TwoTankAmin26
Fish Maniac
Old age has its drawbacks when it comes to keeping fish. One of my tanks is a 29 gal. which began life as a Q tank. Today it is a regular tank. It is packed with the blue dream Neocaridinia davidi which breed there like rabbits. It had a two pairs of Celestichthys margaritatus aka Celestial Pearl 'Danio', 5 Neon tetras bred in Israel, a bunch of breeding Anentome helena aka assassin snails and and unknown number of Hoplisoma oiapoquense. I almost never see them, I do know one died a while back, I also have several more I got earlier and they are in my in-wall 75. I would love to unite them but to catch those in the 75 would be about a 4 or 5 hours job. I would have to remove everything in the tank which is very heavily planted, to catch them.
Yesterday I looked into the 29 and expected to see the sand covered with them as well as there being all over the plants. But there were a,most non in he sand and there was a bunch of sinking food in several places in the tank. The food was "melted" and there were dead shrimp in it. Apparently I had absent mindedly fed over fed it. The live shrimp were anywhere in the tank but on the substrate. There were a bunch of dead shrimp scattered in the melted food and nearby sand. UGH!
The plan for yesterday was to work in the 125 with the clowns and redline barbs. But I had to fix the 29. I first vacuumed out the food and dead shrimp. then I removed a bunch of the water. Fortunately, I keep some RO/DI water on hand even though I do not have my unit any more but my brother does. So, the first thing I did after removing water was to add almost 5 gals of RO/DI to the tank. I also moved in a bunch more Amazon Frogbit. I had only a few days early removed a bunch as it reproduces very fast in my tanks.
I then topped up the tank, but not 100% with tap. The tank is fins ad after the RO/DI went in the shrimp let the upper areas of the tank and many were back on the sand. All is fine today and I will do normal maint. on the tank today or tomorrow.
But the "fun" did ot stop there. The 125 was overdue for ,aint and a water change. When I am late I have alage issues on the anubias. I planned to clean a bunch of the anubias leaves. I have 4 filters on the tank- an Eheim Pro II 2026, and AquaClear 110 and two oldstyle H.O.T. Magnums both with pre-filters and using the micron cartridges. They are strictly for mechanical waste management. I wanted to clean them and replace the microns which can be bleached and reused. I have one of them specially jury rigged- it has an ATI pre-filter on it and I adapted it so the output is an Eheim spay bar.
I wanted to clean them before i attacked the algae on the anubias which I would get off the leaves using a toothbrush and an algae pad. The tank is in the main house but I clean them in our second building where I have a fish space and a utility sink. When I want to pull that magnum with the spat bar I remove the spay bar and I also remove the intake and the prefilter which I would rinse as part of the maint.
So I cleaned it and rturned it to the tank and then did the same with the other one. When I turned on the filter with the spray bar, nothing came out of it but I could feel that the motor was running when I touched it. I spent a lot of time tring to figure it out, I swapped in another H.O.T. and put the intakes and retturn on that and had the same problem. I spent some time trying to make things work with no success.
And then I figured I should chech theoutput set-up. So I took the intake piece off of the filtert and removed the spay bar and I tried tpo blow through the filter intake piec to see if maybe it had clooged somehow. I puffed on one end but no aair came out the other end. So I got a flaslight and shone it into the piece and theere was something inside. A needle nose p;iers later and I removed a plugh from the piece.
Eheim spray bars are open at both ends and one uses a small plug on one end so the return water is foreced to cone out of the spraybar holes. It turned out that in the process of put the filter nack on the tank the first time ai had pushed the wrond end of the spaybat into the intake piece. I hfailed to notice that I had out the bar in cakcwards so the plugged end went itnot it instead of the other way around. ANd the jury rigged set-up had frabbed onto the outer edge of the plug and when I reversed the spraybar the plug stayed behind and I did not notice this.
I spent about two hpours trying to figure out things, I swapped a lot of pprts and filter bodies before I realized my stupifd mistake. I had set up return water hours before. By this time it was past to 9 at night. I had at least ckeaned the two magnums but had not touched the AC 110 nore the intake prefilter on the canister. However, I had also pulled the canister as i had failed to clean it in June. I nortmally clean most canister twiice a year - in June and Dec. Health issues and a recent week in the hospital for a COPD flarre up had messed up my sechdule. So, I did clean the canister but not the intqake pre-filter.
So. I pumped out 1/2 the water in the tank. it goes out a window except when the ground if frozen or covered in snow and then I pump it out nto a toilet. I had a 303 gal can in the bathtune and 5 gal can under the caucet. I had a 2o gl can and another 5 gal, bucjet outside of the tub. So, I managed to do the refil but nit the AC clean. I then refilled the tank, soent about 5-10 minutes bsushing off some anubais. But it weas after 10 and I had noit had dinner, So that was it fpr the day.
I was really exhausted and dinner was two fired eggs toast coffee and OJ. I was almost two house late for me ebening nebulizer medication which is a new one I started on in the last few months. I slept until after 10:30 this morning so was again late for the normal morning med as well.
Old age is a PITA and I should have been more carefull and for sure more alert on this stuff. *sigh* Today I need to finish working on the 125 and hopoefully do regular maint on some of the other tanks. The first would be that 29 which I want to clean the filter and do a water change in it despite what I did yesterday.
Old age sucks, but we are lucky to get there. Talk about a paradox........
Yesterday I looked into the 29 and expected to see the sand covered with them as well as there being all over the plants. But there were a,most non in he sand and there was a bunch of sinking food in several places in the tank. The food was "melted" and there were dead shrimp in it. Apparently I had absent mindedly fed over fed it. The live shrimp were anywhere in the tank but on the substrate. There were a bunch of dead shrimp scattered in the melted food and nearby sand. UGH!
The plan for yesterday was to work in the 125 with the clowns and redline barbs. But I had to fix the 29. I first vacuumed out the food and dead shrimp. then I removed a bunch of the water. Fortunately, I keep some RO/DI water on hand even though I do not have my unit any more but my brother does. So, the first thing I did after removing water was to add almost 5 gals of RO/DI to the tank. I also moved in a bunch more Amazon Frogbit. I had only a few days early removed a bunch as it reproduces very fast in my tanks.
I then topped up the tank, but not 100% with tap. The tank is fins ad after the RO/DI went in the shrimp let the upper areas of the tank and many were back on the sand. All is fine today and I will do normal maint. on the tank today or tomorrow.
But the "fun" did ot stop there. The 125 was overdue for ,aint and a water change. When I am late I have alage issues on the anubias. I planned to clean a bunch of the anubias leaves. I have 4 filters on the tank- an Eheim Pro II 2026, and AquaClear 110 and two oldstyle H.O.T. Magnums both with pre-filters and using the micron cartridges. They are strictly for mechanical waste management. I wanted to clean them and replace the microns which can be bleached and reused. I have one of them specially jury rigged- it has an ATI pre-filter on it and I adapted it so the output is an Eheim spay bar.
I wanted to clean them before i attacked the algae on the anubias which I would get off the leaves using a toothbrush and an algae pad. The tank is in the main house but I clean them in our second building where I have a fish space and a utility sink. When I want to pull that magnum with the spat bar I remove the spay bar and I also remove the intake and the prefilter which I would rinse as part of the maint.
So I cleaned it and rturned it to the tank and then did the same with the other one. When I turned on the filter with the spray bar, nothing came out of it but I could feel that the motor was running when I touched it. I spent a lot of time tring to figure it out, I swapped in another H.O.T. and put the intakes and retturn on that and had the same problem. I spent some time trying to make things work with no success.
And then I figured I should chech theoutput set-up. So I took the intake piece off of the filtert and removed the spay bar and I tried tpo blow through the filter intake piec to see if maybe it had clooged somehow. I puffed on one end but no aair came out the other end. So I got a flaslight and shone it into the piece and theere was something inside. A needle nose p;iers later and I removed a plugh from the piece.
Eheim spray bars are open at both ends and one uses a small plug on one end so the return water is foreced to cone out of the spraybar holes. It turned out that in the process of put the filter nack on the tank the first time ai had pushed the wrond end of the spaybat into the intake piece. I hfailed to notice that I had out the bar in cakcwards so the plugged end went itnot it instead of the other way around. ANd the jury rigged set-up had frabbed onto the outer edge of the plug and when I reversed the spraybar the plug stayed behind and I did not notice this.
I spent about two hpours trying to figure out things, I swapped a lot of pprts and filter bodies before I realized my stupifd mistake. I had set up return water hours before. By this time it was past to 9 at night. I had at least ckeaned the two magnums but had not touched the AC 110 nore the intake prefilter on the canister. However, I had also pulled the canister as i had failed to clean it in June. I nortmally clean most canister twiice a year - in June and Dec. Health issues and a recent week in the hospital for a COPD flarre up had messed up my sechdule. So, I did clean the canister but not the intqake pre-filter.
So. I pumped out 1/2 the water in the tank. it goes out a window except when the ground if frozen or covered in snow and then I pump it out nto a toilet. I had a 303 gal can in the bathtune and 5 gal can under the caucet. I had a 2o gl can and another 5 gal, bucjet outside of the tub. So, I managed to do the refil but nit the AC clean. I then refilled the tank, soent about 5-10 minutes bsushing off some anubais. But it weas after 10 and I had noit had dinner, So that was it fpr the day.
I was really exhausted and dinner was two fired eggs toast coffee and OJ. I was almost two house late for me ebening nebulizer medication which is a new one I started on in the last few months. I slept until after 10:30 this morning so was again late for the normal morning med as well.
Old age is a PITA and I should have been more carefull and for sure more alert on this stuff. *sigh* Today I need to finish working on the 125 and hopoefully do regular maint on some of the other tanks. The first would be that 29 which I want to clean the filter and do a water change in it despite what I did yesterday.
Old age sucks, but we are lucky to get there. Talk about a paradox........
The canister episode was a major cleanup session and…….did involve my tossing out of the unit. I have not used a canister since and I now have multiple water alarms throughout the fish room. The aquarium episode took the better part of a whole day.
Not only did I have locate a new tank, but had to drive a ways to get it, clean it, and then slowly clean out the old tank decor, fish into heated/aerated bucket, substrate, filters, water etc. Then this old goon had to lift/move the old tank out of the room with a dolly. Next came the new one (a 55g since I couldn’t find a 65g) and getting it up and running, filters, water, substrate, and fish. Oh….but do I feel better. That slow leak feeling I had earlier killed me. Now I’m back to relaxing in the fish room
.
