Soupysteve's 40gallon breeder journal

I've found the cardinals to be much hardier personally. I bought my original 6, lost one (like totally and completely disappeared so idk what happened), bought three more and now all eight are happy and healthy. I actually think I might add a few more, they are gorgeous when they school as their colors are far more rich than neons :)
 
Another morning, another dead neon...
It looks like the count is at 9 neons left... of 36 (minus two jumpers) makes me feel awful.
I have really been humbled by this. I thought I had spent adequate time making sure my tank was as close to home as possible...
I will see if the neons will just vanish or if there will be a hearty group of survivors. My birthday falls on the last weekend of the month, so I will treat myself to some new "school" then.
CiaoBella - I'll do some more looking at the cardinals - I agree that they look much more striking. It's just that the LFS here offer neons 12 for $15 - so a good sized bunch wasn't gonna break my wallet. Cardinals here cost 3 or 4 bucks each. Of course, as I said before, if they live, they are worth the cost!
I also like your thoughts on having a shoal of otos and cory cats as well. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough algae growth to feed more than the 4 or 5 I have now. The cory cats seem to pi$$ off my ram at feeding time - and they act CRAZY sometimes, and I was afraid they would stress out the neons. I think my rubber nose is LOVING all the driftwood in my tank and I'd like to get more - they don't get over 4" from what I've read, so how many could I put in?
 
I love my cories but I finally moved them to another tank as the Rams were definately bothered by them at chow time and often were not able to eat as cories are such little piggies! Keep on eye on that.........Just my opinion.
 
So, by the time late October rolled around, I was down to four neons, the rubber-nosed pleco, two cory cats, the ram, and 3 otos. I bought another dozen neons on the 30th. I have 12 left as of today.
The tank became a breeding ground for the most prolific duckweed outbreak EVER! I thought it looked cool, so I left them... But they got so thick they started blocking the light, so I had to go crazy and net all of it out.
I only feed the tank twice a week. Everyone seems happy.
While I had the duckweed explosion, I noticed this nasty brown/green fungus(?) or hair algae started taking over some of my live plants - like rooting onto their leaves and such. I cannot imagine it being "good" for them. What eats the stuff? I hate it, what ever it is. If possible, I'd prefer to get something native to South America.
Any suggestions?
I am also considering getting an additional filter (a duplicate of the one I already have) or a canister filter - as I'd like to add more fish. I promise I won't buy more fish (unless it's to eat the nasty algae) until I upgrade my filtration.
 
Totally off subject, but how/when can I import a custom avatar?[/quote]
:topic: Nice choice of avatar!!! I love Maynard(friends) artwork, not to mention the music! Are you a tool listener? How about his other bands:evil_lol:. Okay, I'll get back on topic now. Nice to hear you are getting into freshwater, and doing your research! you came to a great place! The people here are very helpful to me! Excited to see where this tank takes you. I will surely like to see your reef too!
 
Sorry to hear you've lost so many neons! If I were you, I might consider going to a different lfs that gets their stock of neons from a different "distributor." I had luck with keeping neons and I wasn't the best fishkeeper at the time! I think there is just bad stock with neon tetras.

As for your possible hair algae issue, could you take a picture of the mystery substance so it can be more accurately identified? It'll then be easier to find a solution... If it is hair algae, nerite snails are good at eating it, but I don't think they're from south america (dk tho). Msjinkzd sells nerites in the classifieds section if you end up wanting to go that route.

This is off topic, but when you mentioned converting your 110 to a fw planted and thought about keeping your metal halides for plant growth, I thought that was a good idea! I have a friend who has a 46g planted tank with halides and the tank is gorgeous! I say keep the halides for when/if you eventually convert the tank to a planted, and it if ends up not working, you can sell them at that point.
 
Try getting a some cory cats to accompany the two you have. They usually do better in atleast a school of 6. Starting to convert my community tank into a SA biotope as well. How's the baby tear plant? I heard it's one of the more challenging plants to keep. Good luck on the setup! Love the aquascape.
 
Powerkit: Thanks for the kind words concerning my avatar... It looks like you figured out how to get yours customized. I am a huge fan of Tool - and to an a lesser (though this is not a knock) extent Maynard.
Saram521: I am starting to believe that I just got a bad couple of batches (same LFS). That and possibly overfeeding (leading to constipation) may have been the issue, as everything is kickin'.
I checked out pics of nuisance algae online and have determined that aside from the duckweed, I also have Rhodophyta (which I personally don't mind; I think it's beautiful) on a lot of my rock work and some of my driftwood, Staghorn/Compsopogon in a few places (NASTY), and diatoms in areas where the water flow wasn't sufficient.
I'm not quite ready to convert my 110g into a discus tank (and that IS what I'd do), but the more I walk by the tanks with a nice sized group of discus, cardinal tetras, pricey plecostomus, etc... the closer I get to changing over.
Myang07: I'd throw some more cory cats in, but the two I have act like preschoolers on methamphetamine when feeding time comes around. I think I prefer the "Ottos" temperment over theirs.
All of my plants are growing - the problem is that the edges of all their leaves have algae of one the three mentioned above growing on them.
Thanks for the compliment on the aquascaping - I like it also; I attribute a lot of its beauty to the footprint of the tank itself. The depth rocks!
SchizotypalVamp:
After my water goes through my RO/DI unit, it just sits in the garage in a plastic 55 gallon drum. I don't do anything beyond that to it.

So today I picked up a second rubber-nosed plecostomus and a second Marineland biowheel 200 for my tank.
I'll see how much (if any) impact the second filter makes. If the tank starts clearing up, I'd like to add more fish - preferably "Ottos" and maybe a couple of Rams.
Aside from the "Ottos" does anyone have any livestock (from South American waters) suggestions for my algae issue?
When/if my neons are all gone, I may go the direction of the cardinal tetras... I found one online special... 50 cardinals for $55!!!
 
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