[GSAS-Member] update on the cloudy tank

[Shamus Young <machismo@eskimo.com>]

Thanks again to everyone here for their input into the cloudy work tank.

I'm a little unhappy with the noise of the eclipse hood.  I don't care so
much for myself, just I don't want complaints at work.  So I might yet
take the advice of starting over, and moving it to my empty 20g tank, and
covering the peat and fluorite with some sand, and using a magnum HOT for
mechanical filtration.

But for now, I was trying to make the set up I put together at work work.

My thought on what happened was that I didn't rinse the fluorite well
enough, and that tip about putting paper towels over the soaked peat is
something I'll have to remember.  Just as the dirt started to settle, I
think I got a bacterial bloom feeding off the stuff out of the peat.

I set up the Magnum HOT on the side of the eclipse 12 tank, with the
micron cartridge and filter floss in there, and it wasn't straining the
water at all.

I went with the chemical clarifier, the cheap one that the Fish Store had.
It didn't work at regular strength, but at double dosage, got the stuff to
clump enough that the filter picked it up.  I could also drag the surface
of the gravel lightly and kick stuff up, and it would get sucked up.  I
was also treating with this bacterial starter stuff that Macker sold me.
I've never used it before, but what the hell, I'll give it a try.  By
friday of last week, it was looking murky instead of opaque.  So I added a
piece of driftwood from my 40g tank, which has been up for 14 years and
which has a couple of Anubius nana tied to it. I had another piece of
driftwood that has been out of water for a couple of years, and I tied a
bunch of java moss to it (thanks Jimmy, for that Java moss-- I passed a
hunk on to a coworker who just set up a tank for his kids, and his corys
love it) and that went in.

When I got in on Monday, the tank was nearly opaque again, and I think
that this time it was mostly a bacterial bloom.  Maybe a little of the
fluorite dust that goes into suspension.  I added more chemical clarifier,
and by afternoon, it was back to being hazy.

On Tuesday, I planted a couple of crypts in there and put a sponge that
had been in my main tank for a month in there.  I was going to run a
sponge filter in addition to the eclipse stuff, but the fish store and
AP4P don't carry that brand, so I'll have to see if Little Amazon has it,
or order online.  For now, it's just sitting in the corner.

The tank is noticably clearer after a couple of days, still no fish in
there.  People at work, who were giving me crap about my gross tank and
cracking primordial soup jokes (I do work in a biotech) were now saying
that it looked pretty good.  I ran the tests on it today.  pH has slowly
been dropping all week, and is now 6.2.  I found that my ammonia test kit
was busted, and the bottle evaporated. Nitrites were 0, nitrates were
6ppm. That supports my theory that I got a bacterial bloom after the dirt
was starting to get filtered out.

I did a 70% water change, pH went back up to 6.8.  I didn't retest
anything else.

I think tomorrow, I'm going to put a paradise fish (thanks, Shango) so
that the bacteria in the sponge doesn't die off.

As long as I don't scrap the Eclipse and go to the 20 gallon, I think the
tank is in a good place, with an eye to be kept on the pH due to the peat
in the substrate.  if the crypts end up doing well after the usual leaf
shedding and such, I'll add more, and then look for more plants that will
put up with the 13w light.  I'm thinking I might want to try Hemianthus
callitrichodes for some ground cover.

Once it's more established, I'm going to add in Corys, and maybe some
livebearers for the paradise to chase around.

At the same time, I've been restarting a 26 gallon acrylic tank that a
friend gave me a couple of years ago.  He was running it as a very nice
plant tank with a pair of rainbow cichlids for a few years.  He gave it to
me, and I put it in the back room, thinking that I'd work out in there and
watch fish.  Yeah, right.  I'm still fat as ever, and the tank quickly
crashed from neglect. It sat as a stagnant cesspool for a couple of years.
Then I rearranged furniture and got it upstairs in the living room.

It's got a deep sand bed that I put a few hundred grams of laterite into.
I pulled driftwood with Anubius nana from the main tank, and put it in
there with a 13w light for a month or so, then started running a sponge
filter that had been seasoned in the main tank, and added half a dozen
penguin tetras.  When Jimmy gave me that clump of Java moss, I threw that
in there, too.

Two weeks ago, I ordered the 10g "easy life habitat" from AZ aquatic
gardens.

I had it shipped to work, and they shipped it to my home address.  I
looked online, and saw that it was delivered, and had to track it down.
The guy I talked to on the phone was so laid back I had to wonder how he
got into hydroponic growing.  No matter, as long as the snails I added to
the order weren't going to kick off in 55 degree seattle weather, I didn't
care.  The work tank wasn't ready for plants anyhow.

I had ordered some anubius and java fern from AAQ earlier in the year, and
that stuff was good.  I was impressed with the quality of the plants from
them in this order.  For a cheap package, the size was large.  When I got
home, I quickly opened it all up and put it in the tank.  I also switched
to the 96w super-light on that tank at the time.

Unfortunately, the packing list only had "Easy habitat" on it, so I had to
go back and look online at what I got.  I'm new to plants, since I used to
keep a severum that would eat anything, including anubius and onions. So
I've been looking up the items that are in the package, how to properly
plant them, etc.  I think I've finally figured out which plants are which,
and got a good idea on how to plant most of them.

I'll do the aquascaping this weekend.  What I did notice was that I didn't
get the 10 sagittaria subulata that were supposed to be in the package. I
kept all of the bags, and none is marked with that species. There is the
blood stargrass, and I got three of those instead of the 2 I was supposed
to.  I'm not pissed. I think for $40, I got a good deal even if a big
chunk of it was missing.

the dwarf lily was a bulb that had sprouted, and the leaves were torn off,
so I don't know if that will come back.  The anachris has already shot out
some new growth.

I sent AAQ an email about the missing part of the order.  But it's been a
couple of weeks, and it took me until yesterday to be sure that the S.
subulata wasn't in the order.  I don't want them to spend a lot of coin to
ship that out.  Just credit, or throwing some in with the next order.
Though I'm not sure when / if that would be.  I'm going to see what does
well in the tank before I get any more plants.  Occasionally, I'll move
stuff into the work tank to see if it does well there.  I also managed to
kill the java ferns I put in the main tank, though the anubius is doing
well.  The substrate in that one is just gravel, and there's a UGF, so I
was just strapping stuff to driftwood.  So there's room to add more
plants, just down the line.  I'd prefer to go to the plant auction and get
stuff there, but that might not be available.  I do want to try out that
Hemianthus callitrichodes.  AAQ sells it mounted to driftwood, so it might
work in the main tank.

Finally, a couple of months ago, Shango gave me a four paradise fish.
Thanks again.  I put one in my main tank, and the yellow acaras ate it. I
gave one away, and put the other two in a 2gal hex I had around. one of
them killed the other sooner than I figured, and the other is doing fine.
That tank has some moss (christmas, maybe?) that Shango put in the
tupperware with the 4 paradise fish, and a couple of anubius that I bought
from Lauren (thanks again!).  it's got no filtration, and a little hood
with a compact fluorescent screw bulb.  The moss has tripled in size, the
anubius are sprouting leaves, and algae coats the sides. Or did until I
threw a handful of the nerite snails in there.

When the paradise fish moves to the work tank, I'm going to turn the 2 gal
hex into a shrimp and snail tank.  Right now, the substrate is glass
marbles. I was given the tank, and that's what was in it.

To refurbish it, I'm going to pinch a little of the fluorite from the work
tank, and take some of the sand from the 26g plant tank for substrate.
I'm going to cut some plexiglass to give it a top.  I'll put a small piece
of driftwood in there with an anubius on it, some of the moss, and then
look for a ground cover.  Either the Saggiteria or the dwarf baby tears.
after that seems established, I'll add a couple of snails and half a dozen
cherry shrimp, maybe a cuttlebone.  Hopefully, it will be as good for the
shrimp as it is for the plants that are in there now. And I can feed baby
shrimp to the other tanks.


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