Journal About Time (79 gal, no CO2)

[ElleDee]

Y’all, it's finally here! After years of planning and procrastination, I finally have started my 4ft tank! Every single step has taken way longer than planned, but I think I have done enough now that I can actually start a journal. It’s About Time!

Tank: 120x50x50cm, 79 gallons/300 L Hydra Aquatics Tranquility aquarium

Filtration: Two Eheim 2217s (Classic 600) with prefilters, extra sponges, and a spray bar outlets.

Light: Chihiros WRGB2 90cm suspended - Yes, a 90cm light on a 120cm tank.

Substrate system: mesh bags with a mixed substrate of raised bed mix (pine bark fines, sphagnum moss, with a small amount of compost) + Controsoil + my iron-rich native soil + Safetsorb + a tiny bit of dolomitic lime) with a cap of Caribsea Peace River and Caribsea Tornado Beach decorative sand
I am returning to a DIY substrate with a significant organic fraction. I did something similar with my first two tanks that I'm hoping to improve on, but it’s still fairly experimental. I will post about this mix in detail if I end up happy with how it performs, so fingers crossed.

Concept:
This build is my attempt to scale up and refine what I started with Biding Time. I am really happy with the color and plant diversity in that tank, but I never got the balance quite right. BBA was a persistent issue. I found it difficult to maintain the layout as I had imagined - the aquasoil got everywhere and I found it hard to stop myself from planting in any open area, so it eventually became overfilled with plants. I tried out a lot of stem plants, but once they were happy it was work keeping them a reasonable height in such a short tank. There are worse problems to have, but I want to do some course correction this time around.


Yes, I did do my plant layout by physically making paper placeholders and moving them around.

With this layout I have decided to feature a sunken beach. This will hopefully force me to have one open area in the front for fish and some dedicated sand for future corydoras and/or dwarf cichlids. If the cap migrates onto the sand some it should be much less visually obtrusive than aquasoil. I am planting the front half of the tank mainly with plants that should be kept 6” or less, so there should be a lot of open water above that for fish that prefer mid water and higher. I am still including stem plants, but long term they will be in smaller centralized patches. I mentioned that I have a 90 cm light on the tank and my plan is to take advantage of the gradient of light intensity that will result. Plants that need a lot of light will be in the center, and the periphery will be dimmer. The vast majority of my plants don’t need higher light anyway, even most of the stem plants, and I think it will help with algae management if there is a sizable shady area. I think some fish species will appreciate having lower light areas as well. I also like this from an aesthetic perspective - I think contrasting shadows and bright spots are much more dramatic looking than when everything is uniformly lit like a studio family portrait from the 90s. I’ve gone with a black background, but I hope it is mostly obscured by plants in the long term. I have some amazon swords and taller crypts back there that will hopefully do the job.

I am a fairly patient aquarist, so I expect this tank to take a year to grow in. There will be a lot more stems in the beginning to get that plant mass growing, and the crypts are going to take their time getting established. My light gradient idea will probably take some experimentation to implement properly. There will be other problems I haven’t anticipated (and I’ve already encountered the first one). It should be a fun ride.

I’ve got at least one more post until I’ve caught up with the present and after that we'll have to see what develops.

 

[ElleDee]

So I flooded the tank on 9/5 and planned to do a dark start of some length. Since I’m using a somewhat experimental substrate, I thought it would be beneficial to let the most labile organic matter break down and give the developing microbiome a head start.

And I immediately ran into trouble. Though the water was initially clear when I flooded the tank, it got murky within a few hours. Some of this is from colloidal clay from the yard dirt, though there are certainly tannins leaching from the wood and there may be some bacteria at play as well. (I don't think bacteria was the initial cause of the cloudiness due to the speed of the onset, but maybe I'm wrong about that. But I wouldn't be surprised if a bacterial bloom happened since then.) Through some combination of time, chemical flocculant, and increased mechanical filtration the situation began to improve after almost 3 weeks. I went on vacation for a few days last week and came back to an almost entirely clear tank. I thought, ok, that’s enough dark start for me.

I immediately began preparing to plant.

Plant list
Cryptocoryne spp.
Cryptocoryne becketti, C. wendtii ‘Green Gecko’, ‘Tropica’, ‘Mi Oya Red’, C. xpurpurea, C. lucens, C. petchii, C. affinis ‘Red’, C. balensae, C. spiralis ‘Red’, C. usteriana

Stem Plants
Ludwigia repens, L. ‘Super Red’, Bacopa caroliniana, Rotala ‘Blood Red’, R. ‘Super Red Mini’ (I think? It's gotten mixed in with the ‘Blood Red’), stargrass, Pogostemon helferi, Hottonia palustris

Rooted plants
Nymphaea zenkeri typical red form and ‘Green’, Blyxa japonica, Echinodorus ‘Fancy Twist’, Echinodorus horemanii ‘Red’, Crinum calamistratum, Aponogeton longiplumulosus

Creepers
pearl weed, Helanthium ‘Vesuvius’, Lilaeopsis brasiliensis

Ferns
Established: Java fern ‘Narrow K’, ‘Windelov’ and some straight cultivar, Bolbitis heudelotii, Ceratopteris thalictroides

Floating plants
Frogbit

Here’s a better shot of that layout for the curious:


There is a strong emphasis on rosette and bulb plants, particularly crypts. This is no surprise of course - I’ve made no secret about my love of cryptocorynes. I’m actually very excited to see my background plants grow in. Coming from tanks that are 12 or 13” tall, growing something to the top here is very novel.

For the first time ever, I have no brand new plants going straight from my mailbox to the tank! The Cryptocoryne usteriana, C. spiralis ‘Red’, and some of the C. lucens are TC plants I've only been growing out for a month, so while they look quite happy, they are still quite small. A few of the others are also fairly new, but seem to have acclimated easily. New plants always do much better in a mature tank, and hopefully they will benefit from the strong start and be able to transition over to the new tank without too much trouble.

On Monday I broke down the nano shrimp tank in the kitchen. It was the second tank I built and the first I have ever taken down. Between the dirt substrate, the wall-to-wall crypts, and all the shrimp it was quite a pain to deal with! I found out I have a mild skin sensitivity to crypts, so the next time I have to rip through a pound of them I should wear gloves. A quick Google search tells me I'm not the first person to experience this. Good to know, I guess.


A small handful of the crypts from the nano tank

I wanted to add some of the bacteria and microfauna to the new tank, so I rinsed out the cap as much as possible and added it to the new tank. It’s mostly the same Peace River sand/gravel, but it’s got some larger stones mixed in as well, plus the small amount of dirt that remained. You may be surprised to hear that after so many years there were still discernible bits of pine bark left in the substrate. Probably lots of microbial goodies in that pine bark, not that I could have washed it all out anyway. And I siphoned out some little seed shrimp or whatever they are and added those directly. I don’t know that the tank is stable enough for them to survive, but why not try?

After rinsing it out, I immediately turned the nano into a holding tank for all the cleaned and sorted plants, (plus a large ‘Narrow K’ java fern from another tank).


Yesterday I harvested a good chunk of the stem plants out of Biding Time and started moving fish and shrimp into other tanks.

Tonight the tank gets drained and planting begins!

 

[ElleDee]

First, a moment of silence for Biding Time, as it has been consumed by this build. It began as a side project to try out some new ideas while I waited on this tank, so it's a fitting ending. It had a good run.



Whew, that was a lot of work! Planting went pretty smoothly, but it has still taken me two days off and on. I’m very glad I had the layout worked out ahead of time - there’s no way I could have dont it on the fly at this scale. I did deviate from the plan in a few spots, but on the whole I executed it as I had imagined. And seeing it in real life, I quite like it! So far, so good. (Actually, I suspect I have too many big/tall plants, but we’ll see how it all grows in.) And no cloudy water!

Now’s the hard part - waiting to see if the plants hit the ground running or start to melt. Going forward, I plan to do two water changes weekly for a while and monitor for emerging problems.

I still need to hang the real light, so for the moment I’ve got this temporary one that should be giving me about 100 PAR directly beneath it. Good enough. Unfortunately it makes the colors look very washed out, but once I have the real light I’ll break out the good camera - until then it’s going to be cell phone pictures.

 

[ElleDee]

Just a quick update as there’s not too much going on. The most important thing is most plants in the new tank have put on new growth. I’m happy to see it; it's the first sign that things are going well. The stem plants have immediately adjusted their form to match the lower lighting - red and reddish leaves are greener and in some plants the internodes have lengthened. I appreciate having a visual marker of where the growth in this tank began, because iIf the old growth deteriorates or becomes algae infested it just needs to be removed, but struggling new growth is a warning sign that there's A Problem. The race is on now between the adapting plants + maturing microbiome and the algae that hasn’t arrived yet.



Other than water changes on the big tank, my focus this week has been dealing with all the extra plants I ended up with when I broke down my other aquariums. I greatly underestimated the volume of plants I had packed into my kitchen nano and Biding Time and I had to sort out what I want to keep, what should be tossed, and what can be auctioned off at my local club this weekend. And then everything I was keeping had to be planted somewhere, so I had to clear space and rearrange my existing tanks. It's been a big game of Freecell, but I think I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I've dealt with all the containers of water sitting around anyway. I need to hang the Chihiros, but I don’t plan to approach the PAR I had in Biding Time until everything is more settled anyway.

I have my all livestock in just two tanks now - my best colored shrimp are in the nano I set up in April, and everybody else in my OG 20 long. Honestly, the fish seem happy to be back together even though there are groups of three different species. At any rate, there’s a lot of hustle and bustle and males displaying to each other, etc. It’s nice, especially when some of these fish are pretty geriatric.

I’m not totally decided how I’m stocking the big tank yet. I’ve stuck with light fish loads historically, but with the bigger tank I want a lot more fish. That was the primary reason to get the tank to begin with. I go back and forth between wanting a group of Bolivian rams as my big fish, a group of congo tetra, or to skip the larger fish and get bigger schools of smaller fish. It will probably come down to what is available when I’m ready to pull the trigger. I always quarantine new fish for a few weeks, so honestly I could probably get fish now and by the time they were done with the QT the new tank would be more than ready for fish. Hmm…

 

[ElleDee]

So I went to my local fish society’s auction to sell all my extra plants. I had no expectations going into it, but I put together lots that I would buy myself and hoped for the best. The auctioneer was a plant guy did a good job marketing to the crowd and in the end everything did pretty well! It turns out big hunks of unique java ferns are pretty popular. It was very validating to see other people pay good money for plants I spent years caring for. And it's kind of wild for the hobby to actually bring in money instead of the other way around.

I also made a few purchases myself. I have never participated in a live auction before and I felt like I was in a psychology experiment. My modus operandi is always “over prepare in advance, and then make impulsive changes to the plan when executing” and, yeah, that's basically what happened. I stuck to my personal limits on bidding (yay, good job, me), but I walked out with some unexpected fish.


Six Melanotaenia sp. "Kali Tawa" juveniles! The paddle moved me and I got them for a steal! I think they might all be males? That would be fine with me - I don’t want to breed them and I want maximum color. I’m so excited! At one point I had seriously considered putting some full sized rainbowfish in this tank and ultimately decided they were just too big, but these guys max out between 2.5 and 3 inches. They are in a quarantine tank for the next few weeks and then they get to try out the big tank. I've got some brine shrimp eggs in the hatchery that will be ready for them in a day.

 

[ElleDee]

While I play my least favorite game of “What, If Anything, Is Wrong With My New Fish” in quarantine, let’s turn our attention back to the tank. I’m happy with the healthy new growth I’m seeing, but the old growth has started to get gross and scuzzy.


Ludwigia repens, Bacopa caroliniana, and Heteranthera zosterifolia all showing happy new growth and sad old growth.

Yuck. I just don’t know how to avoid this in a new setup. I can swap stuff around in my established tanks without issue, but new ones are a different story. As I’ve said before, my management strategy for this is to let the new come in and once there is enough clean plant mass I remove the old stuff. It’s a little bit of a balancing act, because too much pruning is disruptive and oftentimes the roots get established nicely, so the stem will have healthy roots and tops and a sad, sad middle section connecting the two. As long as the vascular system in the middle section is working, the healthy ends can send nutrients and sugars back and forth and I don’t want to sever that connection prematurely during this transitional period. I'm also losing crypt leaves here and there, but nothing crazy.

I got the Chihiros up and running. It's ridiculous how much of a difference a nice light makes to the colors! It’s about 10” above the water and the current settings are red 58%, green 39%, and blue 52% for 7.5 hours. I also have left the Finnex ALC running in the back of the tank with just the white and red channels. It is more cluttered than if I just used the hanging light, but the extra on the tall plants in the back is really nice. I have no idea what the PAR is, but my plan is to gradually increase the light until my Rotala ‘Blood Red’ is bright pink again.


I got a couple plants at the auction last week that I added a few days ago. There was a full grown Cryptocoryne usteriana that I nabbed for cheap. Now, I’m growing this species already, but I started with TC plants and it’s supposed to be especially slow growing, so why not add a big one as well? The bag also had a bonus tall crypt with strappy leaves. Maybe C. retrospiralis? It’s a bit browner than the C. balensae, but otherwise looks very similar. Anyway, I threw that in the back as well. I know these crypts are going to be annoying to wrangle eventually, but I’ll worry about that when I get there. By then I should also have to contend with the amazon swords, which are currently so short they look like they belong in the foreground. It's hard to imagine how different the tank will feel once the background plants come into their own.

Overall I’m very pleased with the plants and layout I created, though I think the aponogeton is going to get taken out in a year or two. It’s huge and fun now, but I can tell I’m going to get tired of it. I’ve got a Crinum that is small now, but once it's larger it will be way too similar to the Aponogeton anyway, so I'll probably just keep that one. I’ll enjoy it in the meantime. It’s sending up new leaves and another flower stalk - the third one since I got it a couple of months ago. I removed the first, and the second was aborted when the plant was transplanted, so hopefully the third time’s a charm.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

In regards to the new growth, if the stem is long enough to top it, why not just do that? I don’t think you’ll disrupt anything this early on, especially if the new growth is strong and vibrant. I know it’s gonna be slow without co2, but I’m looking forward to seeing your progress with the substrate

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Six Melanotaenia sp. "Kali Tawa"

I’m jealous those are a cool variety!

 

[ElleDee]

In regards to the new growth, if the stem is long enough to top it, why not just do that? I don’t think you’ll disrupt anything this early on, especially if the new growth is strong and vibrant. I know it’s gonna be slow without co2, but I’m looking forward to seeing your progress with the substrate

I am both trimming and replanting tops and doing some pruning to encourage branching, but it depends on the species and exactly how much new growth there is. I'm not very systematic about it, I just get the stems that need it the most.

I’m jealous those are a cool variety!

Don't be too jealous yet - they are behaving oddly in quarantine. Very skittish and stressed, though they are getting excited for baby brine shrimp now, so that is encouraging. I go back and forth between thinking they definitely have fish TB and thinking if I put them in a proper planted tank they will completely transform - which I have seen before. I always, always stress about new fish, so hopefully this is me just doing my thing and the fish are going to be fine. I could not handle this hobby without a quarantine tank - if I had to worry about my new fish *and* everything in my display tank I would go insane.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Yeah I know what you mean. IME with M. variety rainbows are that they are very skittish when you first introduce them, especially to a quarantine tank that’s pretty open with no hiding places. I personally will dose Maracyn Oxy for several days as a precaution. My last couple of male Neons I acquired developed some mouth fungus/rot and one got so bad it had a lesion where the fungus eventually fell off. That one eventually perished even with meds the first sign of the rot. The other healed and is thriving. I checked back where I got them from and the rest in the store were doing just fine and thriving but mine were so nervous when I put them in quarantine they were thrashing about in the tank I think they likely injured their mouths banging into the glass out of fear. For me if it’s been a week and there’s no sign of physical stress and they are eating I drop them into the display, that’s worked for me thus far

 

[ElleDee]

Yeah I know what you mean. IME with M. variety rainbows are that they are very skittish when you first introduce them, especially to a quarantine tank that’s pretty open with no hiding places.

That's good to hear they have this tendency. This is my first experience with real rainbows. I have floaters and some moss, but it's still pretty open. I am using an established sponge filter, but it's not keeping up with the ammonia, so I'm doing daily water changes and treating with extra Prime to try to compensate. I've been very diligent about that, but ammonia burn is also a concern. I have managed an unicycles QT before (and one where the filter is compromised by medication) without issue, but it's still on my mind.

The real issue is I'm not all that experienced with fish. I know plants and feel comfortable going with my gut when faced with problems, but anytime there's something up with the fish I'm so unsure and indecisive! Is it certain death or literally nothing?? Idk!!

I personally will dose Maracyn Oxy for several days as a precaution. My last couple of male Neons I acquired developed some mouth fungus/rot and one got so bad it had a lesion where the fungus eventually fell off. That one eventually perished even with meds the first sign of the rot. The other healed and is thriving. I checked back where I got them from and the rest in the store were doing just fine and thriving but mine were so nervous when I put them in quarantine they were thrashing about in the tank I think they likely injured their mouths banging into the glass out of fear. For me if it’s been a week and there’s no sign of physical stress and they are eating I drop them into the display, that’s worked for me thus far

I am not familiar with Maracyn Oxy. I was thinking about doing a treatment of kanaplex because they have some minor mouth injuries, probably from banging around as you said. Do you think that sufficient? I have Ich X that claims it can handle fungal stuff, though I've never experienced a fungal issue before.

This is making me think I should put the HOB on the tank. It adds a lot of flow, but the rainbows might be more comfortable with the water movement, right?

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Maracyn Oxy is an Oxy/Chlorine based treatment and doesn’t actually contain any antibiotic. Kanaplex should be fine to potentially root out any potential infection. I don’t think adding the HOB would hurt especially if you’re saying the sponge isn’t able to handle the ammonia. It’ll help with oxygen exchange too

 

[ElleDee]

I don’t think adding the HOB would hurt especially if you’re saying the sponge isn’t able to handle the ammonia. It’ll help with oxygen exchange too

Yes, increased filter capacity (eventually) and aeration was exactly what I was thinking.

But wouldn't you know, I got that HOB up and running and their color improved instantly and they are swimming around much more freely. They are still easily menaced and they did not appreciate my turning on the light, but that's a huge, huge improvement. I think they are responding to the flow, but I don't really know.

I think I'll hold off on meds for now. If the lip injuries don't go away on their own or other symptoms manifest I will treat them, but I want to see how much they can improve on their own. My next goal for them is to eat more than just live BBS.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Evening, how goes it with the tank and rainbows?

 

[ElleDee]

Sorry for the delay, @Mr.Shenanagins! The rainbow situation is depressing, so I'm just going to give an update on the tank itself right now.

So! I had some unexpected family stuff that demanded my focus for the past few weeks (thankfully all is well now, whew) and haven’t paid this tank much attention at all. This bad boy got zero (0) water changes since the end of October, much less any pruning. I do not think it was smart exactly to leave a new tank to fend for itself, but these things happen.

All in all, it could be worse! Besides the general instability that goes along with a new setup, the soil was a huge unknown with regard to the production of organics, but given the lack of water changes I am surprised things are holding up as well as they are. I mean, clearly there is an excess of organics in the water and the algae situation is not great, but it’s not a toxic soup of melting plants under a thick layer of algae, you know? With a few exceptions, the plants have done a good job getting established and the new growth is staying pretty clean. I really can’t complain.

Let’s get into the trouble spots though. I even took a few pictures. This is what I started with:



Grody. After I cleaned off the glass, the most obvious problems is the BBA in the front center and front left of the tank.



It’s unfortunate that the worst area is so prominent, and one that was a troublesome spot for me in Biding Time as well. I think it’s the combination of high flow from the spraybars and low plant mass/high light that makes it susceptible. I have a bunch of Crytocoryne ‘Lucens’ and Lilaeopsis along the front of the glass that is really getting hammered, as well as the older leaves on slow growers in high flow areas. Hopefully it can be combated with consistent maintenance, but I bet it’s going to take a while. I didn’t prioritize dealing with the BBA in Biding Time and never got it completely defeated, and I really hope I’ll manage better this time around.

But other areas look pretty good and the plant mass of the tank has greatly increased. And even the infested plants are growing, so I’m not counting them out by any means. Most of the frogbit settled on the right third of the tank and it appears to have really reigned in the algae on that side, though it's a bit too shady for some species. The lower stems of Bacopa caroliniana on the right and Hottonia palustris are losing leaves and probably ought to be moved. My downoi is also leggy, but it’s growing pretty clean and that makes me hesitant to move it right now.

There are a few truly unhappy plants. Blyxa japonica is the one species that might not make it. It’s never been incredibly happy in my tanks and I’ve killed it before in a new setup, so I'm not surprised it’s not found its groove here. Echinodorus horemanii ‘Red’ is still small but growing well, but ‘Fancy Twist’ is not settling in at all. It has made a flat rosette of small (stunted?) red leaves and the root zone seems to be slowly turning to mush. All the other plants are well rooted at this point, so I don’t suspect a substrate problem, but I don't know what its deal is either. I'm going to let it float for a while and see if that helps. Lastly, the aponogeton is handing in there, but has an unsightly bba problem; I’m considering removing it altogether. But it’s still putting out new leaves about as fast as I remove the old ones, so I’ll give it more time for now.

Among the plants that are doing well, Rotala ‘Blood Red’, star grass, and water sprite have been the real MPVs of the startup period. I know I have effused about ‘Blood Red’ before, but it’s the easiest keeper for me and has great color. The other two are well known very easy plants, but I am still impressed with their quick growth. I am also really loving Nymphaea zenkeri ‘Green’, but I’ve tucked it behind the wood and it’s hard to see. I wanted it to grow a little taller and peak out, but no such luck.



The crypts as a whole are looking sparse, but that’s as expected. I know I’m playing the long game with those guys and I look forward to complaining about having to control all the runners in about two years. We’re just not there yet. In the meantime I have done what I always do and tucked all sorts of stems higgledy-piggledy in between them and it’s chaotic and off plan. I wryly think of this as my “signature style”, but it's not what I'm going for long term. I am going to work to restore order, but it is working against my brain a bit, and admittedly now my priority is stabilizing/maturing the tank, not moving stuff around and leaving the crypts out in the open before they really come into their own.

I just did a massive water change and a first round of pruning. Big improvement with just a few hours of work!



I am still figuring out all the ways to optimize moving that much water around. I am using a garden hose to drain the tank now, because 0.75” created too much suction and didn’t give me enough time to clean. I added a gravel tube to the end and now it’s perfect. There are still some kinks to work on on the filling side, but my husband surprised me with hose attachment for a clamp he secretly designed about printed for me, along with something to go on the end of the hose to blunt the flow of the water. (Someone else designed that part and I can find out who should anyone need the link.) Even when my pump is running full speed the velocity of the water is very manageable and it's secure and hands free. The benefits of having a thoughtful design engineer spouse are very real!



I hope to move back to my scheduled twice a week water change until things look better (or at least once a week, sheesh), pruning more and more as I go. It may be better to do all the pruning at once, but I don’t have that much time in a single session, so I just address the most pressing stuff. Nothing needs serious pruning more than once a month anyway, so it works out. I am pretty optimistic about the tank overall, so I’ll start writing up the details on the substrate while I can still remember them.

 

[Kwyet]

You made a big difference already!

 

[Count Krunk]

Bummer on the rainbows, I'm guessing disease related? Always depressing.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Based one what you’ve divulged and from the pictures, I’d say you’ve done a good job with locking in the nutrients at the substrate. In terms of some plants not working, I’ve had similar issues with blyxa. It does not like unstable parameters nor any detritus or mulm buildup IME. When I had bouts of extended period of no maintenance it would start to decline and eventually so much that it wouldn’t recover.

Thanks for the update

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Oh and about the rainbows, I’ve been there so you’re not alone. I’m sorry it’s not panning out how you’ve hoped, but there’s somethings we can’t control unfortunately.