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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.
Well! The tank survived a year! No mishaps. No floods. No tank killing algae. Cool!
I would have posted sooner, but we have had house guests, and tank things had to wait.
Hardware
I had some work to do before I made it to the 1 year mark. I wanted to finish all my under the stand stuff. So I bolted down my second Ocean Clear filter that had been loose before. And I did a thing I had really been dreading… moving my water depth sensor.
I haven’t posted the technical details of my setup yet, but suffice to say I have an auto water change rig that does not require any floats or sensors in the tank. It detects a “full” condition with a water pressure switch in the stand that gets water through a bulkhead hole in the bottom of the tank. And so that little critters don’t crawl down the hole, in the tank it’s covered with a somewhat unsightly filter sponge. If you have noticed the patch of crypts to the front left of my tank, it’s there to hide the sponge.
Well I wanted to create an open area to the left of the tank, and that meant that I had to push those crypts further back and to the right a bit. But that exposed the sponge, so I had to unscrew it from the bulkhead, cap off the bulkhead, and screw it into a different, better hidden bulkhead. That’s a real PITA with a tank full of water and three inches of sand in the bottom of the tank. And none of that describes all the hardware I had to move under the tank. Anyway, maybe you can see why I procrastinated. 
I’ve got a few additional changes to make, with the hardware waiting in the wings. But I don’t need any of it yet, so I figured there’s no harm in crossing the 1 year threshold without doing that too.
Now that the tank has been up a year, there are a number of long-term maintenance things to start doing. Like changing the carbon filters that strip the chlorine out of the water as I add it each night. And changing the UV filter light. And - though I don’t like the cost - the HQI hologen bulbs need to be changed. Drat! This is going to add up.
Fauna
Been a lot of changes this year in fish. My school of Green Neons (P. simulans) has lost a few fish. It’s getting pretty small now - no more that 30 I’d guess. And I recently added six juvenile cockatoo dwarf cichlids that are doing quite well. And my small school of Otocinculus catfish has gotten smaller. I think I’m down to less than 10. But that’s OK, they can be tough on discus sometimes.
But my shrimp are doing great. I’ve still got quite a few Amano’s. I’m guessing 25 or 30. They are hard to count in a planted tank. And I’ve got no idea how many of the orginal 100 ghost shrimp purchased for this tank are still around. But it’s a bunch. Every week I find a new one or two on the floor in front of the tank - or so it seems. But at that rate they should be almost all gone. But they aren’t and I don’t think they are breeding because I never see any juveniles. Either way, I’m glad they are still around because they are great at eating excess discus food.
And as for the discus, they are fine. Or at least I assume that since they are still breeding like rabbits. I have at least two pairs breeding every couple of weeks. Maybe three pairs. I have to admit I don’t pay much attention since all the eggs are toast in a tank full of neons, dwarf cichlids and shrimp. But knowing that they are breeding is my way of knowing they are reasonably healthy and stress free.
Flora
I’m going into the second year for this tank with something that I’m not really happy to call an aquascape. IMO it’s a little lousy looking - closer to what I refer to as JABOP, or Just A Bunch Of Plants. But I’m still working through the set of plants that will tolerate my ultra soft water and the warm water temps that discus need. And having somewhat low maintenance plants is also an important criteria they must all pass.
So another real aquascape is coming. But not yet. Crossing the 1 year mark I ripped out a lot, trimmed a lot, and moved a lot of plants around. So I’m letting things settle a month or so before I go messing with stuff. And just to manage expectations… my aquascapes are not set up to look good in pictures. They are set up to look good in person. For instance, the open area on the left is that way to attract and hold fish. The tanks right side is in a corner of the room. So that keeps fish closer to where the people watching them are. But it does not always make for the best looking aquascape in photos I’m afraid. Sorry.
Conclusion
It’s been a pretty good 1st year for the tank. Algae pretty much under control, even if it did take too long. Fish are fine, plants healthy, and that tank hardware pretty much installed and complete.
This next year I’m going to have to redouble my efforts to get this to a nice looking aquascape. I like a challenge, and that will certainly be one.
Well, here’s a pic of my current tank. I give all my tanks names, and this one is “Kahuna’s Revenge”. It seems that my bigger tanks have all met with untimely ends. The first I called Big Clear Kahuna (I’ll post more on that later). It was followed - in true Hollywood “B” movie tradition - by “Son of Kahuna”. After that take tank bit the big one in very dramatic fashion, I had to have another. And this is it… “Kahuna’s Revenge”.
It’s a 180 gallon planted community discus tank. It’s a lot easier to have a a big, heavily planted tank with a few tetras swimming in it. But discus look much more dramatic, and it’s a bit more challenging to do successfully. So being the masochist that I am, once I started planted tanks I was drawn to discus like a moth to light. And in true moth fashion, I’ve been burned. But at the moment the tank looks OK. Not great. But OK.
I say that because the the aquascaping technique is a bit lame at the moment. I’ve got some plants growing out and are left in bad positions temporarily. And a few plants need to be removed once others grow in. But it’s pretty healthy.
I set this tank up about 11 months ago, and I been vigorously battling algae for about 10 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days. In other words, the algae has not been gone long. More about that later. But it does seem to be on the retreat now. But it was a wicked, hard time getting here. Now I just need to let a little time pass so I can grow out the plants and rearrange to a better aquascape.
This is my first real post to my Journal. So take note of how the tank looks today. It’ll change. And if the past is any indicator, all the changes will not be for the better. But relatively speaking, it’s a good day for a 1st post. Some browsers will let you click on the picture for a larger (and much more attractive IMO) pic. If you can get to the larger pic, you can see one of the discus guarding its eggs on a leaf in the back right corner. Spawning is my “canary in the coal mine”. If they are spawning, I assume they are happy.
More later!
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