10 Gallon Planted Tank Journal

Hi everyone! This is my first aquarium journal I'm hoping to keep track of my planted aquarium progress and see how the tank develops. This thread will mostly comprise of me rambling on and on about niche details within the tank

Here is a build thread I had made for this tank a few weeks back. It also includes an update on my stocking and hitchhikers...

This is the current tank setup! I'm hoping to stock this with one pea puffer in the later months, but there's so many different options it's hard to pick!!!!



Stocking:
Three Amano shrimp (as of today)

Plants:
- Rotala Vietnam H'ra
- Pearlweed
- S. Repens
- Creeping Jenny
- AR mini
- Duckweed
- Dwarf water lettuce
- Crypt Wendtii (red and green)
- Hydrophylla Taiwan
- Christmas moss

It's a low tech planted tank. I'm using Seachem Excel (for algae) and Trace at the moment. It would be amazing if I could get my hands on some Easy Green- but I live in Canada and it seems very difficult to find

Thanks for reading!
Naomi

 

Wow! I love it! Following!

 

Journal Entry 1: September 3, 2021

Hi everyone! Hope you're all doing well
Nothing really changed too much with the current tank, except that the so called pests in the tank are not baby bladder snails, rather, Freshwater Limpets!

Pests and Sterilizing:
I'm not too sure where they came from, but I suspect they may have come from the duckweed. I think it's kind of ironic that the only plant I happened to not sterilize and are not in-vitro plants are the ones that do bring all the pests. I don't mind them, and find them a little bit cute (in the assumption that they will not reproduce like flies). Their radula remind me of my Nerite Snails when grazing the algae haha They're in both of my tanks, but since the 10 gallon also seems to have some harmless flatworms (rhabdoecolea), I've begun trying my best to take careful measure in santizing the cleaning equipment (siphon, tweezers, tubes etc.) with Hydrogen Peroxide and seperating the buckets for collecting and filling water.

However, seeing the detritus worms in the 10 Clear Mini make me cringe. When they squiggle around and swim all throughout the tank, it does not look great (to say the least) and makes me feel somewhat stressed as to what to do. Doing some research on the web, some people have tried dosing dog dewormer medicine (i.e. Panacur-C), but I've seen from other resources that this does essentially nothing for detritus worms as they can essentially survive through an apocalypse! I don't have planaria and figured that I wouldn't go through the risk of affecting the current environment of the tank for the three Amano Shrimp (as long as nobody does any harm).

Shrimp and Water Changes
In regards to the detritus worm breakout, I've resolved to do more frequent water changes and suck the buggers up if I ever see them swimming about - but hopefully not at the cost of the shrimp. I know that Amano Shrimp can be pretty sensitive to any changes in water (temperature, gH, pH, iron etc.). And I experienced that first hand when doing my second ever water change for the tank (with them stocked) in hopes of eliminating the detritus worm population. They were frantically swimming up and down and all over the tank after the water change (I think I removed too much water in one sitting) for 15-20 minutes, and eventually settled down.

I'm a little bit worried as I'm away for the weekend and won't be there to monitor their progress. Hopefully everything will be fine when I return I really love seeing them explore their tank! Their little hands (as I like to call them) are so interesting to watch when they're working hard towards the algae. I made a

, and I hope you enjoyed watching them as much as I do, haha. Sorry for the video quality, I tried my best- but I think I'm certain I won't be able to become a photographer or video editor in the meantime XD




Hair and BBA:
Yep, I know see BBA growing on the wood At least the Amano Shrimp can eat the Hair Algae, but I doubt they're going to make a significant difference on the state of the blackbeard algae. I ordered some syringes from Amazon;
Ajax Scientific Plastic Luer Lok Syringe, 5mL (Pack of 10) - PL060-0005S : Amazon.ca: Industrial & Scientific (they're red in the thumbnail, but they're actually clear).
I intended to use the syringes to drop dose Excel to help combat the growing algae issue. WCs and cutting down the light schedule is also helping the tank

This is all that's happened up to today! Thanks for reading this long post, and until next time
Naomi

 

September 25, 2021:
Hello all! It’s been a while since the last update, but I’ll make this one short and sweet

Sept 12:
I did a 50% WC to remove detritus worms and general (I thought it would be okay as I have done it twice before, BUT I dosed <2ml Flourish Trace because the Hygrophylla was turning clear). That wasn’t a good idea, as the following day, two of the three shrimp escaped the tank in search of a better environment….




Sept 23:
Big hair algae bloom in the tank. I haven’t removed it yet, but I’m planning to do so today.

Sept 25 (today):
I went to Big Al’s, and bought some fish! The Pea Puffers there didn’t look very healthy (many were dead on the floor), so I went against my original stocking plan and bought 8 diamond head neon tetras. I also purchased three more Amano Shrimp. And some Salvania Natans (I really like the look of them!)

I’ll post another update when they’ve finished acclimating!

September 25, 2021:
Hello all! It’s been a while since the last update, but I’ll make this one short and sweet

Sept 12:
I did a 50% WC to remove detritus worms and general (I thought it would be okay as I have done it twice before, BUT I dosed <2ml Flourish Trace because the Hygrophylla was turning clear). That wasn’t a good idea, as the following day, two of the three shrimp escaped the tank in search of a better environment….




Sept 23:
Big hair algae bloom in the tank. I haven’t removed it yet, but I’m planning to do so today.

Sept 25 (today):
I went to Big Al’s, and bought some fish! The Pea Puffers there didn’t look very healthy (many were dead on the floor), so I went against my original stocking plan and bought 8 diamond head neon tetras. I also purchased three more Amano Shrimp. And some Salvania Natans (I really like the look of them!)

I’ll post another update when they’ve finished acclimating!

The crypts and ar mini are doing well The hair algae has blocked off much of the light source for the s repens so I took as much I could could out of the tank







More pictures to come!

 

Morning Update! Sept 26, 2021


Everyone seems alive and well. Shrimp are all here too

I fed the tetras some brine shrimp flakes (from AngelFins) and frozen brine shrimp- they really seem to go crazy for them!











It’s surprising to me that they aren’t hiding away, I expected them to be more shy in the first few days! They also seem very interested in hunting for rhabdoecolea and detritus worms.
Detritus worm eaten by Diamond Head Neon Tetra (another unlisted video)
Here’s a general short video of the tetras exploring their environment