hi all, about 4 months ago decided to venture into biotope and decided on a rio n egro black water scape in a 15g (i broke down my previous planted tank), 2 pieces of wood,l ots of sticks, branches, botanicals, oak leave litter, substrate is mixture of fine sand, lilly plant substrate rinsed and rinsed some more, along with a little clay. there are some region specific plant life as well.
Echinodorus Tenellus
Cabomba aquatica
Cabomba Red
Myriophyllum hippuroide
Got a sword from last setup
and could reset putting in my large cyrpt
Filter is a fluval 307 turned down low, i also inject small amounts of CO2 for the plants.
Live stock consists of 6 gold tetra's, 6 Beckford pencil and a reverse trio of checkerboard (Dicrossus filamentosus, i actually think i have ended up with ones from a different river system which was not the intention). i started off with just 1m/f but the female checkerboard is very aggressive and chasing the male away to the back of the tank, i don't see any of the tell tale signs from the female that she is ready to breed, so i have added another male in the hope it reduces. time will tell.
My water params are not there yet, ph is to high (7), along with KH and GH ( i live in a hard water area and although the fish came from the same water i do want to lower everything), i have ordered some peat moss and i plan on running an experiment.
1 bucket with a 50/50 mix of RO and tap water
1 bucket with tap water and small filter full of peat
I have also just stumbled across the JBL Tormec, any thoughts on this. Pictures are taken a water change so its lost the slight tannin it did have. I'm also suffering from brown diatoms, not sure what is the trigger yet as i have 0 nitrates, current thinking is maybe silica from some part of my substrate or maybe its just the tank bedding in.
Echinodorus Tenellus
Cabomba aquatica
Cabomba Red
Myriophyllum hippuroide
Got a sword from last setup
and could reset putting in my large cyrpt
Filter is a fluval 307 turned down low, i also inject small amounts of CO2 for the plants.
Live stock consists of 6 gold tetra's, 6 Beckford pencil and a reverse trio of checkerboard (Dicrossus filamentosus, i actually think i have ended up with ones from a different river system which was not the intention). i started off with just 1m/f but the female checkerboard is very aggressive and chasing the male away to the back of the tank, i don't see any of the tell tale signs from the female that she is ready to breed, so i have added another male in the hope it reduces. time will tell.
My water params are not there yet, ph is to high (7), along with KH and GH ( i live in a hard water area and although the fish came from the same water i do want to lower everything), i have ordered some peat moss and i plan on running an experiment.
1 bucket with a 50/50 mix of RO and tap water
1 bucket with tap water and small filter full of peat
I have also just stumbled across the JBL Tormec, any thoughts on this. Pictures are taken a water change so its lost the slight tannin it did have. I'm also suffering from brown diatoms, not sure what is the trigger yet as i have 0 nitrates, current thinking is maybe silica from some part of my substrate or maybe its just the tank bedding in.
