New 240L dirted/planted nano fish tank

get yourself a full spectrum studio light, i.e. Chihiros. You won't regret it

 

Power went off at about 22:30 last night, came back on now at 19:30.

 

Yikes! We had two power failures here in the south over the weekend too - the first one was nearly 7 hours and the water temp dropped to 20'C - the barbs were deathly pale when the lights came back on. Perfect conditions for treating sick fish! I also learned the calcium batteries on my inverter setup are klaar - they couldn't handle a 200W heater + 12W light + 15W cannister without the inverter beeping.

The second outage only lasted for about 30 minutes but the tank then looked like a spaceship as I'd wrapped it in alu bubble wrap.

 

I didn't realise the power was off until Sunday morning, I even did a load of dishes in dishwasher before I went to bed on Saturday.

My main inverter lasted until around 5 am, I then had to get my old trolley inverter from the garage, which thankfully kept the air pump running for 10 hours. After that, I tried manually agitating the water's surface to get some oxygen in. Don't know what would have happened if they didn't fix the supply when they did.

If my trolley battery was charged, I could get a weeks' worth of air pump out of it, but I haven't used it for ages, so it was almost empty.

Decided to finally get some PV installed so I don't have to deal with this crap again.

@Neon tetra 10 did you have any power problems?

 

Yup power was out but managed with air pumps thankfully

 

Decided to go duck hunting after seeing @LilMissMurder 's one week growth. I've taken away the ring that was keeping the duckweed from getting sucked into the overflow box, so should be rid of the rest of the ducks in a week or so.

 

Tonnes more light! It brightens the tank considerably. What about the lettuce? Are you getting rid of that too? Or will the overflow catch it?

I think I have managed to get the last of my duckweed out - but you never know.

I see a pink rotala survived!

 

I've taken the lettuce out for now, but will return them once I'm sure the duckweed is gone.

Jip, one rotala hanging on and it has shown some growth over the last couple of days.

 

Quick update:

Two weeks ago, I decided it was time I cleaned out my sump filter. I quickly found out that I had about 60 shrimp living in there, with most of them being about 2mm in size. I did not want to catch all of the shrimp, and if I added them back into the main tank, they would have been eaten by the other fish, so I decided to swap out the sump and set up the tank in my office. The only container large enough to serve as a temporary sump was one of these plastic storage containers. It worked great, and I was able to swap over without major issues.

On Saturday morning, while on my way out, I realised my sump pump was not working, but after a bit of cleaning, it was up and running again. When I returned after about 30 minutes, there was a faint plastic smell in the house. Turns out, I moved the heater, and it burned a hole in my new sump. Did a swop over to another storage container with less holes.

I've now become attached to the shrimp only tank in my office so I will have to make arrangements to build a proper sump with baffles etc for the main tank. In the meantime, I've moved the heater into the main tank.

 

Well that sucks. Luckily you caught it!

 

My fish are not breeding but my tanks definitely are. Tank count: 4

4ftx1, 2ftx2 and 1.5ft x 1

Picked up a 2ft tank for R140 and the 1.5ft for R100 at Auction last night. Going to use the 2ft for a sump and keep the small one as a backup QT tank

 

All the duckweed is gone and MC is carpeting nicely, Pogostemon deccanensis starting the fill in on the left and hygrophila peeking out at the back. There are 3 miniscule rotala pink on the right that will hopefully start to show soon.

 

@LilMissMurder I had to add a couple of assassin snails because the ramshorn snails were starting to destroy my vallisneria.

 

Ooof. Didn't know they will do that. Next time I'll pack a block of alum.

 

No worries at least a had an excuse to add more interesting critters to my tank.

 

@LilMissMurder so after your recent experience with ich what is your recommendation for treatment? Seems it's my turn to play Dr

 

Pond medic ick clear. Don't waste your money on PG. It'll stain the silicone though so I see HT in your future.

But now, where did it come from?

 

Will it stain if I do half dose?

No idea where it came from, besides the snails 2 weeks back I haven't added anything. So far I've only seen a couple of spots on 2 of my super blue tetra.