fishymel

[fishymel]

I'm working on setting up my 75. (I seeded it with filter media and a pre-filter sponge I added to my established 45 a month or so ago -- not adding anything until it's cycled, other than a couple mystery snails for potential algae control and bladder snails because I never intended to have any, and my 45 has plenty to spare. Might as well toss some in there.)

I bought a piece of driftwood from Amazon. I was very happy with the size and shape of it -- a perfect perch for the filter feeding shrimp I want to add after it's established. However, 14 hours of boiling later, the driftwood was still leaching tannins.

The tank was also perpetually cloudy.

I wasn't sure what to do about it because I needed to get my hardscape together soon. My plants were arriving in the next day or two.

A Reddit post suggested Purigen for tannins and to clear up the water in general. The reviews on Amazon were also positive. It was $10, so not a huge loss if it didn't actually work.

I put in the Purigen on Friday. My plants were arriving Saturday.

And the tank on Saturday, after my plants arrived.

I ordered another package for my 45! I've had some clarity issues there, too.

[fishymel]

I took advantage of the Petco sale this month and brought home a 75 gallon future angelfish community tank!

I decided to go with an organic soil dirted substrate because I want to plant it moderately heavily, and organic soil is so much cheaper than aqua soil. I got two decent sized bags of the organic soil for $8 total.

First, I made a border with sand to hide the dirt from view.

I sifted the organic soil with a colander to get out the mulch wood chips. After spraying the soil down with water and getting the air out to prevent bubbles coming up from the dirt, I added root tabs on top.

The sand cap is thick because a 2" cap above the dirt is required, so ammonia doesn't leach into the water. I definitely want to avoid that!

[fishymel]

One of my shrimp molted. A rabbit snail decided not to let it go to waste!

[fishymel]

One of my mystery snails decided to parasnail and photobomb the shot when I was trying to take pictures of my new endler's livebearers that I had my local fish stores order for me. They got in yesterday!

They're so colorful and pretty -- I absolutely love them! I didn't want eleventy billion endler's so I got just males.

I also finished out my school of false julii cory cats. I went from 4 of them to 7. They're such characters. I'm definitely putting a school of cories into the 75 I'm setting up as a community angelfish tank, although I'm not sure which species of cories I'm going to go with. I was thinking possibly panda, depending on local availability.

I'm going to pick up the tank from Petco this weekend. The stand is already built. I also already got the substrate I need for a dirted tank. I'm going to cap organic potting soil with black sand.

The plants will be more complicated because of the weather. It's getting up into the 100s here in Houston, and the local fish store owner said that the plants he ordered were pretty rough when they came in. Most of the plants I want unfortunately seem to be a little harder to find locally, other than an Amazon sword.

[fishymel]

A local fish store recently came under new ownership, and the new owner is so much better than the former one. Knowledgeable, unafraid to look up things he didn't know, didn't push fish on me. Just an overall great experience.

He ordered some endler's livebearers for me that I'm looking forward to getting soon!

I left the store with a school of eight celestial pearl danios, two kuhli loaches (all they had left), False Julii Cory Catfish (Corydoras trilineatus). They only had four the cory cats left, and I want to finish out my school soon. They're such characters!

The kuhli loaches haven't appeared much unfortunately. I hope that they'll make more of an appearance after I finish out their school.

[fishymel]

"Yum!"

[fishymel]

Norman Rockwell hooking up with another snail. That's nothing new. Happens every single day. Multiple times most days. If nothing else, Norman Rockwell wants to spread his...love throughout my little community of mystery snails.

But this ghost shrimp apparently wanted in on the action? He just hung out literally on Norman Rockwell and his...friend there without a care in the world. For over an hour. 💀

[fishymel]

I'm currently in the process of tearing down my tank to rescape it.

I'm intending to go from this:

to something like this, but with more of a slope in the black sand substrate on the rock side, and I'm planning on using bucephalandra on the rock side in some of the cracks:

I'm currently here:

A friend stopped by and found a mayfly nymph on the substrate. She asked me what it was. I immediately panicked because it was definitely something I didn't want in there. I knew it wasn't a dragonfly nymph, but I thought it might be something just as bad. I got it quickly out of the tank and identified it.

They look like this.

It must have come on the hornwort I got from someone selling it on eBay.

I can definitely see the appeal of tissue cultures now. Going forward, any plant that isn't a tissue culture is going to be safely bleach dipped and thoroughly inspected.

[fishymel]

I love the look of dragon (ohko) stone. I've seen it in a variety of aquascapes, and I thought my shrimp would enjoy it in the new aquascape I'm working on.

I found a great deal on 25 lbs of it on Amazon. I was worried I'd get a lot of tiny pieces, but I really liked the selection of pieces I received.

It was quite dusty, though. I thought I could take it out back and hose it off, run some water over it in a bucket, and call it a day. I was very wrong.

This stuff was absolutely caked with reddish clay, from the surface to the inside of the holes throughout it. I soaked it in hot water twice and thoroughly sprayed it off with the sprayer on my kitchen sink before scrubbing it with a previously unused kitchen brush and toothbrush each time. (Don't want to get any chemicals on the stone!)

I couldn't brush any harder than I did because pieces of it started breaking off. I'm pretty sure it's clean enough that it won't leach rust colored clay into the water. I soaked it in water in a bucket to see what happened, and the water stayed clean.

I don't know if it was so ridiculously dirty because it was heavily discounted from the normal going rate, or if that's a dragon stone thing in general, but I'm not sure I'd really recommend it after spending hours cleaning it.

I might change my mind after I see it in my new aquascape with shrimp on it, though.

[fishymel]

I was ecstatic when I got about 20 skittles mix cherry shrimp on eBay for my 45 tall aquarium, and all of them arrived alive and well.

After over 8 hours of drip acclimation (overkill, I know), I was very excited to introduce them to their new home right before the tank lights went off for the night, so they had time to adjust before I could see them in the morning in their new environment.

Did I see them interacting in their new environment in the morning? No. Over the course of the next few days, I saw one or two at most -- different ones because they were different colors and sizes.

The rest of them were hiding in the literal masses of plants I had because I hadn't grown aquarium plants before and went a little overboard.

I recently learned that the amano shrimp I added to the tank in February and thought had long ago died did not in fact die. Instead, they grew huge, and I love them.

I'm currently in the process of rescaping with less plants so I can see my shrimp.