Overdue Update - not so South American themed 55 gallon
It's been a while since I've posted in my journal here, but since I've started to get back into messing with the tank I thought it might be worth doing.
I had originally planned on having all South American type fish and plants in this tank. Early on I moved away from that somewhat with my plant choices. I didn't want to go blackwater (is that what that's called?) anyway.
Since then, I've gone through long periods of barely even maintaining my tanks (I stop doing CO2, stop dosing ferts, don't change the T5 fluorescent bulbs, etc.) I keep feeding the fish, and occasionally (very occasionally) doing water changes. but that's it. In this tank the plants die back a good bit, start looking unhealthy, etc. Fortunately I very rarely lose fish.
About 3 months back I got back into heavier maintenance, and then shortly thereafter decided to rescape a little bit and sell some of the massive amounts of Vals I'd grown since re-starting ferts and CO2. Now, for the time being, anyway, I'm spending a lot of time with the tanks.
During my off-time, the filter on the 20 gallon in my living room died. I didn't feel like replacing it though, so I took all 12 of the cherry barbs from that tank and put them in the 55. About a year ago there were only 4 cherry barbs in that tank, but they had babies and 8 of them survived. So I added the cherry barbs to my 55 with the bleeding heart tetras, black skirt tetras, amano shrimp, and rainbow. Clearly all thoughts of it being a themed tank were well gone by then.
Today when I was cleaning I was surprised to find yet another young cherry barb hiding in the massive pile of plants. I never saw any fry; I'm amazed any can survive that tank with all the bleeding hearts. I couldn't find any more young 'uns today, so maybe just one made it. Or maybe the others are still hiding. At any rate this one came out in the open while I was taking pictures...
I'll attach a couple full tank shots at the bottom, as well as one of the new member of the family.
It's been a while since I've posted in my journal here, but since I've started to get back into messing with the tank I thought it might be worth doing.
I had originally planned on having all South American type fish and plants in this tank. Early on I moved away from that somewhat with my plant choices. I didn't want to go blackwater (is that what that's called?) anyway.
Since then, I've gone through long periods of barely even maintaining my tanks (I stop doing CO2, stop dosing ferts, don't change the T5 fluorescent bulbs, etc.) I keep feeding the fish, and occasionally (very occasionally) doing water changes. but that's it. In this tank the plants die back a good bit, start looking unhealthy, etc. Fortunately I very rarely lose fish.
About 3 months back I got back into heavier maintenance, and then shortly thereafter decided to rescape a little bit and sell some of the massive amounts of Vals I'd grown since re-starting ferts and CO2. Now, for the time being, anyway, I'm spending a lot of time with the tanks.
During my off-time, the filter on the 20 gallon in my living room died. I didn't feel like replacing it though, so I took all 12 of the cherry barbs from that tank and put them in the 55. About a year ago there were only 4 cherry barbs in that tank, but they had babies and 8 of them survived. So I added the cherry barbs to my 55 with the bleeding heart tetras, black skirt tetras, amano shrimp, and rainbow. Clearly all thoughts of it being a themed tank were well gone by then.
Today when I was cleaning I was surprised to find yet another young cherry barb hiding in the massive pile of plants. I never saw any fry; I'm amazed any can survive that tank with all the bleeding hearts. I couldn't find any more young 'uns today, so maybe just one made it. Or maybe the others are still hiding. At any rate this one came out in the open while I was taking pictures...
I'll attach a couple full tank shots at the bottom, as well as one of the new member of the family.
