Round indoor pond project queries.

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I do want some but I've to figure a way to keep the floaters in one area around the emersed baskets themselves. The alternative I was thinking is to get some trailing plants. I am trying to train some of the bacopa to grow emersed. It does very well as a floater too and may do the trick.

<"Hygroryza aristata"> would be ideal for what you want. Just root it in the basket.

cheers Darrel

 

[zozo]

Hi all,<"Hygroryza aristata"> would be ideal for what you want. Just root it in the basket.

cheers Darrel

Hey that picture looks familiar.. It indeed is a very lovely plant to grow emersed too.. But it needs a rather high nutrient rich invironment.. The above yellowing of the older leaves is a potassium shortage, dosing extra potasium nitrate / potassium phosphate will surely aid this plant to a good health..

Here is a picture of some growing emersed in a pot among others. Not fully growen in yet and it's winter by now, but i suspect this go booming in enough light next year.. It ended up in there by accident, don't ask me how, but i must have added a tiny piece without notice..

 

[sciencefiction]

Its hard to find the plants I want here, including floaters....I've been searching since last night, can't really find a place that has good variety of floating and marginal plants that could suit. I've never seen the Hygroryza plant on sale here.

And I moved the baby clown to the Big Pot just now. It took quite the chasing first to catch him. Eventually I cornered him and what did he do? He jumped out of the tank. After that it was easy scooping him up from the floor

Here you can see him trying to go into one of the clown loach caves and getting evicted twice



Right now he's sort of figuring his surroundings and he's using the shadow of the plant pots to hide...Poor little thing. He's so tiny as well.

 

[Manisha]

Hi sci fi, don't usually notice these boys but after your thread saw some clown loaches at lfs at the wend (tiny babies compared to your ones) but saw these guys in a new light very cute ☺☺☺

 

[Greenfinger2]

Hi Sciencefiction, Wonderful Project. Looking really cool

 

[sciencefiction]

Hi Manisha, they are great fish, very interesting to have and are my favourite. I did hate them for the first few months after I got them

Hi Greenfinger. Thanks. There's a lot to be done yet but I am not in a rush and its limited here on plant availability.... I was trying to find simple stuff like water hyacinth and I couldn't find anywhere to get it, lol.

 

[sciencefiction]

I think the little loach is kind of afraid of the other clown loaches right now. He's not sure if they'll eat him alive or not They won't of course, but he doesn't know it yet so he's avoiding them like the plague

 

[tim]

If you can get hold of some hydrocotyle tripartia, plant it at the front of the pots and it should make its way into the water.

 

[sciencefiction]

Thanks Tim. This one I can find for sure.

 

[sciencefiction]

This will be a long post.....typical for me but I've broken it down per topic

I ordered Water Hyacinth, Aeschynomene Fluitans and salvinia from a kind member on here I can't wait.....Yey...

I just wonder if I'll have room to fit them all if they grow, lol. The bigger the tank, the more space one needs

The question is how to reduce the surface movement a bit. It's destroyed my two floating stems of bacopa and ludwiga and the bacopa normally has no problem growing floating. I think I've got a bit too much flow for what I want. When I put some food in, it makes a full circle around the tank. The problem is when my last tank went down, I got a bit mad and I threw away almost all my spare bits and pieces I had collected over the years, and I've thrown the extensions to my outlets too. I can buy new ones but its just not worth it for what they are selling them for on the APS website, for such bad piece of plastic. ... I can raise the water level though...

I ordered some Profito iron. I've got EDTA dry iron ferts that don't work well in my hard water and I am seeing some iron deficiency. I am sick of seeing iron deficiency in my crappy tap water. I've got a huge pack of dry micros. Now I need some decent macro ferts...The fish aren't producing much waste for the size of the tank and with my large water change habit, it ain't helping either. I see my palm is having some nitrogen problems.

The small clown loach has been a loner, poor thing, He's not been accepted in the school yet. He keeps away from the pack. They normally circle like sharks in a bunch in the morning, begging for food. The small guy is always away on his own. I don't know what he does all day but he seems to be out on his own. When clown loaches are babies, they are not skittish with lights on. They start hiding when they get older. Pity now his friend jumped out..and I was too afraid to get another loach due to the poor state of the remaining loaches. They were probably just starved....He'll be fine though. Clown loaches always eventually get on together. He just needs a bit of growing to do to stand his ground.

I've been feeding a bit more now, as in twice a day as opposed to once a day. I think I can afford it with the light stock and water volume and I want them to get strong after the last few months of hardship. The clowns are now regular at nibbling my fingers at feeding time. I think the black tank walls are really helping them feeling more confident. The couple of occasions of them flashing have stopped. I think the water is good now. It's been a month or so with well cycled filters to start with. And the fish had spent about 2 months in small plastic containers, an 80L! one housed my 7 loaches and the bristlenose pleco for the first month with large water changes and barely any food. And then in a 130-140l one with large water changes and again barely any food....

My corys are pretty happy in another plastic container that's been setup with soil and plants for a while. I am not sure I want to move them. It can wait.

But I am definately moving the kuhli loaches and shutting down their tank after I use it for quarantining new fish that i can fit in there. I need some smaller caves in the tank that the clown loaches can't get into, and the crypts to grow a bit to give the kuhlis some cover as they are quite skittish. They do come out all the time in my small glass tank but it's literally packed with plants. But they are crazy and entertaining when they have bigger water volume...They swim like crazy at the water surface or up and down at night time...

And finally,as you are probably aware, I was going to get rainbows for the tank. Now I am reading they are prone to mycobacteria. That's the one thing I can't have of all possible diseases...although I am pretty certain its probably everywhere, just not all fish get it. I do trust the shop and I had blue eyed forktail rainbows before but....mycobacteria can take a year to show up and with my luck...

I can't make up my mind on dither fish. Please suggest any fish you'd house if you were in my situation I still may get rainbows in the end of the day but I want to explore more options before I plunge

 

[zozo]

The question is how to reduce the surface movement a bit.

I guess you have a hose at the filter outlet? If so or not try to fix one to it.. Hang the hose in a plantbasket, the basket will be partialy submersed.. For example that kidney shaped basket, fix a spraybar to the end of the hose, whole lenght of the basket covered and let it spray on the substrate in the basket.. You can't have a beter filter as well..

That's a winwin..

I made this for the goldfish this winter, an indoor celler pond, round, square and 270 litre.. I filter it like that and it works like a charme.. Tho no spraybar, no riple, but still to same flow rate..

 

[sciencefiction]

Hey Zozo. Thanks. I remember that idea from earlier in the thread and its been in my mind. Its a really great idea. But my filters are 2000l/h each. They totally blow the substrate out of the basket(I knocked my bigger pepper plant out of the substrate when I was trying to prime the damn JBL filter) so It won't work unless I get some smaller filter/powerhead for that same purpose. I do have some power heads from my trickle filters from before that I didn't throw out. I haven't thought about using them for this and how to do it exactly but its just extra filtration I probably don't need yet...But I may still try it because its just such a good and easy way of filtering and at the same time providing the most for the plants inside the basket....

 

[sciencefiction]

I made this for the goldfish this winter, an indoor celler pond, round, square and 270 litre.. I filter it like that and it works like a charme.. Tho no spraybar, no riple, but still to same flow rate..

You've got magic fingers Marcel. Lovely DIY stuff. I am useless with my hands

 

[zozo]

Thank you.. So you are running 2 x 2000 l/h filter pumps? Anyway, why should it be filtering you do not need?

You could use Y connectors in the hoses and create Octopus outlets.. Like 4 outlets per filter same size tube 3 Y splittrs per outlet.. Some more baskets and plants.. Never it is filtering you do not need, it's just there in case you needed.. Even if you don't need it still makes you a nice jungle.. Put an Echinodorus in it, they do good in lower humidity.. My pogostemon also doesn't mind as some hygrofilias are also not so fusy about it, lilaeopsis brasiliensis will do, most rotala's, cyperus helferi.. Ophiopogon..

 

[sciencefiction]

It's 3 filters right now. Two of them are 2000l/h and one 1900l/h. I can try splitting the JBL one eventually because its easier to buy bits for it. But they are all non-standard pipe sizes. The JBL has a 19/25 hose size and the APS are 18/25 hose size. The APS filters outlets are sort of hard to change because despite the hose size, they've got a very narrow outlet..and the more you connect to it, the less the flow, restricting the filters. I've reduced the outlet bits to a minimum to get a decent flow out. If I connect the spraybars to these filters, the flow is reduced by half, judging only by looking at it....I can do that, but its a pity doing it...

Everything out there that's good for modification is for 16/22 hoses/outlets. One would wonder....And it's not the problem of my DIY skills only...which are poor I admit but I have plenty of ideas. The problem is that the local shops here are so poor, you can't even find a pvc pipe of the size you want. Most of the stuff I need I have to buy online, and its hard to do so without seeing what you're buying. It's just hard to imagine how it would fit. It ends up in a pile of useless stuff sitting in the cupboard until I throw it out one day, and lots of money spent on stuff that would have been better utilised for the living beings I am caring for.

The last bit was just a rant about feeling helpless ...or just useless

But just as an example, I went to two very large garden centres last week trying to buy a bunch of small ceramic pots to replace the plastic ones the clown loaches have been knocking off. Guess what...I found none....And its a small enough city. There are a couple more places only to check out. Annoyed...is lightly said

 

[sciencefiction]

Hey, my new plants just arrived and are in perfect condition. I got them from a member here Konrad Michalski. He did a great job packing them.

Here are a couple of pictures of them in bowls with a a bit of light and ferts. I'll keep them in there until the weekend. I don't want to worry about them being blown by the flow until I have time to fiddle around.

 

[sciencefiction]

Today I bit the bullet and got 10 denison barbs. They are only young and still quite colourless so I got them quite cheaply in my local shop. I am acclimating them right now. I know they might not like the higher temperature but they'll love the good flow and oxygen content this tank can provide. I may still add a school of rainbows in the near future if I feel like getting more fish. The shop owner of my local shop said he can order whatever species of rainbows I like so I might again support the local business instead of trying to order online.

 

[sciencefiction]

F*cking hell. These fish jump. I just found one of them dead outside of the bucket where I was acclimating them. How the hell didn't I see it earlier
Anyway, I am down to 9 now and they are in the tank now......If they want to jump out of there, its their choice....

 

[sciencefiction]

Well, the floaters are in too. It looked like I had so many but in the tank it seems like nothing
Some of the salvinia tried to go behind the plant baskets but moving the outlets a bit worked out to keep them out of there.

The sensitive fern closes its leaves each time you touch it so it looks a bit unhappy right now. I wedged its stem behind the inlet so it's not being moved by the flow.

My other plants had been suffering from iron and nitrogen deficiency which is the usual in my set ups. Even my paprika grew new pale leaves...They were shouting at me to give them some iron So I finally dosed a couple of days ago and I am seeing them bouncing back because the bacopa finally produced normal growth....Its very iron sensitive.... I just need to work out how much to dose without going overboard. I may also skip the water change this week because the current stock don't seem to be producing enough nitrogen for the plants between the large water changes. The 9 small barbs won't make much of a difference.
On another hand they coloured up a bit already I think. I am seeing some red stuff on them. But they were quite colourless in the shop so it may take a while.

Here is a bad picture of some of them and the tank below with the floaters which look insignificant right now

 

[alto]

These fish jump

sorry wish I'd checked in earlier as I could've warned to cover the lid ... you always need to watch for them jumping when startled or stressed so keep doing your tail counts when water changing etc until they settle

You might try to source wild rainbows? rather than tank farmed (but then $$)

My (undoubtedly useless) inkling says the "blue eyes" are less prone to mycobacteria ... BUT that may also just reflect their shorter lifespan so ...
I'll admit though that given the longevity of the Clown Loaches, I'd also reconsider the Rainbow notion

There are loads of interesting Rasboras of all sizes & colors, they are always fun to watch in bigger groups in bigger tanks & you'll see lots of spawning dances & just (apparently) joyful swim antics ...


As for the 19/25 hose, my memory says there used to be more in that size range - I guess it's just fallen out of fashion
Drive about the countryside & look in the really old fashioned shops