55G planted South American themed planted tank journal
- Thread starter cobfreak
- Start date
At some point I moved my original CO2 bottle out of this tank and into my 20 gallon. This left this tank with a 3 bottle CO2 setup, all running into the glass diffuser I picked up from somebody. I am suspicious that I could still use more CO2; it seems like my algae was least present during the time that all of those bottles were running. Therefore I'm creating another DIY CO2 setup with a 2.8 liter juice bottle, running into another bubble counter, and all of that will run through an airstone beneath the filter intake the way the 2 liter was running before I moved it. This time I'm using the Jell-o mixture, recipe for which was sent to me by James I think the use of that canister filter is the best way to distribute the CO2, although I still worry that it may damage the filter. In this case, that filter is already somewhat screwed up, as there is a slow leak in the outflow hose connector. I will be replacing the filter at some point I think, though I still will probably repair this one also.
The plants are still growing well, or most of them are, anyway. The apongeton has gone a little nuts, and the sword is finally sort of taking off. I trimmed a lot of the cabomba, the jungle vals, and the water sprite, significantly. The jungle vals are having an issue that I haven't identified - most of them are a very nice rust/red color, which looks cool but I don't think is right. And many of the leaves also look nearly translucent.
Like I said, the algae is also getting a little bit of a hold again. The driftwood where the amanos like to hang out is almost completely clear of all the stuff that had covered it, but I don't think those thing venture far from that place to clean the rest of the tank. So some of the algae looks like diatoms, though I'm not sure, some of it is what I call hair algae. Some of these pictures may show some of that.
Snails are reproducing. I cleaned off some eggs from the glass yesterday. There are pond or bladder snails, a big ramshorn, and MTS. Also the limpets (bird poo snails) are multiplying. All of those latter are still very small.
Here are some photos from yesterday, after a water change and a cleaning:
The plants are still growing well, or most of them are, anyway. The apongeton has gone a little nuts, and the sword is finally sort of taking off. I trimmed a lot of the cabomba, the jungle vals, and the water sprite, significantly. The jungle vals are having an issue that I haven't identified - most of them are a very nice rust/red color, which looks cool but I don't think is right. And many of the leaves also look nearly translucent.
Like I said, the algae is also getting a little bit of a hold again. The driftwood where the amanos like to hang out is almost completely clear of all the stuff that had covered it, but I don't think those thing venture far from that place to clean the rest of the tank. So some of the algae looks like diatoms, though I'm not sure, some of it is what I call hair algae. Some of these pictures may show some of that.
Snails are reproducing. I cleaned off some eggs from the glass yesterday. There are pond or bladder snails, a big ramshorn, and MTS. Also the limpets (bird poo snails) are multiplying. All of those latter are still very small.
Here are some photos from yesterday, after a water change and a cleaning:
I think Im in love with your tank! Very nice work. and FYI I dont think there is anything wrong with your jungle vals. There is actually a variation of jungle vals that due produce a dark red. I believe they go by red jungle vals. 
:werd:I think Im in love with your tank! Very nice work. and FYI I dont think there is anything wrong with your jungle vals. There is actually a variation of jungle vals that due produce a dark red. I believe they go by red jungle vals.
+1, my rule is that it's okay if it's still alive
Eww. I just installed the other CO2 setup, running the output back under the filter intake where the 2 liter line used to run. There are always a bunch of vals stuck to the bottom of the intake (the intake on this filter is a flat pill bottle lid with holes drilled in it, as the used filter came without a filter basket/screen thing), so I reached under to pull those away so that the CO2 bubbles could have a clear path (for whatever that's worth.) This time the vals weren't as easy to pull away as usual, so I felt around on the cap and there are bunches of hard, crunchies. Guess it was a bunch of snails, and I pulled the all away, after which the flow from the filter actually increased noticably. So now I figure snails have probably started to gather inside the filter, too, which I've read about but never experienced. Yippee! Also, earlier, I did a little cleaning and found that the snails (mostly ramshorns) love the floating water sprite. They were all through it. I took all of those out and threw them in my 20 gallon. Those things are really growing fast, and I don't think I feed too much. I guess I must be wrong, but it's tough making sure I'm feeding the tank right with the quick tetras grabbing everything and the shrimp and cories left to get stuff on the bottom.
It's late!
It's late!
