Amano New Year Build!

I think my next project is going to be a shallow grow op, maybe a series of shallow tanks - and I'm gonna wack them full of culterra pond mix and grow ALL the plants.

 

That's such a great start! I can see the vision coming together

 

How many Rotala cuttings does one need to stick in the gravel until sanity starts heading for the door? In my case it's exactly 201.

Also, my eternal tinkerer was not satisfied until I removed the frosted diffuser on the ADA light. INSTANT improvement. The rocks have more definition, the tetras popped and the barbs started showing their irridescence. The plants look more saturated and in particular the rotala pink gained back some of that beetroot hue.



And finally I shoved some black plastic trays at the back of the tank - MUCH BETTER STILL. The light spilling from the rear was muddying the fish and it's NFG. It is getting a black screen at the back for sure (I won't paint the glass, too much hardware in the way).

 

The tank is looking fab this morning with much clearer water and happy, vibrant feesh. Params are looking fairly good with zero ammonia, a little bit (5ppm) of Nitrite and 10ppm of Nitrate. This tells me that the canister is Nitrosomonas-dominant (it's photophobic) and that the tank itself needs to get re-populated with Nitrobacter. I added more Hype Juice (tm) for morale-building purposes.





Brutus (foreground, full orange pelvics) and Biggus Dickus up in each other's grills. It gets pretty intense but they happily chill and graze together five minutes later. It looks like Brutus is alpha. I have (I think) 3 males and 3 females. The males are much bigger than the females and are more intensely coloured, except for the largest of them all, which is either a female or a timid male (judging by the colouring) that never stands up to Brutus despite the size advantage.

I love how their dorsal fins become erect like a Hoplite's helmet plume when they get all rowdy.

 

New bebbes! I acquired four more juvenile Sumatran barbs (they were lost in a HUGE school of tiger barbs and were the last four left), 11 more neons, 9 glowlight tetras (of which one died during acclimatization ), and ten zebra danios.

I think I may have overdone it somewhat - the tank is rather busy now and I may be pushing the limits of what I'd consider an appropriate stocking level, or the size of a single stock addition in one go. I have 48 fish in there now . But all the fish seem happy (apart from the glolights which are a bit shy and hidey atm but have accepted food which is encouraging). I'll keep a close eye on the ammonia over the next few days.

I also bought some more plants for variety - the only item I can ID is a square of java moss. Help identifying the rest would be appreciated, thanks! EDIT: with a fair bit of goggling, the small red-stemmed plants are Ludwigia "Red Mini" and the large-leaved ones are Hygophila corymbosa "Giant" - which apparently does best if you allow it to emmerse.

 

I told myself 2 weeks ago that I'm not adding more fish...

Picked up 3 hillstream loaches (R90 each), 3 more kuhli loaches (R20 each) and 10 copper rasboras (R14 each) today that I won at auction last night.

 

I really do think I have too many fish and already have subliminal emergency plans for setting up the toilet. There's no way I'm getting more without getting another tank.

 

I was up at 4 this morning and found most of the fish hanging at the surface. Immediate ammonia test reading was 0.25ppm with 0 nitrite; while not skyhigh it still bothers me a great deal because there are a few too many unknowns. I don't know if there is enough oxygen in the water during the night and whether all the plants (and I have a lot) are stripping the water during the darkness. I immediately added an airstone and turned the tank lights on to help get some oxygen back into the water. Hopefully the airstone will help gas out some of that NH3 too.

Right now I don't know if my tank is hopelessly overstocked, or whether the filtration simply needs to catch up, or whether it is maxed out already, or whether the whole setup just needs more time while needing less fish in the interim. I fed a lot yesterday too. I also don't know if the surface hanging was due to the ammonia or a lack of oxygen or both. After an hour the fish are still a bit listless and pale-looking (except for the danios, they're seemingly on a bottomless caffeine+cocaine cocktail). I'm not a happy chappy right now because I ordered a regulator but don't know if adding C02 would be wise. And I feel guilty for stressing my fish.

 

Well, I went back to bed and woke up at 9, the fish were all vibrant and happily feeding and swimming about as if nothing ever happened. I did another ammonia test and got a reading of flat zero. I don't know what to think. Was it the airstone? The plants photosynthesizing and binding ammonium? Both?

I'm not a fan of airstones but I will run them if necessary - but it tells me the system is marginal at best right now. I will see what happens overnight.

 

The ammonia was zero this morning and the fish were fine. I did run the airstone overnight so that definitely helped - perhaps because it clears the surface of scummy film too.

However! The smoking gun, I think, was that the intake lily pipe was blocked with tiny chips from the compost substrate and all the leaves and stems that have been floating around since my planting marathon. The big bowl of the outlet diffuser hides any changes in the flow so it wasn't something I noticed. I love the way the inlet looks but I feel like it only just manages to allow for the flow from the filter and any blockage makes it drop precipitously. I had a coarse tubular foam sock that came with my dinky sobo hob that fit perfectly over the tube and the slits and that seems to have solved that issue, but I already had to clean it once - but the situation is getting better as I remove more and more floating garbage. I do think that it needs a more permanent solution though - a hole in the bottom perhaps or the bottom cut off entirely and fitted with mesh, or more slits but that sounds like work.

 

Oh and my plants are being ruined by the diatoms. Specifically, GHA or whatever the short fuzz is, which in turn is being colonised by the diatoms.

It's growing everywhere except where I want it to grow - my rocks don't have a speck of algae on them but I'm forever cleaning GDA off the glass. I feel like the ADA light is a bit too powerful without CO2 and I'm back to running my old light for the time being to see if it helps, but it needs a companion to cover the whole tank.

 

I lost two barbs overnight - with likely a third on the way out too. All three are new members. One was on the floor next to the tank, another was dead on the substrate and the last is very weak and floating motionless in the ball of floaters rapidly gasping. I am monitoring it but don't have much hope.

The fourth young'un seems fine, but overall all the barbs seem listless and didn't come out to feed when I stood in front as they always do. Everyone was fine last night. They got the same food as they always do, nothing new went into the tank, I didn't stick my hands in, nada. The tetras and danios are all perfectly fine with no untoward behaviour.

I don't know what's going on. I had a close look at the dead fish (well the one that wasn't stiff and dry) and it seemed perfectly fine - no spots, no fungus, no fin rot, no ulcers, nothing. Early this morning at around 3 the largest of the barbs and one of the juveniles was hanging at the surface (while the airstone had been running). I tested the water and everything was fine, 0/0/5ppm. Temperature is a stable 24'C, pH is ~7.4. The large barb is still occasionally nosing at the surface while the others are just hanging motionless in the back of the tank in the shadows. It doesn't show any outward sign of disease or injury. Something is stressing/killing my barbs and I have no idea what it could be. I don't know if a water change will help, or whether that will just stress them more.

Any ideas or suggestions would be highly appreciated.

 

Another casualty, one of the adults - it's Biggus Dickus and he's just floating on his side gasping. The other young'un briefly swam around for a short while but is back to resting in the floaters. That's encouraging at least. All the barbs are listless and don't control their swimming well. Nero, the largest, is swimming slightly tilted to his side.

I can only account for seven of the barbs - excluding the two dead ones there should be eight but I can't find the last one anywhere. I'm hoping he's just hiding where I can't see him.



I've turned off the air pump. It's the only thing I can think of that might be introducing something toxic into the tank. When you open the cabinet it has that gluey cabinety sawdusty smell and god knows what it might be gassing off.

 

The young'un died. Did a 50% water change, the only thing I can do now is wait. It's not looking good for Biggus.

Something is poisoning the water, and I don't understand what it could be affecting only the barbs overnight to the point of killing them while the other fish aren't affected at all.

 

Thanks Right now I'm heartbroken and feel it's all my fault because I wanted a fancy tank set up with lots of fish while my little toilet was super happy and healthy. I'm having a **** of a day.

Honestly the barbs are my favourite by far - the tetras could belly-up by the dozen and I'd feel bad but as long as the barbs were fine I could deal.

 

Biggus is dead. I feel like shutting the whole lot down and giving it away. I'm down from ten to five barbs overnight for an entirely inexplicable reason. Brutus is MIA - I've looked everywhere for him or his remains but can't find anything. It's possible he jumped and got taken by one of the cats.

The rest of the barbs are hanging in there but it's looking grim and I am bracing myself for the worst.

I have read that barbs are more susceptible to columnaris than other fish - that could explain why the tetras aren't showing any symptoms - but if it is acute columnaris is it possible for it to be THAT virulent? The fish were all perfectly fine yesterday afternoon and Brutus and Biggus were wrestling as usual.

 

Really sorry you are going through this.