My Doomed Tetra Tank...

[tanksalot]

Thought it was time I posted a (bad) photo of my tank. Those blue and red blobs really are my neons...promise

The Cabomba had had a bit of a haircut when I took this photo, but it still spreads all the way from front to back of the tank and over to the left as well. The Crypt likewise spreads from front to back, so it's grown quite a bit since I received it. I tied my Java moss to a piece of slate and that makes a nice little cushion down in the shade of the Crypt. Now if only I weren't so lazy I'd make a background, and then I'd probably be quite happy with it for a first attempt (obvious internal filter notwithstanding!).

Still, the important thing is that it has never shown any detectable levels of ammonia and nitrite since day 2, and still doesn't. I'm down to a weekly water change now and the nitrate level goes no higher than somewhere between 5 and 10ppm between changes, so I'm finally beginning to relax and enjoy my little fishies.

Oh, the algae growth doesn't seem to have changed much with the decreased photoperiod, but in such a small tank it's not exactly an arduous task to whisk a toothbrush and a bit of sponge around the leaves every few days to keep it at bay. I'm surprised that there's been no algae growing on the glass up till now - that'll probably be next .

My 64litre has been a bit of a puzzle. It's had plants in it for a few days now and whilst there is no detectable ammonia, there is nitrite at up to 0.5ppm. As the tank is not in a fishless cycle and there are no living creatures in there to provide an ammonia source, I was wondering where the heck it could be coming from. Then I remembered that my Crypt had arrived as 5 small plantlets with so little root that I thought the best way to get them anchored was to put them in a perforated plant pot with an inch or so of multipurpose compost in and bury that in the gravel. I wondered if it could be that the compost was leaching nitrites into the water column, so yesterday I removed it and re-potted the Crypt in John Innes No1 mix (soil-based seed and cutting compost with minimal ferts) and tested the water this morning to find that the nitrite has gone down to <0.25ppm. I don't know if that is "case solved", but I'll keep testing and see what happens...

 

[tanksalot]

The day has come. My (not so) Doomed Tetra Tank is no more.

Yesterday, the 64 litre showed no signs of nitrite so I moved my neons into their new home. Catching them was...umm...fun. Managed to gently herd most of them into a glass jar placed on the bottom of the tank, but the last one wasn't going anywhere near that jar, so I ended up having to remove everything except the Crypt in order to net it. I acclimated them for about 45 minutes then released them into the new tank, and they seem to have been having a ball ever since! No hiding or skulking in corners: they've explored everywhere and seem to have the best time throwing themselves into the currents from the two filters - I moved the old one over with them - and swimming against them. The water stats were perfect this morning, and obviously I'll be keeping a very close eye on them. I won't be adding any more fish until I'm certain the new filter/plants can cope with the current bioload, at which point, the old filter can go back into the 27 litre tank which will then become the quarantine tank for new arrivals. I'd like a couple more neons to bring the shoal to 7, and definitely a shoal of small cories. I think I'd also like one bigger fish such as a platy, but I'm undecided about that.

Anyway, I guess I'll have quite a while to make my mind up...

 

[waterdrop]

Sounds good tanksalot,

Catching tetras is a two net job: big net, little net. You get and put a really large net (base it on the side-size of your smaller tank perhaps, so you could use it with both) and then you herd them into the big net with a smaller net.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[tanksalot]

Thanks, WD. I'll get another net - for the ones that are too smart to go into my glass jar

Mind you...that's if I have any left to net. Made an unpleasant discovery today regarding pH. I went into this with my eyes tight shut (as evidenced by everything I did for starters!), and because I didn't do a fishless cycle I never bought a pH testing kit until now. Tested my tap water - and tank water - today, and it is at least 7.6 (that's as high as the test goes).

Now, as a gardnener, I did know that the water (and soil) around here is a tad alkaline - I've never tried to grow ericaceous plants for that reason - but I didn't put two and two together when it came to keeping fish and sort of assumed that as long as it was wet, any old water would do .

So I'm guessing that as they prefer a lower pH, my neons probably won't be here for the long haul no matter how careful I am to keep the water quality good? I've already read that attempting to change pH is a no-no because fluctuations are even worse for fish, so at least that's one mistake I can avoid.

This fishkeeping business is far more complicated than I ever imagined...

 

[waterdrop]

Ericaceous: belonging to heath family: belonging or relating to the heath family, a group of evergreen bushes and small trees that includes the heath, heather, blueberry, rhododendron, azalea, and arbutus.

Thanks! You've given me my dictionary word for the morning - I had never heard the word ericaceous before but I've certainly heard of and seen some of the famous heaths over in the northern reaches of the isles our UK friends live on!

Let me guess that perhaps you purchased the normal range API pH test kit? There is a high range one that goes with it in the master kit and when you hit the top of the normal range you of course give the high range a try. It would probably show your water pH was even higher than 7.6. That is a range that will make livebearers like guppies, swords, platies and mollys very happy but will make life difficult for our Amazonian friends like the neons, cardinals and angels.

And unfortunately you are right, lowering pH (especially lowering!) is a major effort. [Actually, it -is- kind of interesting how its done properly - you generally purchase and install a high-quality reverse osmosis (RO) water system that's usually installed under a sink somewhere and can potentially reward you with high water bills as large amounts of waste water washes away the excess minerals that the high tech membrane strains out of the hard water, leaving water that doesn't have much of anything in it and has been produced in much smaller quantity. You then have several options, most commonly adding back in a percentage of your harder tap water in a percentage that gives you the desired hardness as measured by an electronic TDS meter and a resulting low pH. In some cases, breeders or others with a need will craft a custom mineral-mix to get just the right actual minerals rather than just use their tap water (I've never done this, so I don't know the details.)]

You can see perhaps that what I've described above is dramatically different than the sort of slap-dash thing a beginner will hear from a shop clerk who just says, here, buy some pH-down powder - that sort of thing can create a mess in a tank.

~~waterdrop~~