We are ScapeCrunch, the place where planted aquarium hobbyists come to build relationships and support each other. When you're tired of doom scrolling, you've found your home here.
All stock from CMACs Charlotte location, I think the Cories had just come in so not surprising I lost one.
Forgot to note that there was a deceased green tetra in the filter too so somehow he got in as well.
The amanos are big! I’m not really sure but wondering if they swam into the lily pipe output? I’ve seen a cory give it a try already.
As for shrimp and fish getting in the filter, are they getting past the prefilter? If so, it could definitely be them coming in through the outflow. I’ve had fish swim into the mouth of a lily pipe before, but none ever make it very far—usually the flow pushes them right back out. Oase filters have extremely low flow (often around half of the listed rating, and the listed rating already feels low), so I guess it’s possible.
When it comes to larger filters I am firmly on team Aquael after trying most of the major brands. The flow is easily double the equivalent Oase, they’re cheaper, and they’re consistently quiet. My Biomaster Thermo 2 250 has been a nightmare—it stays loud even after a fresh impeller clean and after shaking out every bit of air. The flow is about enough for the 60U and no more.
As for CMAC, I’ve had about 50/50 luck with them. My best pickups from there were my Keyholes and Von Rio tetras. The Von Rios were in a back tank for over a month, so they were essentially quarantined before I bought them. But most of the time they turn over fish so quickly that it’s a gamble whether you get healthy ones. Unfortunately, I’ve lost 3 out of 4 SAEs and 2 out of 4 Panda Garras I bought from them. They were probably already weak, and I should have moved them into a dedicated tank to baby them early on.
Amanos were in one of the smaller planted nano tanks around the counter, had a nice stand of hygro pinna in there.
Lol pre-filter, yeah that would be nice! I went with the smartfilter thermo 200 for the slim profile and integrated heater.
I just pulled the intake off and rubber banded a cut up media bag around the bottom slots, looks real nice.
At least it’s halfway hidden by a stone.
I’ll deal with the ugly to not have to pull and disturb the canister again for a while.
I saw your post about nu aqua, might have to consider them for another addition since I don’t really have a quarantine tank.
Huge fan of Nu Aqua. I have gotten 20 Amano's from them which even with shipping is less than CMACs. 6 C123 Cories, 4 Red breast Acara, 9 Cardinals, 1 reticulated SAE and plan to use them for the 20gal. Shipping is very reasonable. compared to other vendors I priced. Only negative is they sell out fast and don't have the inventory of a Dan's Fish.
Tank looks great from a distance. ;0
Closer in it’s a bit ugly, getting some spots of black looking algae on edges of leaves in spots. Looks more stringy than bba so not sure what it is.
Upon adding the fish in I decided to lower the co2 concentration a bit so it fluctuated for a few days. It hasn’t been the picture of stability since planting so I guess I’m happy it looks ok as it does.
Stock wise I’m pretty sure I lost all of the green tetras except the ones I had already. They were tiny/skinny and honestly I’m not the best with fishes, usually if they don’t take pellet or dry micro flakes they aren’t for me.
Still have 5 Pygmy Cories doing ok although they do tend to disappear completely sometimes.
Thinking maybe now to add more Cories and some rummy nose maybe… at some point. Although the few times I did see the greens school back and forth it looked super cool. ;(
Start a 2 week vacay tomorrow at the lake so hopefully it’s not too bad, me not having my hands in there constantly might be a good thing lol. I’ll return home for normal water change and will either front load or have my sitter dose m/w/f. Been floating around 10ppm nitrates so scared it will bottom out if left alone.
Shame on the fish, your experience echos mine with cmacs. Some fish come in small and very skinny. Glad the pygmys are doing well. I am always a fan of rummy nose.
Did a pretty big mow down of purple bamboo, Pogostemon, and rotala. Clipped the tops off of the Amcella Repens and replanted. I left the very tops emerged and they’ve already thrown new growth. Removed the Tonina Fluviatilis entirely as it was struggling.
Moved a Nymphaea gardneri baby that’s been hiding at the back out front to replace the Tonina.
Good thing about my vacation spot only being 30 minutes from home I went back today to do my usual water changes and front loading. Did a ton of manual removal of the algae and spot treated the top of the wood with peroxide. Hopefully if I can get on top of it I can knock it down before I start removing stems.
I replaced the glass pipes with a stainless set as I’d broken the return while prepping for vacation. It was due and I can sleep better with the stainless ones. The “skimmer” on the return is a little safer than the inlet side anyways.
Set up a spare ring camera so I could keep an eye out
Sitter gets to do 2 feedings and ferts this week.
It’s mostly on the open / high flow areas and attacking old or slower growing leaves.
So yeah I knew that the size of the co2 “mist” coming from the in-line Fzone diffuser looked a bit too large. Combine that with my constant adjustments and a real lack of flow with the glass lily pipes I think is the culprit, also the Fzone has the diffuser right in the center cutting down even more flow.
Replaced with UNS pro diffuser and things look much better. I was getting the PH drop but just not getting dispersal all around the tank. It’s already on the rebound although I’ll probably need multiple more sessions of tediously removing as much as I can and just chucking small peoples with it attached.
Buy once cry once as they say, suppose that’s going to apply to the regulator at some point as well…
So I’ve added the stainless pipes and getting much better flow and fixed co2 distribution. Keeping dosing same and knocking an hour off the light cycle for good measure.
I removed all of the Val on the far right, I think it was blocking a good bit of return flow across the back. Mangled the Isoetes lacustris down to one lonely stem trying to extract it from the bagged soil it’s already latched to before deciding to leave it. The other crypt in the front nurii ‘pa hang mutated’ will move to the back eventually.
Many hours of cleaning bit by bit, full removal/reset, and substrate vac of the front areas later…
I’ve added in some caridina culls from a local breeder (orange base boa line/pinto/galaxy/blue steel) and those have settled in well. Still waiting to see some molts but they are still fairly juvenile. Amanos are now staying firmly in the tank and haven’t been able to venture back into the filter. I wrapped the intake with a media bag just to protect from having caridina spelunking.
I’m having to be a bit cautious with any super crazy cleaning esp on the sandy areas as the Pygmy Cories have fry wiggling about. Here’s to hoping a few survive, I’ve managed to see three at once and they’ve already tripled in size at least.
Meh I should have known earlier and switched it up but oh well! I think I’ve got it on the run now and just have to keep things stable for a while.
I’m chuffed about the fry and am hopeful. That does put a delay on adding anything other stock to see what happens for now.
I’m definitely learning what stems will stay longer term. The limnophila ‘mini’ and Pogostemon ‘Kimberly’ have a nice growth rate that’s seems manageable. And the Kimberly being larger crowned will take more space while being less tedious to deal with. It’s also doing well holding its color at lower light.
I think everything along the front is just about right and easy to top/replant occasionally.
Now that the collectoritis from returning is waning and the harsh reality of the planting area I’ve left myself with kinda brings the original goal back into focus. Something nice to look at and easy to maintain. Need to sort out some reasonably sized crypts to start replacing things. Thinking maybe lucens or similar? Need a few different colors/textures with medium height.
Also to note I snagged a craftsman extendable magnet to clean up pieces of aquasoil that escaped into the sand. The UNS Kona pebbles get picked up by it!
Kind of annoying but it will be helpful to pluck out the staghorn affected bits.
I was watching YouTube on one of my tvs yesterday and noticed that it had linked into a long abandoned and forgotten YouTube channel. It actually had videos of some of my tanks from 16 years ago !
It’s like popping a vhs in these days and almost seems like another life time. I’d link the videos but they are pretty janky and totally amateur.
I snapped a few screenshots so forgive the quality… not that it was great to begin with!
Tank is looking great. I’m also still dealing with the Staghorn but no BBA yet (knock on wood).
Interesting that you mention the FZone diffuser as I’m running the same one. I’ve been happy with the mist size but mine is completely gunked up with dark brown buildup. I haven’t cleaned it since I started up the tank and it’s probably impacting performance.
It may be one of those things where if I had adjusted the working pressure out and increased it a bit if would have done better. I’ve seen where folks have had to have higher pressure to collapse the check valve.
I have my pressure set at ~27 lb and just swapped the diffuser over with no other changes. Now I have a very fine mist that gets carried all the way around the tank.
It may be one of those things where if I had adjusted the working pressure out and increased it a bit if would have done better. I’ve seen where folks have had to have higher pressure to collapse the check valve.
I have my pressure set at ~27 lb and just swapped the diffuser over with no other changes. Now I have a very fine mist that gets carried all the way around the tank.
I soaked my FZone diffuser in peroxide today during maintenance and I have to say the mist is now so much finer than before. I thought it was fine before because the bubbles appeared to be circulating throughout the tank without off gassing quickly, but it’s really so much finer now that I can barely see the bubbles. Fingers crossed for the Staghorn algae.
Very nice! Maybe I need to give mine a good soak and give them another shot.
Hope we both get on the right side! I think if after the next few weeks I don’t see any changes I’ll be looking to alter the flow pattern somehow.
Ordered Paracheirodon innesi, 13 gold neon and 6 regular neon tetras. Hopefully they make a nice little show together and will be the finishing touch stock wise. It’s such a small tank, seems like much more would be too much.
I swapped to a GLA Pro dual stage regulator and picked up one of their new inline diffusers, I’ve also been more diligent about maintaining my water level so CO2 levels have been as stable as possible.
So life and work both get very busy for me in the summer months to the point where having to trim/replant every weekend becomes tiresome. @JayP was right, high light & stems in such a shallow tank does require more touch than I wanted.
One of the things that was annoying me most was I didn’t layer enough loose Feast on top of my bagged aquasoil. So knowing I was going to begin transitioning the tank to lots of crypts I decided to fix it. Early in the summer I removed all plants and carefully dug up bags to then dump them back in place. You can imagine the disturbance this created, amazingly 3 days later the water was clear and polished again. Did a full filter maintenance after and let it ride for a while.
Added quite a few crypt sp that don’t really show in the pics just yet. Lots of ‘Rosen maiden’, ‘flamingo’, spirialis tiger, wendtii brown Philippine are hiding behind the wood.
Some of these came to me with huge leaves which have been mowed down to grow back in situ.
A few weeks after this during maintenance I noticed a Planaria… then another. Ugh must have come in on one of the crypt additions. So it’s gone through a full cycle of no Planaria as well.
Both of these disturbances set off an epic scale breakout of bba on the hardscape, I almost got to where I liked it swaying in the flow . I had already eradicated the staghorn so I’ve been slowly spot dosing with APT Fix to loosen and remove the remaining bba . Neither is returning thankfully although I do have some other ‘startup’ type algae that is most likely from the dent in biological filtration by the no Planaria.
Lighting has been lowered to 30% power which should still be around 40-50 par at the substrate. Still cranking CO2 to get a 1.4 ph drop, keeping checker lime.
Stocking wise things are fine and stable:
13 gold neon tetras
6 neon tetras
5 Pygmy cories
20ish Orange base BOA/blue bolt culls
Added another batch of culls as I didn’t get any females first time around. Already have one with a clutch so that’s good.
I’ve removed most of the stems at this point and may keep the remaining ones in their spots for now.
Once the heat breaks a little I plan to do another largish order of crypt parva, lucens, lutea, reg spirialis, wendtii ‘Florida sunset’, a Lagenandra, and a mixed buce pack from Daku. When that hits I’ll most likely move some things around a bit to showcase the colors a bit that are hiding.
Looking back at the early pics makes this one disheartening a bit but we are in recovery/transition mode. Should have the fuzzies fully cleared in the next few weeks.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
yep staghorn/
!
must have come in on one of the crypt additions. So it’s gone through a full cycle of no Planaria as well.
. I had already eradicated the staghorn so I’ve been slowly spot dosing with APT Fix to loosen and remove the remaining 
