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Well, every once in a while if you highly automate your tanks, you will dip your toe into the cold, cold waters or highly automated hell. Welcome in! I’m there right now, and going for a swim…
My lack of posting for a couple of weeks is not for lack or desire. Nor has it been because the tank looks like crap, and I’m just ashamed to show it to you. No. The tank DOES look like crap. And I AM ashamed. But honesty and candor require that I show it to you. But I don’t have time now to deal with picture taking, Photoshop, and all that hoowie. But I’m happy to tell you about the tank.
A few weeks ago I was agonizing over the fact that I let the plants go too long without trimming. And that the deep trimming that neglect necessitated was a really bad bedfellow with the fact that I needed to change a filter. Well it gets worse…
I’ve got a pH controller, and a probe for it that I have mounted in-line, so it is perpetually sampling my water for pH and adjusting CO2 injection accordingly. This particular pH probe - Lab grade from Neptune Systems - was both expensive, and also WORTH it because it has been humming along for almost a year without any significant deviation from my other pH meters. In other words, while the probe vendors recommend calibration on a VERY regular basis (say monthly if you are lazy like me) this little puppy has been RIGHT on target for months on end. And being human, I’ve been ignoring it… as if it would be correct forever.
Well the deep algae on every surface in my tank caused me to quickly surmise that something FUNDAMENTAL was wrong. And at the very least, it was my pH readings, and subsequent lack of CO2 injection.
Now that does not mean that I did not cut my biofilter back too far. I did. A major trim of plants coupled with a massive plant trim was pure foolishness. But following this up with too little CO2 because of an out-of-calibraton probe was just stupid.
So, my tank looks like crap. Pics to follow soon.
That said, I don’t have a lot of progress to talk about. Nor pics to show you. My extra time - for what little there has been, has been consumed with stupid and time-consuming scraping the sides of the tank to clean the MASSIVE quantities of GDA, and trimming the RIDICULOUS amount of plant leaves of the same affliction. All in all, between the trimming, tank cleaning, and pH probe testing, I’d guess that I’ve wasted AT LEAST 8 hours on this crap.
So much for a low-maintenance planted discus tank.
Will post much more later after I dig myself out of planted discus tank hell.
Cheers - Steve
A couple of weeks ago I posted saying I wasn’t going to trim my plants. Big mistake.
The hygro was growing out of the top, and was long overdue for a trim. Unfortunately I let it get too tall - too leggy. So when I cut it last week, I cut it way back. But the leaves that were exposed by that process were too old. When they were exposed to the direct light this week GSA set up on them badly.
That was made worse by the fact that I spent weeks without cleaning the GDA off the sides and let it get too bad. I had it where I could do a quick scrape every few days and the tank was fine. But by waiting weeks it got thick, and when I cleaned it it went all over the tank. Including those old leaves on the hygro. And it hit the wysteria pretty hard too. And because I let it get so out of hand before I cleaned it, it was unusually thick on the tank walls by the end of the week.
All this might have been avoided if I hadn’t neglected regular maintenance.
But I replaced the filter media on one of my OceanClears. Big mistake after a huge trim. The trim removes biomass, and the filter change took out half of my bio-filtration too, Stupid. But I did it. I wonder how long I have to be in this hobby before I stop making newbie mistakes?
So I ripped all the stems out, and the hygro, and cut it way, way back. And I removed the Ludwigia repens too. I hated to do that - I love that plant. But it’s getting warm in the summer weather - 85 degrees in the tank every afternoon - and it is just not dealing with the heat. All its old growth is algae covered, so it’s better out of the tank.
What went back in the tank was only 1/3 the plant mass of what came out. Now my tank has precious little biomass. That’s potential trouble. So I’m anxious to see what this week is going to bring.
Live and learn I guess.
Well, the Green Dust Algae got pretty nasty. I hadn’t touched the tank in weeks, and it looked like it, so I broke down Friday nite and cleaned it. There was so much GDA that after scraping it off gave the water a strong green tint. So I did an 80% water change too, just to get most of it out. And I’m still having trouble with some kind of green algae growing on the sand. So I gravel vacuumed up the top 1/2″ or so, Chloroxed it, and put it back.
I’ll have to go back and check my records I think it had been three weeks since I touched the tank. And doing so created a maintenance effort that was probably 3 hours in total. A good bit of work I’m afraid. Or, I suppose you could say 1 hour a week for 180 gallon aquarium isn’t too bad. Especially with plants and discus.
I obviously trimmed the plants while I was at it. It felt like a pound or two of trimmings were pulled out. Tank looks better now though.
These photos really look aweful. The depth of field - or rather lack thereof - makes the tank look flat. I need to get a better camera, because I can tell you these boring, unidimensional pictures, just don’t show what the tank looks like in real life… where you can see the layers of depth. It also makes the fish look like they’ve got no room, when in actual fact they’ve to all kinds of room. So one day, a new camera. But for now, here’s a few pics of my fish.
I’ve got two types of discus, Cobalts and High-bodied Leopards. Both sets purchased from Dan at Gulf Coast Discus. If you look hard, or click on on of the pics to pull up a larger shot, you can see that one of the Leopard’s tails is a bit raggedy. I’ve got two fish that get beat up by the other fish. The ragged tailed Leopard, and my runt Cobalt. I’m not sure the runt can be seen in these pics - he’s hanging to the background where it is safe.
Anyway, here’s some pics.
I’m tired of cleaning green dust algae. Tired of trimming plants. So I’m taking a break from maintenance this week.
Usually I’ll clean the tank on a Friday evening if we don’t go out. Or Saturday afternoon/evening if we do. But last night we didn’t go out, and I was tired. Didn’t feel like farting around with the tank. And this afternoon we are going to the SimplyDiscus.Com 2008 Northeast Meeting and Cookout. So it won’t get cleaned then. I’m sure that tomorrow I’ll feel compelled to clean. But I’m not doing it on schedule.
Actually it didn’t get cleaned last week either. So the plants have been at least two weeks without a trim. So some old leaves are getting algae - that’s natural. Others are rotting. Natural too. But that’s why regular maintenance is required.
And the green dust algae (GDA) is getting bad in some places. Here’s a pic. Not very good, and clicking brings up a larger one. In this you can see that the GDA really does need attention. And the crypts need old leaves trimmed off.
I chose this pic because it reminded me of something disconcerting this week…
Earlier this week I came in to feed the fish one morning, and there was a bunch of foam on the surface of the tank, up against the tank wall. Uh oh. Looks like protein film. Hmmmm. I wonder what died?
All the discus were there. But a couple of days ago I noticed that one or two of my cockatoo dwarf cichlids seem to be missing. I had four males and two females. This pic is a typical feeding shot. When I drop in frozen blood worms everybody comes out of the bushes in a hurry! Dwarf ciclids, corys, biota striata (zebra loaches), and ghost shrimp. They all love bloodworms. But now, no more than two or three male cockatoo dwarfs. At least one is gone. If I can get them to hold still long enough maybe I can count.
I’m not really up on these fish… I suppose one or two could be guarding a brood. I’ve got breeding caves hidden in the plants. I wouldn’t know. I just hate to think that one or two died. They were young, and apparently healthy. I quarantined them for almost six weeks, and hit them with all sorts of prophylactic meds. If that didn’t kill them, I’m concerned that tank conditions would.
But it has been hot this week. The tank temps have been climbing as high as 85-86 degrees F every afternoon. Maybe it’s time to turn on the air conditioners and bring the ambient temperature in the room down a bit. It’s definitely killing my Ludwigia repens. Could be giving my poor cockatoo dwarf cichlids a hard time too.
And speaking of hard times… my favorite plant forum plantedtank.net has been down for two days. And I notice that aquaticplantcentral.com is down for repairs. I wonder that there has been another attack on aquatic plant sites? Hope not. And I hope that whoever it is that does that discovers in a nasty way that there is karma in the universe, and that what goes around comes around. But mostly I hope everything is ok.
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