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Transparent Tank - the end

Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

sarahtermite said:
it looks like you've buried a Stegosaurus
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know exactly what you mean. was trying to block of lines of site (important for puffers) using quite big stones. you don't really get a sense of the depth with the lens i'm using.

putting the CO2 direct into the filter intake using an UP atomiser has worked amazingly well. the odd 'burp' from the filter but otherwise perfect water quality and a bright yellow drop checker pretty quickly. just glad there weren't any fish in there...
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

tim said:
love your tanks and you put so much effort into your journals a lot can be learnt from them.
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Thanks - hope it helps people avoid my mistakes. I like journals that have the detail about what people tried. So here's an update with my latest experiment:

Bought some Rotala rotundifolia, most of which is going into my big tank, but saved two stems...

2012-04-01%20at%2015-19-08.jpg

...and am experimenting to see whether cuttings work if taken from the middle of a plant as well as the top. So here's the two stems converted into 15 plants, with two nodes on each cutting and the leaves stripped from the bottom node... :shifty:

2012-04-01%20at%2015-24-06.jpg

and planted into the middle of the setup

2012-04-01%20at%2017-40-03.jpg

Have to say this would save serious cash and effort getting new scapes going if it works. From a biological point of view I can't see why it wouldn't.

Seems like nowhere has any South American Puffers at the moment so am going to use this tank as a plant experiment one for a bit, with supercharged CO2.

Have also tweaked the hardscape a bit to have more 'flow' and taken out some excess substrate. Would be interested in whether people think it's an improvement :thumbdown: :thumbup:

Here it is before:

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and after

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Quick shots after a water change (also has new intakes / outtakes from a bit of PVC tube lying around).

Have also been playing with manual mode on the camera, trying to get better shots. These are really underexposed according to the camera's settings, but come out quite well I think. Have learnt from Mark Evans' shots that a bit of black in an image does really help.
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

the cuttings should take, plenty of growth hormones around the leaf nodes, although i wonder if the tips of the original stem will root and grow faster than the cuttings taken from the middle of the stem? Anyway, keep us posted on the results.
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

as with all stems when you cut the main branch it creats a split so all your cuttings (apart from the very tip which will remain as a single stem) will grow but they'll grow as 2 separate stems.
What you then do is uproot and separate them from the original stem and now you have gained 2 plants from your one 🙂 so if you've trimmed a single stem into 15 plantlets when they grow you'll actually have closer to 30 plants.

Its what i've been doing for the last 6 months in a little tank so I have enough plants for the big tank but without shelling out the hundreds of quid it'd have been to buy the plants themselves
 
Shrimp

Have moved six cherry shrimp in from the big tank in preparation for a lot of stauro arriving from UKAPS members...

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...seeing as there are no puffers in London at the moment, thought might have a go at breeding lots of cherries in here in the meantime.

Also popped in some half dead HC (very dark green, melting) and it seems to be recovering nicely. The CO2 in here is a lot higher.

UPDATE... that Amano shrimp just went walkabout. Found him on the floor near the door :jawdrop. Maybe they're less CO2 tolerant than cherries?
 
Stauro

An exciting package arrived from Aquadream from Bulgaria:

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And another one from Spyder in the UK.

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So I've got the Stauro from these two tanks:

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Which I prepped:

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Giving me more than 300 stems...! You've got to love UKAPS... Here's just one bowl of four...

2012-04-10%20at%2022-25-28%20%281%29.jpg

spyder said:
Come on Mike, lets see how far that stauro went to filling it out 😱
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So that's a load in this tank:

2012-04-10%20at%2022-11-24%20%281%29.jpg

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...and a load in the other tank too...
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

darren636 said:
the cuttings should take, plenty of growth hormones around the leaf nodes, although i wonder if the tips of the original stem will root and grow faster than the cuttings taken from the middle of the stem? Anyway, keep us posted on the results.
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Pretty much every one has taken and produced two stems - so well on the way to having 30 plants from two stems... Growth is a bit slow though, and the old leaves have taken a bit of a hit. Will keep you posted.

hinch said:
What you then do is uproot and separate them from the original stem and now you have gained 2 plants from your one 🙂 so if you've trimmed a single stem into 15 plantlets when they grow you'll actually have closer to 30 plants
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Not quite at uprooting stage, but useful.
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

spyder said:
Mike, you want to plant the stauro so the lowest pair of leaves are at the substrate for besst results. The burried nodes will then throw new shoots around the main stem.
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Cheers - prepped them a bit wrong and then couldn't be bothered to change them when it came to planting (as had so many :thumb up🙂 and was hard to get them deep enough as stems were a bit long, but have put some more in along your lines alongside these.

2012-04-12%20at%2021-21-58.jpg

2012-04-12%20at%2021-20-58.jpg

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Here's the HC that's been suffering (almost died in the other tank before I got the AM1000 working properly) and is on it's way to repair in this tank (and the other one too now) - this is a warts and all journal after all... :shh:

2012-04-12%20at%2021-21-23.jpg

Have never been able to start out a tank quite heavily planted from day 1 - and literally can't get another stem into this, so keen to see whether that makes a difference.
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

mikeappleby said:
Slightly suspicious - everything seems to be going well: cherry shrimp pregnant and about to pop, stauro all looking healthy, no algae anywhere, HC starting to take off...

Fingers crossed might have cracked this tank!
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:shh: :shh: :shh: :shh: :shh: :shh: :shh: :shh:
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

spyder said:
Mike, you want to plant the stauro so the lowest pair of leaves are at the substrate for besst results. The burried nodes will then throw new shoots around the main stem.
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Spyder thanks for that tip. I am just about to plant some staurogynes into the tank tonight. Lucky to have had a chance to read this before the planting. 😀
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

ha! Now you've done it.....
 
Re: Transparent Tank - reborn

darren636 said:
ha! Now you've done it.....
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Yup. Back from a few days away and brown algae on all the rocks :crazy:. Quick scrub, big water change and looks ok again. So turned the lighting down (switching off one T5) to just one T5 and one grobeam 500. Will see if that helps.

The APS filter has UV built in - does this only stop green algae or is it supposed to do brown algae too? Thought disrupted anything that was just one cell or relied on spores. Was hoping it had made a difference.

Apart from that all going well. Rotala putting out new leaves, HC still well on the way (though is having to come back from the very brink :shh:, so will take a while), Stauro putting out new leaves at substrate level (even those I planted way too high). And two cherry shrimp heavily pregnant, fanning their abdomens with another two or three developing saddles.
 
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