Low Tech Rio 180

[NathanPrince]

Indeed, my LFS charge around £2.95 each!! I'd go Ember Tetra, but I'm biased as I really want a shoal of my own

 

[stu40]

Hengeli's are good, so are T.Espei ,both tend to stay mainly in the top third.
Rummys & Embers are also good choices IMO.

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Embers are great I have to admit, mine shoal nicely, I'll add a video later to my journal so you can see them doing their group hugging lol

 

[Biulu]

Embers are nice, but for a 180 litre tank I would choose a larger shoaling fish. Embers really stay small and you need to get 50 or so to get them noticed in a tank like that.

 

[ATK!!!]

I think CPD's are out of the question then! Rummy nose have always caught my eye but then the Rasbora are so nice!!! On another note it would seem that the new wood has grow a sort of grey fuzz... Is this common on new wood and is it fixable? I would hope so as that is part of the main focal point Also the bacterial bloom has come back again which is rather annoying. I can see a lot of it stuck to the gravel but annoyingly I didn't have a gravel vac available until yesterday so its just been piling up a bit. Tommorow I'll have a good go at cleaning things up and perhaps I'll get some photos of the new growth!

More suggestions are welcome about shoaling fish and I was also wondering how feasible it would be to have a filter feeding shrimp in with the CRS? Would they fight?? It'd be pretty nice to have one of those scuttling around! I'd been eyeing them up for a while but I never got round to looking at their compatibility..

 

[Ps3Steveo]

The filter shrimp would be fine in a tank that size, I kept them together with Cherries and CRS before and they were ok. The fuzz on the wood will go eventually, most new woods do it when becoming water logged. Oh btw Embers are cheap so a large shoal wouldn't be too expensive.

 

[ATK!!!]

The filter shrimp would be fine in a tank that size, I kept them together with Cherries and CRS before and they were ok. The fuzz on the wood will go eventually, most new woods do it when becoming water logged. Oh btw Embers are cheap so a large shoal wouldn't be too expensive.

Good good! I'll try and remove some of it later when I do the gravel vac. The weird thing is it seems to be growing out from the wood onto the substrate I hope it'll go away soon as its looking awful!

 

[Ps3Steveo]

It's just like a jelly, you can syphon it up.

 

[ATK!!!]

Time for an update! Well quite a lot of things have happened, nearly all bad! So far, the black background is shrinking or expanding and is getting loads of weird air bubbles that we can't get rid of. Annoyingly the tank is right up against the wall so it'll be hard to rectify. Then we have the algae.... I've got the usual brown diatoms that have covered the Anubias and some of the other plants, also I seem to have a load of hair algae all over certain parts of the Anubias and the Crypts. Yesterday I decided to go for a huge clean! I did a huge gravel vac, sucked at all of the plant leaves and pulled as much hair algae off as possible. It is looking better but this is obviously only a short term fix. Hopefully the ammonia/nitrite levels will have stabilised enough for a nerite snail and some shrimp which may be added next weekend.

On the bright side, the filter is really quiet now and the bacterial bloom has ended! The water is looking brilliantly clear . Also the anubias has flowered twice and produced a couple of leaves, the other plants are all going mad. I have already pruned the hygro and the Alternantherea is catching up!

I'll put some pics up later this afternoon!

 

[ATK!!!]

Well here we are, about a month down the line. Many more changes have been made, there are now 5 Amano shrimp living happily in the tank alongside 2 Nerite snails! All of the plants have grown massively and have been trimmed numerous times! Also all of the algae has disappeared, maybe due to the shrimp cleaning the tank or perhaps it has stabilised a bit more. This gave me a chance to use my dad's fancy new Sony NEX-7 to take some lovely shots of the Anubias flowering and giving off what appears to be large air bubbles! I would be interested to know why this happens... anyway it looks awesome

The duckweed is spreading just as I planned

Side shot of the tank

FTS

Another FTS later in the afternoon

 

[ian]

looking very nice there ATK.

the anubias look very healthy, the bubble is the flower respiring. This normally happen in C02 injected tanks or directly after a water change. The plant must have had a source of C02 intake and the bubble is the 02 expiring.

 

[ATK!!!]

Fair enough! The only reason I was wondering was that I thought that only Photosynthesis produced 02 and the flower doesn't usually photosynthesise on a normal plant? Would that mean the bubble would be CO2 produced from respiration... Or do Anubias flowers photosynthesise? Anyway thanks for the compliments!

 

[ian]

the flowers of anubias do pearl, i presume they do photosynthesis, they do adapt to underwater conditions, with would make me think they would photosynthesis.

you should be proud of that, any plans for more crypt parva along the front?

 

[ATK!!!]

That definitely is one good idea, I haven't quite made my mind up yet as to what to do in the foreground. Do you think that the parva would look good filling in the gaps created by the larger crypts like this:

Oh and one other thing, it would seem that there are some weird white maggot like things moving around on the back of the tank, they are about 4mm long and quite fat I don't have a clue what they are but they seem to be growing in numbers.... Any idea what they could be? I'll try getting a pic later

 

[ATK!!!]

It's been quite a while since I've updated this so I thought I'd go ahead! Since the picture above this post was taken, a year and a lot of growing has occured! Today I just added something which I've always wanted to try: Eleocharis parvula. I'm hoping that in time it will grow out and fill in to make a nice addition to the foreground. Hydrocotyle Tripartita was also added as I found it's leaves to be incredibly pretty so we'll see how that goes Finally, I trimmed the mass of Hygrophila corymbosa which has taken over a large part of the tank and added some Bacopa Compacta to break it up. Here's some quick pics. I'll be getting out the Sony NEX for some better ones tomorrow:
 
 
FTS

 
The fish seem to love the new plants!