helterskelter
Livebearer Specilest
Over the last week I’ve been having to mop up after our small tank developed a leak....
It was only 24x12x12 inches with lots ok plants and a few guppies.
It’s plated with a Aponogeton madagascariensis or Madagascar lace plant as a centre.
Lot’s of Cryptocorine wendelii around and lots of Limnophilia in the background.
It also has a red tiger lotus to the left and a normal lotus plant to the right with some thing in the four ground which I have no clue.
So when it some to either replacing or repairing the tank i was dreading up rooting every thing to have to replant it all again.
So today the wife when out and i had a change to just get on with it all.
So firstly I got all my buckets from work and a few bags, i got all the fish and put them in a bucket, next was catching the shrimp!!! I only had a couple of adults left so catching then was easy, but then i tried catching a couple of the baby cherry shrimp and all i could see was more baby shrimp.
I seen plenty of baby shrimp over the last month but their was far more than i was expecting.
My next approach was to remove all the plants and because of the baby shrimp I had to use another bucket to keep the plants in to give the baby shrimp a chance to survive that was still among them.
Once the plants was out I could then see how many baby shrimp I had. No joke every I looked their was another shrimplet. I netted as many as I could but these was from 4-10mm in size!
Now with my caring nature I wanted to save as many I could. but this was almost impossible!
So now I had to remove the sand and shrimplets (that I could not catch), i did this by syphoning out the water and hovering up the sand and a few shrimp.
By the time I had done this I was down to my last bucket. This is annoying as i had to try to keep as much of the original water as possible to make the move as easily as possible.
So now i has the fish all safe, the shrimp safe and all the plants ok.
I syphoned out the wast water and inspected the tank for the original problem of a leak!!!
Needless to say I could not see the problem. The leak was only happing with a full load of water and i could not locate it, so the choice was to get some glue and re-seal the tank or buy a new one!!!!
I decided to take the easy route and buy a new tank. Oh yea make it bigger too!!!
So I popped out and got a slightly larger tank due to lack of space.
So now I have a larger tank in the living room to watch, it’s still only 24 inches long by 12 but it’s 15 inches high now so the plants have a better growing area.
I set the base up again and added the sand, I did not wash the sand so the nitrobacter and nitrosoma bacteria’s was not killed, these remove some toxins from the water and washing it would of killed them.
I added all the spar water I had from the original tank in the buckets and the topped it up with treated tap water to fill up near the top.
I then planted up all the plants, I had to trim so much wast off the old plants but it’s good to do this once in a while.
I has as much wast as i did good plants and the roots from the lotus plants was huge, all this and old plants had to be trimmed up and re-planted which did not take too long.
As i used all the original water (well 80% or so) i only had to top up the water and set up the filtration and heating and then i could add the fish and shrimp.
I acclimatised the fish to the new tank for only 10 mins, swapping some water every min or two. As this was the original water then was happy and was back into the new tank almost with in an hour of being removed.
So now they are back in their new tank and looking very happy and the i counted at least 50 shrimp!!!!!
The tank know looks a little bare as the plants have all been trimmed back but give it 10 days and they will all be growing back.
Still I’m happy now I found something to spend my birthday money now!
New pic after rehash
One week on
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 7
Week 10
very over grown
It was only 24x12x12 inches with lots ok plants and a few guppies.
It’s plated with a Aponogeton madagascariensis or Madagascar lace plant as a centre.
Lot’s of Cryptocorine wendelii around and lots of Limnophilia in the background.
It also has a red tiger lotus to the left and a normal lotus plant to the right with some thing in the four ground which I have no clue.
So when it some to either replacing or repairing the tank i was dreading up rooting every thing to have to replant it all again.
So today the wife when out and i had a change to just get on with it all.
So firstly I got all my buckets from work and a few bags, i got all the fish and put them in a bucket, next was catching the shrimp!!! I only had a couple of adults left so catching then was easy, but then i tried catching a couple of the baby cherry shrimp and all i could see was more baby shrimp.
I seen plenty of baby shrimp over the last month but their was far more than i was expecting.
My next approach was to remove all the plants and because of the baby shrimp I had to use another bucket to keep the plants in to give the baby shrimp a chance to survive that was still among them.
Once the plants was out I could then see how many baby shrimp I had. No joke every I looked their was another shrimplet. I netted as many as I could but these was from 4-10mm in size!
Now with my caring nature I wanted to save as many I could. but this was almost impossible!
So now I had to remove the sand and shrimplets (that I could not catch), i did this by syphoning out the water and hovering up the sand and a few shrimp.
By the time I had done this I was down to my last bucket. This is annoying as i had to try to keep as much of the original water as possible to make the move as easily as possible.
So now i has the fish all safe, the shrimp safe and all the plants ok.
I syphoned out the wast water and inspected the tank for the original problem of a leak!!!
Needless to say I could not see the problem. The leak was only happing with a full load of water and i could not locate it, so the choice was to get some glue and re-seal the tank or buy a new one!!!!
I decided to take the easy route and buy a new tank. Oh yea make it bigger too!!!
So I popped out and got a slightly larger tank due to lack of space.
So now I have a larger tank in the living room to watch, it’s still only 24 inches long by 12 but it’s 15 inches high now so the plants have a better growing area.
I set the base up again and added the sand, I did not wash the sand so the nitrobacter and nitrosoma bacteria’s was not killed, these remove some toxins from the water and washing it would of killed them.
I added all the spar water I had from the original tank in the buckets and the topped it up with treated tap water to fill up near the top.
I then planted up all the plants, I had to trim so much wast off the old plants but it’s good to do this once in a while.
I has as much wast as i did good plants and the roots from the lotus plants was huge, all this and old plants had to be trimmed up and re-planted which did not take too long.
As i used all the original water (well 80% or so) i only had to top up the water and set up the filtration and heating and then i could add the fish and shrimp.
I acclimatised the fish to the new tank for only 10 mins, swapping some water every min or two. As this was the original water then was happy and was back into the new tank almost with in an hour of being removed.
So now they are back in their new tank and looking very happy and the i counted at least 50 shrimp!!!!!
The tank know looks a little bare as the plants have all been trimmed back but give it 10 days and they will all be growing back.
Still I’m happy now I found something to spend my birthday money now!
New pic after rehash
One week on
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 7
Week 10
very over grown
