plants are so much work, especially in a big tank..
 
IMG_1992.jpg Lush neglect...

So I've been lazy with my tanks the last few months doing little more than daily feeding and ferts plus fortnightly water changes. The tanks don't care...

Here's "Parva Beach" today... I really am expecting to re-scape come the autumn but right now it is a pleasing virtually maintenance free jungle.
 
E3097177-C79D-4D3D-8CCC-DBB094C80E1F.jpeg So life changes have meant less time for tanks and this tank is now on slow tick over mode with just moss and easy care plants. CO2 dialed right down as well though lighting is unchanged but was not been high in a long time. Moss, ferns, anubias, simple but still a pleasure. Note the ancient Neon with half it’s tail missing and a bent spine...must be 8 years old at least...and been this way for many many months....

At some point I/we’ll be moving house and starting a new project....hopefully before the summer!
 
Chris Jackson said:
Neon with half it’s tail missing and a bent spine
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Funny ... if we see this fish in a shop, it tends to reflect badly upon the shop when it may easily just be a fish that arrived in a sad (ly permanent) state
I have a Betta that I purchased who looked to have swim bladder issues but I hoped were just constipation/stress etc - several months later he is still much the same, despite attempts to "heal" any possible bacterial/parasite contributions
- poor guy struggles to swim, but his fins are clear & he seems cheerful enough ... especially at dinnner time 😉
 
Chris Jackson said:
I tend to suspect too much in-breeding is weakening many of the most popular species. I think my ancient neon maybe suffering from the “diseases of old age” more than anything else.
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A few of the last ones I bough have the same issue... I'm suspecting they came with Neon Tetra Disease? I'm really bad at diagnosing fish illnesses though...
 
Chris Jackson said:
View attachment 112940 So life changes have meant less time for tanks and this tank is now on slow tick over mode with just moss and easy care plants. CO2 dialed right down as well though lighting is unchanged but was not been high in a long time. Moss, ferns, anubias, simple but still a pleasure. Note the ancient Neon with half it’s tail missing and a bent spine...must be 8 years old at least...and been this way for many many months....

At some point I/we’ll be moving house and starting a new project....hopefully before the summer!
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What happened to the parva lol?

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 
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