Dirt, plants, CPDs, Inverts, and an Endler--29g journal

Ok, so a long due update:
I went on another three-week research trip from the end of August-middle of September. Neighbor fed the fish daily and I had a friend come by and change the water once. Things were mostly OK when I came back (in fact, you could tell that the pygmys liked the change in terms of a quiet house, as they were out and about more often), but there was one sad loss--a female CPD that had swim bladder issues prior to departing had developed what looked to be a bad case of columnaris or something similar. She had open flesh in several places and looked terrible. I put her down as soon as I saw her. Not good and a lesson in what can go wrong without someone watching daily who knows the tank (I felt especially bad that I was there to use the clove oil earlier).

At the end of September I found a nice deal on Alternanthera Reinekii at Petco--two good sized clumps for $5 a piece. I inserted them in the middle of the tank where the Ludwigia used to be after clearing out the tangle of Pogostemenon below and various floaters above so that they could get some light. I have kept up on keeping the floaters off of the surface above them and they seem to be hanging in there despite their higher light needs--while several have done the stem rot thing, several others seem to have taken root and they are slowly adding red leaves (they came with all green leaves on top, perhaps emersed grown?)

Most recently I purchased $50 worth of goods/livestock from Glass Grown Aquatics, a neat local outfit that also ships and is worth a gander/consideration. Included with the purchase was 4 more CPD to get the school back up to 13, a few small plants, root tabs, and cholla wood. The new CPDs are doing great. This was my first time adding root tabs, something I am doing in an effort to deal with long ongoing nutrient deficiencies. I am also making an effort to take some snails out--in the pics that will be soon added below you will see that I am storing them in a breeder box so that they can be taken to my LFS (which takes snails--I just took another load earlier today).

With fall/winter here, the tank is now at a much better 76-77 degrees. I may eventually lower it even a bit further.

Current stock is:
~14-20 dwarf shrimp
~1 amano shrimp
~1 nerite snail
3 endlers
13 CPDs (4 new)
~12-13 pygmy corys
Many, many pest snails (esp. MTS)

 

A few tank pics. The tank always looks better with red in the middle--here's to hoping the AR makes it. (the tops are growing and turning red nicely, but lots of stem rot on the bottoms, so may ultimately be a losing battle) And look at that sword--over a foot tall and almost a foot in width as well!

 

Have to say that I rather like this one. The red/purple of the lily pad looked great all morning.

 

Not too much to report. There is one female CPD that has clearly had a swim bladder problem for about two months now. Once or twice she has seemed about ready to deteriorate, but she always seems to rally. She is significantly more rotund than the other CPDs and I suspect the extra weight may be pressing on the swim bladder. I have been feeding peas 2-3 times a week on the theory that constipation may worsen the issue.

Other than that all seems well. The new CPDs seem fine and the AR is hanging in there, arguably better than the ludwigia a year ago. The two new crypts that I got with the cpds are half snail eaten unfortunately (my plant eating snails remain a headache).. But overall all is well! Below are tank pics from today after a major clean out of floating plants and lily pads yesterday.

 

Just two tank pics for today. As you can see, we have entered a period where not much is changing. One thing that I will note is that the AR is hanging in there better than the Ludwigia did, I think. Not growing as quickly, but it seems as if at least 3-4 are actually rooted and not rotting at the stem. It will be interesting to see what happens the next couple of months with the AR. I have been making a concerted effort to keep the area above the AR free of duckweed/water lettuce.

 

All continues to be well with the tank. No fish losses (that I am aware of; I am only seeing perhaps 8-10 pygmy corys at most at a time). The colder temperatures ave resulted in an increase in spawning behavior from the CPDs--perhaps I will get more fry this winter.

I have been meaning to post about 'Big Bertha', my name for the very plump female CPD with a swim bladder disorder that I think I mentioned a couple of months back. While it can be gut-wrenching to watch her (she has to struggle to swim), she has stopped getting worse and now seems determined to get on with life to the best extent possible despite her condition. This includes seemingly frequent passes at the males. As long as she is not suffering, hopefully she can keep this up indefinitely. Of course, if anyone has an idea of a way to cure her, do let me know (but my impression is that this may be a physical deformity, perhaps the extra girth pressing on the swim bladder?).

As the second photo below shows, my lilies and AR are both growing and nicely red. The lily leaves are in particular also riddled with holes from snails (and probably deficiency issues as well). But I have almost stopped caring about the holes. The tank looks good from far away (to my eyes anyways), and most importantly, the plants grow, provide cover to fish, and keep this a low nitrate tank. And the snails keep the substrate pretty clean. (I do now have a bit of algae on the front glass, however, as well as a bit of hair algae here and there--if only I would have even more algae so that I could perhaps keep hillstream loaches!)

FTP and the plant pic below from tonight (changed water earlier today):




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Good night of tank watching--shrimplets for the first time in months. Saw four of them, most only a day or two old. One of the endlers took a stab at a shrimp dinner, but was foiled by dense hornwort foliage and a timely tap on the tank by me.

Fingers crossed for a winter of shrimplets and fry--breeding and egg activity by all shrimp and fish inhabitants seems to have picked up with the return of cooler water. Think I may even have seen pygmy cory eggs a couple of days ago.

 

A weird week+ for the tank. Basically the best and worst of times.

The best:

More shrimplets than I have ever seen before (pic of one below--they are all orangish-red, even though I also have blue/red rilis in the tank in addition to red cherries--these must be from a red-red pair). I have gotten up to counts of 8, which means 10-20 shrimplets in the tank since I am surely not seeing them all at once. (there are about 12-15 adult neos in the tank, so this would double the numbers if they all grow up)

Continued good growth from the AR. Love having the touch of red in the middle.

Pretty sure that I saw pygmy cory eggs and the pygmys that I do see look healthy.

The worst:

As I posted in the disease forum, I now have two female CPDs with swim bladder issues. One ('Big Bertha') has had this going on for almost 3 months and seems to have learned how to live with it. The other, a smaller female, just started in the last week or so. I have fasted, fed a pea, and started a dose of PraziPro. She may be a bit better. At least one of the other CPDs seems to be expelling worms (a pic of this is below)--not exactly sure how, as I have dosed the tank three times in the last year +.

After 1.5 years of looking good, albeit with holes in the leaves, about three weeks ago my big Amazon Sword began to have 'crumpled' looking, lighter green colored leaves. And then, about 2 weeks ago, it looked as if snails were simply eating off the leaf material and leaving only the filament on 5-6 of the leaves. Then the eating/progression of this stopped about a week ago. But even the uneaten parts of the leaves still don't look great. You can see this in a pic below. Not sure what is going on. 6 weeks ago I added root tabs (5-6 around the sword) for the first time ever. Is it possible that these burned the roots? The alternative would be the complete opposite--that the soil finally ran out of nutrients for the sword, weakening it and allowing the snails to eat more fragile leaf matter.

Neither here nor there: I added a mystery snail this week. The last one had shell problems, but I am hopeful that this is taken care of now that I have added cuttlebone to the tank and there are more frequent water changes...I came very close to getting honey gouramis and kuhli loaches two days ago. But I held off, for now anyways. If anyone has opinions one way or the other on whether adding the kuhlis in particular is a good idea, do let me know. (actually, I have also thought of adding a scarlet badis, but the need for live food is stopping me for now).

 

The pygmys seem to be going back into one of their more 'out and about' phases. This may be connected to a slight decrease in food put in the tank after the issues with CPD swim bladders. Or perhaps it is just pygmys being weird. Whatever the case, over the past week or so sightings have gone from 4 at a time up to 6-8 at a time, and then today (related to barometric change with incoming snow?), something like 10-12. Interesting behavior--not sure if this is happy or not so happy 'glass surfing.' On the whole, the pygmys do seem to like looking at their own reflections, but these were wild caught fish, which I still feel bad about, and I suppose this could also be a reaction to that.(though the fact that they seem to do this only when confident points to this perhaps being a happier behavior)..

 

Shrimplets are everywhere! Seriously, does anyone have an idea why the tank, after 1.5 years of basically producing only a slightly higher than replacement-level number of shrimplets, would suddenly become a shrimplet factory? There are at least 20 in there I think, and maybe 30 (against an adult population of 15-20 neos). And they seem to be growing without much predation. A few from earlier in the month are almost past being mouthsized for the CPDs and endlers.

In other news, I got a Hobby Artemia (baby brine shrimp) grow plate for Christmas. The goal is to try to get CPD spawning going via live food AND possibly to be able to add a scarlet badis (though I know that might end the shrimplets days to some degree, so need to think more).

Happy holidays everyone!

 

Likely last tank pics for a while-- life will be busy the next few weeks. Exciting possible changes after thar, namely bbs raising so that a scarlet badis can possibly be introduced and potentially breeding efforts via new 4 gallon tank just purchased.


Special year end thanks to Rose of Sharon for all the likes/support (and all others reading/commenting as well)!

 

Been a while as have been gone on another research trip the last month. This time family was around to help with feeding/WCs. Will post more soon, but just a few after-trip pics for now. (sorry for the glare--morning sun through the windows)

 

Well, finally a bit of time for an update. I was off in Taiwan for about a month (at some point I will post pictures of some really cool aquarium stores there). Family watched the tank while I was gone, changing water once a week and with feeding reduced to once a day usually. Overall things went pretty well--I don't think there were any fatalities or other major issues. And it looks like the shrimp continued to breed.

However, about a week after I returned, I noticed that there was body rot/infection on two fish (a small 1 mm by 1mm section of scales missing with flesh exposed on a female CPD and a thin grey stripe ahead of the dorsal fin on a male). The female CPD is the fish with swim bladder issues since September, who I have grown quite fond of. After monitoring for 3 days and deciding the infection was progressing, I removed her to my hospital tank (didn't mention, but just before leaving I used Christmas gift funds to buy a 4 gallon) and began treatment with Kanaplex and Jungle Fungus Clear. I think (emphasis on THINK) that she may be doing better now on day 6 of treatment. After monitoring the male for 5 days, I finally decided yesterday that the infection was progressing. Catching him was a nightmare spread across 4 attempts, but I finally got him after a 40 minute long chase today (I know, not ideal for stress for anyone, but I did want to get him out try treating him while still relatively healthy). So he is now in the hospital tank too. Fingers crossed that the stress associated with trying to get him out doesn't trigger an infection in anyone else.

While changing water 5 days ago, I discovered that the filter had slowed to a trickle. So the working theory is that this had been ongoing for a week or two and that the change in water flow perhaps led to some kind of bacterial bloom and the infection. Just a theory.

Since these are the third and fourth infections, spread out over a year or so, I am more confident in saying that I must have some sort of very slow columnaris-like bacteria in the tank, as stressed fish seem to come down with a very slow progressing columnaris-like infection. I may purchase a UV light some time, though I am not 100% certain.

Otherwise, the tank is doing well. I continue to be amazed by the growth of the shrimp population. The breeding between the red cherry shrimp morph and the blue/red rili morphs are creating some really neat/crazy second generations. And the AR, and one stem in particular, is doing great and looks quite nice in the center of the tank.

That brings us up to the present. I am increasingly thinking that I may add scarlet badis soon. Another Christmas present was a baby brine shrimp hatchery and I am also thinking about getting a Grindal worm culture going. Doing both of these would put me in a good state of preparation for the possible badis as well as for hopefully inducing CPD breeding.

 

Forgot to post pics with the post yesterday. Here they are:

 

Lots going on. I added two scarlet badis. Quite cool and seem healthy. Does anyone who knows badis want to give an opinion as to whether I have a male/female pair? I know females are rare, but that first one in the video beloe is very pale. (Even though his colors don't show up very well in the video, the second is def. a male)...I made up my first batch of bbs using the hobby kit today. Amazed how easy it is and they hatched despite 60s in house at night...I also released the female CPD from the hospital tank back into the tank. Tough call, but she looked better and I was worried that she would struggle with ore doses needed immediately for the male. Probably a good thing as I then found out after testing that hospital tank is at about.75 ppm ammonia (dosed prime). Fingers crossed re her and will update....Badis/tank video during bbs feeding below: Badis
*Edit: just watched video and you only see 'her' for a second at beginning (and his colors actually show up well) Heres a pic of her for any helping with iding

 

Your tank looks great! I have a species tank with 3m/5f scarlet badis, but I can't really tell from the pic or the vid. Sorry.

 

Your tank looks great! I have a species tank with 3m/5f scarlet badis, but I can't really tell from the pic or the vid. Sorry.

Thanks! And no worries--not winning any photography awards anytime soon.

I think I may have seen a small bit of red on that badis today, so the chances of it being a subdominant male and not female would seem higher...I did notice the endlers chasing the badis a bit today near the top of the tank. Hopefully this doesn't get bad enough to scare the badis out of the top area--it is quite cool seeing them picking at little microfauna from the water surface/in the water lettuces.

I pushed my Valentine's Day spousal gift/goodwill to its absolute maximum by not only purchasing the badis, but also ordering a bunch of plants and dry goods that I picked up today (rotala rotundifolia, bulbitis, java moss, chola wood, catulppa leaves, shrimp mineral balls, lucky bamboo, pink arrowhead). So there will be NO more purchases other than food when necessary for the foreseeable future. But that is OK--quite happy with the tank/inhabitants. Now that I have an extra tank, the goal will be to begin trying to hatch pygmy and CPD fry in the 4 gallon once the male CPD is (hopefully) also better.

 

The second badis didn't make it. I think it was a subdominant male, and it probably was already stressed from the lfs tank. Bullying from the other badis may have been the last straw and it passed today. :-(

Otherwise, things seem ok in the main tank. The female CPD I released from the hospital tank seems to be hanging in there (though the male in the hospital tank is not doing well). All else are well and enjoyed more live bbs today.

 

The tank is currently in one of my favorite periods since setup. The nice looking forked red AR stem in the middle is now at 18 inches high and I am starting to see some thickening of the other AR stems that gives me hope that they might be about to shoot up as well. The buce, java moss, catapa leaf and extra cholla wood that I added recently in the back right/on the driftwood creates a cool, even more natural vibe for the right side of the tank. And the old standbys (crypt on right, amazon sword on left, pogostemenon, water lettuce, hornwort and water lily) continue to do their jobs to varying degrees.

We are now also officially in shrimp city. I am getting counts of 30+ shrimp, an all-time high that has me thinking the total population may be over 50. The second and third generations of shrimp being produced by mixes between the red cherries and blue/red rilis are really cool looking as well. The single amano is also out and about quite a bit.

All fish still in the tank are doing well, I think. I did ultimately lose the male CPD that I was treating in the hospital tank. Strange/unfortunate that I was able to successfully treat the female (she is back in the main tank and looks to be still doing well overall) but not the male. Since I have not kept them before, I do continue to worry about the scarlet badis and whether he is getting enough to eat. I have been doing 3-4 days with live BBS followed by 3-4 days consecutively with 1 feeding of frozen a day. He eats the live BBS with gusto but shows only a little interest in frozen. He has also seemingly settled into a routine of bouts of morning glass surfacing followed by evening disappearance. Yesterday I finally found him at night behind the driftwood and under the buce, hunting for who knows what. There are very small critters of some type that I see doing 'dashes' up and down to/from the top of the tank as well as the shrimp, so I am hopeful that he is getting enough to eat. Still, I think I will try to run off a week or two more or less straight of live bbs feedings in the hope of packing some weight on to him. He is such a cool fish and I am hopeful he will be around for a long time.

At present, the total count in the tank is 11-12 CPDs, 3 male endlers, 1 scarlet badis, and who knows how many pygmy corys (I haven't seen the pygmys schooling in numbers in months, but I have not seen any bodies and the ones that I do see look very healthy--I have seen what I think are pygmy eggs on several occasions), 50-60 davidii shrimp, 1 amano shrimp, 1 mystery snail, 1 nerite snail, lots of MTS/other 'pest' snails, a few hydra, and a population of some sort(s) of almost microscopic organisms.

Plant-wise, in the tank there are two crypts, one amazon sword, one microsword, hornwort, pogostemenon stellatus octopus (or is it the other way around?), AR, water lettuce, duckweed, buce, java moss, val (one of the bunches has taken off recently), dwarf anubias, one dwarf lily, and rotala. Growing out of the tank is pothos, pink arrowhead and lucky bamboo. And that's about it. Will post a photo below in a bit!

 

I think I lost the Badis. The day after that triumphant last post he lost much of his color and was hanging at the top of the tank. The next day (yesterday) I didn't see him at all; I fed a lot of live BBS just now and also didn't see him.

I'm not sure that either of the Badis were in great condition and I am not sure there was much I could have done for the first one. But this one had a good amount of color and I have to think this is on me. In hindsight I should have done a month straight of live BBS before trying to do a frozen/live feeding schedule. And, I should also have had other live food on hand. Not good and I doubt that I will try again in the near future. :-( (keeping in a tank with other fish also makes things difficult, as he was always in a race with the other fish for the live BBS)

 

Been a while; life is busy now (job interviews/applications, dissertation completion, parenting). I also lost at least two more CPDs (one the female I erroneously thought I had cured from that columnaris-like infection a couple of months ago; another a fish that had some sort of twirling/whirling disorder or parasite) and that took some enthusiasm out of me. The tank also apparently had an oxygen deficiency last week, which seems to have been caused by an excess of floating plants blocking surface agitation combined with higher springtime temperatures and reduced filter flow (I hadn't squeezed out the intake filter for a while). As far as I know, I didn't lose any fish before I fixed it--I only pieced it together after seeing the CPDs gasping for a couple of days.

I have more or less kept up with water changes and just did a major pull-out of the floaters yesterday. Up ahead is summer and a battle with temperatures--I will soon reduce the water level by an inch so that I can keep the lid off and also increase the surface agitation from the filter waterfall.

As you can see, and even after the pull-out, the tank remains lush!

(also, the job apps and interviews led to a job. I will thus have a 'real' income for the first time in a half-decade plus. You know what that means? That's right, a better than 10% chance of convincing my spouse that a 75 gallon is affordable and isn't much bigger than the 29! )

 

I guess these are turning into once-monthly updates, for now anyways. But all is well with the tank. As you can see, it is quite overgrown, but I am enjoying that fact, for now anyways. I have been clearing out the duckweed and water lettuce when the top grows in; at some point I will need to do some clearing out of the pogostemenon as well.

As far as I can tell, the fish are all well. The shrimp colony continues to increase. I continue to do once weekly water changes.

I do have a bizarre/interesting story. Our house's south side has always had trouble with ants. I also allowed small bits of fish food to remain uncleaned on top of the aquarium light this winter. As one might expect, this attracted the ants when spring rolled around. As one might not expect, they actually set up a nest/colony INSIDE the nicrew aquarium light. I discovered this last week and after failing at an attempt to clean out the ants, I thought the only solution was to order a new light, which I did. The light arrived Wed., but I gave cleaning out the light another try Thursday and discovered that Nicrew designed the light so that it can be completely disassembled. This allowed me to squirt water straight down the hollow parts of the fixture (since I was able to remove all of the electronical parts) and clean out the nest. So problem solved, $50 saved (thankfully I ordered from Amazon Prime), and kudos to Nicrew for smartly designing the light to facilitate cleaning!

That's all. FTS s below. Tank water is down a bit since I had the lid off during the light issues and didn't want any jumpers.





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Wow, that's just gorgeous!!!! Really stunning!!!

 

Wow, that's just gorgeous!!!! Really stunning!!!

Thanks Rose of Sharon! Both for the appreciated comment and continuing to read this--always great to see you here!

 

Also following. Nice tank!
I think all my tanks smell “marshy”. And I figure that, after all, bacteria does smell! That smell definitely wasn’t present until the tanks matured.
But I’ve also had some run ins with BGA or Cyanobacteria. That definitely has a distinct and sharp smell to it. But if you aren’t seeing very green algae like stuff growing, that’s probably not it.

This.

If it smells like nature, it’s fine.

My brackish tank smells like a tide pool. So terrible lol I can drive a few miles to the beach, or I can just admire mine anytime. Just gotta get really close to the tank to get the full beach smell though lol

 

Spotted a CPD fry while doing a water change tonight. First I've seen in over a year-- fingers crossed it makes it!

 

More CPD fry sightings today—the little guy is hanging in there!