It’s been about 3 weeks since I first planted my new 50G aquarium. Since then, I got my 4x39W T5 lights from Catalina Aquarium, which are fantastic, and have tweaked a number of things in the tank. The biggest thing so far is that I removed a few pieces of the manzanita wood, which I decided were breaking up the flow of the aquascape from the left to right. As you can tell, the plants are all growing, but unfortunately, you can also see that I have a fair amount of algae. Part of the reason for this is that until this weekend, I didn’t have an extra timer to run the lights separately, so all four bulbs were going for 10 hours straight.

Now, only two are running, with the other two coming on for a mid-day burst of light. Hopefully that will clear things up after a bit. Despite the algae, the plants are growing well, and there’s lots of pearling going on. I changed up a few of the plants, taking out the Echinodorus sp. ‘Vesuvius’ , replacing it with Limnophila sp. ‘Mini’, and in the center mid-ground, I added Najas grass. All of the plants need a good trimming, but at this point, I’m still trying to propagate the stems a little bit more so that I can replant them. After that, I’ll start bushing them out via trimming.

In addition to the plants, I also added a group of some fantastic Black Morpho Tetras, or Poecilocharax weitzmani. They’re still young, and quite skittish, so it’ll probably be awhile before I can get a decent picture of them, but there’s a fantastic photo of one on Aquahobby.com. They also seem to be growing, and I’m sure they love the acidic nature of the Aquasoil at this point, since they originate from blackwater streams. So, right now, it’s still just waiting game before I can really start fine runing the plants. Comments welcome!

Even though I’m still waiting on my 4x39W T5 light fixture to arrive from Catalina Aquarium, I’ve managed to borrow lights from some other tanks so that I can get going on the planting. I hooked up the Eheim 2026 Canister Filter, Hydor In-Line Heater, and CO2 canister so I’m good to go on everything but the light. I also added a few more rocks to fill in the hardscape. As this is my first planting, everything is subject to change and refinement as it grows in.

I’ve surrounded the large manzanita root ball with Stargrass, which I hope will provide a bright green backdrop to the wood. In front, I planted Hemianthus callitrichoides along with a little bit of hairgrass mixed in. This transitions up to some Blyxa japonica in the midground areas. In the back, I’ve planted five or six varieties of Rotala, which I’ll groom and cull once they’ve grown in a little bit. Unfortunately, I didn’t have full bushes of many of the stems, so they’ll all have to grow for a little while before I can truly scape with them. I still need to obtain a bunch of Fissidens fontanus moss to accent and soften the wood and rockwork. So, it’s definitely still a work in process… Comments welcome!

I mentioned last week how I’ve been tearing down a few of my smaller tanks in order to consolidate them into a single larger aquarium. Well, I’ve begun setting up a new 50G breeder tank. The nice thing about a 50G aquarium is that it is as tall as it is deep, giving it very nice dimensions for creating an aquascape. I still don’t have a light fixture for this tank yet, so up to now, all I’ve been able to setup is the hardscape.

Using a huge manzanita root ball on the left, my goal was to create the look of a log or tree that’s fallen into the water and has sat there for awhile. The limbs have settled in between rocks, and only the larger ones remain undecayed. That’s the premise so far. I’ve had a difficult time trying to decide what plants I’m going to use in this tank, and exactly where they’re going to go. I’ll likely use a bunch of smaller leaf’d plants, such as various rotalas, but I still haven’t figured out how they’re supposed to fit with this hardscape. I think my biggest stumbling block right now is more about where to position the negative space (unoccupied area), rather than cramming plants throughout the entire thing. I’d love to hear feedback on the hardscape itself, as well as, any ideas for planting.

The GWAPA meeting that I hosted has come and gone, and the weather outside has turned downright chilly, so it was time for me to tear down the pond for the year. I brought the Crinum americana indoors, as well, as a number of the other plants that had spent the last few months basking in the open sun. I also managed to net out about 4 dozen cherry shrimp from the bottom of the pond.

In addition to some outside maintenance, I’ve also been working to break down a few of my smaller tanks in hope that I can replace them with a larger “farm tank” to grow out a number of exotic plants that I’ve been acquiring recently. To that end, with the Jewel cichlids off to a new home, my 20H is completely empty. I piled all of the wood/rocks from that tank into my 20L quarantine tank.

This suits me just fine because I had recently put 20 juevenille bristlenosed plecos from the Catfish Convention Auction into this tank. These plecos are adoring the algae-ridden wood that was in the 20H.

In addition to the plecos, that 20L now contains 3 I. werneri that I’ve been unable to fish out to move to my 75G, and a large number of trumpet snails that retreat to the substrate during the day, and emerge each evening.

I’ve also torn down both of my 2.5G tanks that I had used for my first wormstrate/soil experiment. All that’s left is the 20L and two 10Gs, which I’ll need to consolidate at some point. I’m thinking of getting a 50 breeder, or similarly sized tank for my farm tank. Of course, we’ll see what deal comes along.

As promised, here is a picture of my 75G after some trimming and cleaning up. I didn’t end up changing the aquascape very much, but that will hopefully come before too long. I have changed the fauna in this tank, however. I managed to fish out about 15 Corydoras paleatus, which I sold in the catfish convention auction.

75G - Click picture for larger image.

I replaced them with about 60 Threadfin Rainbowfish (Iriatherina werneri) that I had kept in quarantine for the last few weeks. I also intend to fish out the Goo Obo Gudgeons from my 54G tank to turn this into more of an Australian/New Guinea themed tank. My hope is that the Gudgeons will breed without the Corydoras in there to disturb their eggs. We’ll see! Let me know if you have any suggestions for the aquascape.