Well gang, I'm retiring my green thumb..

[spankey]

Its been great this past year chating with all of you and helping anyone out along the way. I mean I'm not leaving the forum, but I am retiring from plants.... I guess my schedule won't allow me to do the frequent water changes and upkeep on the tank....Pruning,ferting ect.....

Any rate. I am going to do an african cichlid setup. So that should be cool....

Between my magnum canister and my AC300, I should have enough filtration. Now I need to get the coral substrate and get started.....Wish me luck...

I'll check in from time to time to see if I can offer any 2 cents worth of info if needed...

Thanks to all of you for all your help over the time I had this tank set up...You guys and gals are a great bunch. Truely helpful....

Take care...

Spankey

 

[plantbrain]

No one likes a quitter...... Well... smokers don't.
You can still use things like water sprite and other floaters in AF tanks. They will help. Easy to care for/deal with.
I always used it in all my cichlid tanks.
The plant tank will be here if you change your mind later on.
It'll be like the fish, err....plant, that got away, knawing deep into your psyche

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[spankey]

Plantbrain-

Won't the addition of the salt content for the cichlids kill or harm the water sprite and such? I intend to add salt to the tank, due to others recomending it?

Do you add any salt or have added salt to your cichlid setups?

See I am still here...LOL I can't seem to get away from these darn plants... HA HA...



Thanks gain....

Spank.

 

[plantbrain]

When you refer to salt, I hope you do not mean NaCl.
Cichlids don't need this. They need things like Mg, Ca, K, SO4's.
Na is pretty far down on the list of cations.

Most cichlids you buy unless you are into Xenotiliapia, Cyprichromis, etc simply do not need these marketed cichlid salts, especially if you already have relatively hard tap water.

Where are these fish raised? By farms, LFSs or breeders and most of them do NOT use added salts. It cost too much to run large water changes etc.
Unless you have F0's or some wimpy Tangy's, you don't need to worry much about it unless you have KH/GH less than 3-5.
GH you can add MgSO4 and CaCl2 to get it to 5 or higher etc.
K2SO4 is still good to use etc.

Most plant nutrients are present in the make up. Na and Cl can cause issue if too high. But even there a few plants are pretty good.

Cichlids are popular because they are active and tough. Don't coddle them.
If you don't have time for the plant thing, you don't have time to coddle fish by dosing salts etc. Plant tanks are not any different, we add salts to these, many of which like K2SO4 and GH as the same make up as the rift lakes.
Plants do well at high GH.

I'll tell you this: cichlid salts are a relatively new thing. Breeders like myself did not use "salts" 20 years ago. They were not available but we routinely bred every darn fish that came out of the lakes. We had hard water, but most folks have hard water in the USA.

__Somehow__ we mananged to sweak by and somehow managed to bred fish for last 30 years
Point is, the fish don't need it. You create more work and expense for yourself for some fish that's lived its entire life in normal tap water. A water change and good food will do the fish better IME.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[spankey]

Thank you


point well taken... I did keep my two java ferns.. Maybee they will be ok to still use???

Thanks gain..

spankey

 

[djlen]

Now where am I gonna get my daily chuckle!?!

Hey Spank.....say it ain't so.....the plant forum won't be the same without your questions and feedback. I feel like I'm losing a friend here. But I guess you'll be hanging around on the other forums, so I'll keep an eye out for you.
And as Tom says......you'll be back. Once a plant lover, always a plant lover. Later........
Len

 

[spankey]

Len-

Yeah I guess I will be a drifter for awhile.. I am not totally gone as Tom stated, Salt is NOT a requirement in a cichlid tank... SO I will still be keeping my java ferns and maybe getting some anubis.....

I still have my 10 gallons with some plants in them, but as for the 55 gallon, Its stripped.... ...... Just java's now...

My wife and I were up at that pet place this past weekend.. MY wallet is greiving... But hey we all know how it can be... Especialy when you are saving like 50% compared to a lfs when you are in the big chain stores....

Any rate. we walked past the cichlid tanks and she fell in love with thier colors.. My wallet was by now in my socks... Running from her. As all know the cichlids are so Exspensive.... We saw a few that were about 4 inches that were $30.00... OMG... But its colors where off the wall...

I look at it this way. This is the closest way to get the colors of a salt water tank but at a fresh water budget....

I dream of a salt water tank, but we know how HIGH MAINTINECE they are... I thought the plants were bad.... WHew... Salt I hear is horrible....

Any rate... I will post pics when I am done setting it up... Most likely I will do it slowly but over the next month or so.....


Take care

Spankey..............

 

[Tempest]

Sorry to hear that Spankey. The picture I saw of your 55 gallon really looked nice. Maybe you'll get the urge for the green stuff again soon.