100 Gallon Tank My new (to me) 100 gallon tank!

LOL! I would certain be willing to help!

 

What are you looking to stock your tank with, ginger?

 

UPDATE: Pictures of my new babies!!!

My only complaint (and I'm sure that I am just being petty), is that all of the Blue Marbled Veils (6 in total), just look too black. Each has at least 80-90% black coloration and very little white. I understand that they have not turned yet, so they are not showing their blue colors yet and that is okay. However, with soooo much black coloration in their marbling, I really doubt they ever will show much of the blue (even after they turn). I'm thinking that they would need more of the white marbling for it to show up well. So that is rather disappointing.

I have the same fish from the same breeder, give it time. The Blue does come out, give them time and you will not be disappointed.

It is going to be hard to give them up...Gordon always gives extra.

 

I have the same fish from the same breeder, give it time. The Blue does come out, give them time and you will not be disappointed.

It is going to be hard to give them up...Gordon always gives extra.

I talked to Lee Gordon and he offered to send me some more blue marbles with lighter coloring for a dirt cheap price! I just have to pay shipping. It was a deal I couldn't refuse... so... 8 more should be here on Friday!!!

You are right... it is going to be sooooooo hard to give them up! They are all just adorable. Not to mention the fact that I LOVE seeing so many tiny Angels schooling together... it is so cool!

 

That's awesome! Lee is a very good guy that is all about the fish and customer satisfaction rather than sales. I've dealt with him a couple times.

Oh oh oh! I want the extra babies!

 

I'll be sure to give you first dibs when that time comes, Rogue!

UPDATE: Video of my Angels!

All fishy babies are doing well... although I had a little scare last night. If you care to read about that, you can do so .

My new lighter Blue Marbles arrived on Friday and they have settled right in with the rest of my angles just fine. I really wanted to take some pictures to show you guys that the blue coloring is just starting to show up a little bit on some of my angles... but my camera is not very good. So instead I took a 2 minute video for you guys to watch. Enjoy!

 

LoL... great choice of music!

I want to order a few Philipine Blue Pinoy by the end of the month...I hope they will be back in stock...

 

Beautiful tank Musey and gorgeous angels too

 

Thanks all! The babies are doing really well, are growing fast. I'll put up some new pictures soon. Anthony, I would highly recommend ordering from Lee Gordon... as every Angel he sent me was in perfect health. Not only did all 24 Angels survive the trip, but they looked better than any other fish that I have ever ordered through the mail. I was impressed that I did not even have one single loss. They are all thriving and they are super healthy and active!

 

LoL... well I only maybe want 4 but will probably order 6

 

I will probably only keep 4-6 of mine as well. But I don't want to stare at an empty tank for then next several months while my Angels grow up. It is a lot of fun watching so many babies school together and play. So even though I'm not going to keep them all, I am enjoying having them for the time being.

These babies have no fear of me either... they follow me everywhere I go. And as soon as my hands go into the tank they are all over me! LOL! They absolutely know who feeds them and they beg ALL DAY LONG! An hour after I feed them, they are begging again! Hahaha!

 

Musey, why are you doing your substrate this way?

-Organic topsoil mixed with some API First Layer Pure Laterite and some gavel for the bottom of the substrate which will then be capped with 1.5 inches of black sand.

I like the idea but still curious

 

I'm using soil because it is better for the plants. Most of my plants (but not all) are root feeding plants... so a nutrient rich substrate like soil will do wonders for them! The Laterite is basically just clay (which is super rich in iron), and because I'm growing some red plants (Red Temple Plant, Ludwigia, Red Tiger Lotus, and Rotala Indica) that require lots of iron to show their colors properly, I added the Laterite as an extra boost in nutrients. As for the black sand cap... well I just like it. Plus, it also helps to hold the soil down and keep little bits of stuff from floating all over the tank. Without a thick cap, the soil substrate would make a mess of my tank water.

I went with black sand this time because I have used light colored pool filter sand before. I didn't like how it looked after a few months. It just got dirty looking and no matter what I did, it just never looked as good as it did when I first got it.

So far, things are working pretty well. The "new driftwood fuzz" is almost gone... and my plants are starting to rebound very nicely from the initial transplanting. I had a lot of die-off initially and a couple plants didn't make it (RIP Anubias Nana and Duckweed). However, now I have a ton of new growth starting to show up and in another week or two I think things are going to look gorgeous! Don't ask me why the duckweed didn't make it... I have no idea. Most people complain they can't get it out of their tanks because it grows so fast. But for what ever reason it just seemed to vanish over night.

My Pennywork, Ludwigia and Jungle Val are doing the best of everything and growing like weeds! Watersprite and Anacharis are also doing well, although they both almost completely melted at first. Happily, they have both rebounded beautifully. The Bacopa and the Creeping Jenny are growing slowly... and the bacopa seems to be struggling a bit. The Dwarf Sag and Narrow Leaf Chains are just now starting to come around as well. Oh and the Red Temple plant is really starting to look nice with a lot of new leaves.

Strangely, I'm having issues with the Hornwort at the moment. When I first added it to the tank it was doing great.... it tripled in size the first week. I had the largest, prettiest bush of Hornwort ever! After week two, I ended up trimming about 48 inches of Hornwort out of the tank. But ever since then, it has not been doing very well. The plant just seems to be falling apart now and I keep finding pieces of it all over my tank. Some of it started to turn reddish-brown and it seems to have stopped growing. I'm not sure what is wrong. Just as the rest of my plants seem to be coming around and looking good, the Hornwort suddenly wants to die off. Oh well.

Also, I added some Baby Tears to the tank a few days ago... so we will see how that goes.

 

Hmmm... I gotta message you!

 

Sounds like your tank is coming along extremely well. I'd love to see an FTS and some close up shots when you've got time.

 

Sounds like your tank is coming along extremely well. I'd love to see an FTS and some close up shots when you've got time.

Thanks Rogue!

I'm planning on taking lots of new pictures once the driftwood fuzz is completely gone (almost there) and my plants fill out just a little bit more. They are only just now starting to get some real nice growth going, but I think in a week or so they will look great. I can't wait!

And some of my babies are getting big already! I could hardly believe my eyes today when I was checking them over... one of the platinums is bigger than quarter size already!

UPDATE: Here are some new pictures PLUS a video of my GBRs sparring.

Overall the tank is doing well. Starting to have a bit of algae growth so I am cutting back on the lights for a while. I can't seem to get the baby tears (not dwarf baby tears) to grow... just wants to die. But other plants are doing okay. Just need to get the algae under control.

Bartholomew




Blizzard



Ice



Frost



Casper



Countess & Duchess




Jellybelly



MerI (Meriadoc)



UPDATE PART 2: More pictures.

Myst



Oreo



Patches



Peaches



Pip (Pippin)




Sam (Samwise Gamgee)



Sebastian




Duke

 

Beautiful!! Your rams are particularly gorgeous.

 

Beautiful!! Your rams are particularly gorgeous.

Thanks Rogue! I'm very proud of my rams. It is really hard to believe that they are doing so well because I know how sensitive they can be and I was very worried about my pH being naturally high here. The store I got them from is on well water that has significantly lower pH. At the moment I have 6 of them (2 boys and 4 girls) and they all seem to be happy as bugs in a rug.

I do have to give some credit to ... the new local fish store that opened about 5-10 minutes away from me in January. John and Lisa over there are fantastic and they have a lot of beautiful fish that are very well cared for. I have never seen GBRs look so good in a store tank... ever. But their GBRs are just amazing... they have them in a HUGE Discus display tank that is beautiful. The GBRs seem to really like it in there.

Thought I would do another update on what is going on with the tank.

1. I made a HUGE mistake. Because (as mentioned above) I was starting to see some algae starting to take hold, I did what you usually do with algae... I reduced my lights (and over the weekend I actually killed them completely for 48 hours) and started double dosing Excel. However, I complete forgot that with Brown Algae (Diatoms) that killing your lights makes it worse. DOH! So now my tank is covered in Brown Algae. *sad panda face* Fortunately it seems to be contained (at least for now) to the lower third of the tank. My tank lights are off for the night already... so I will try to post some pictures tomorrow of my Diatom outbreak.

2. About a week or two ago, I ended up finally ripping all the Hornwort out of the tank. It was just falling apart and making a HUGE mess. What a chore that was, let me tell you! I spent about 3-4 hours trying to get all of it out of the tank and the needles off my substrate! Anyway I replaced the Hornwort with some pretty Ammania Gracilis, Mayaca Fluviatilis and Limnophilia Aromatica (my favorite). I have also just received some star grass which I will be planting tomorrow to replace the baby tears that have all but withered away. Again, I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

3. I built an inline DIY CO2 reactor out of PVC pipe. It works great and I think I get pretty close to 100% dissolution! I'm currently still using DIY CO2 but will be upgrading to pressurized for this tank in about a week or two. This thing is much better than my other CO2 system on my 55 gallon (pressurized + ), where I get a zillion micro bubbles all over my tank (looks like 7-up). A lot of the bubbles in the 55 actually make it to the surface and just float around up there at the surface so I know I'm losing a lot of gas. However, with the new PVC pipe reactor on my 100, there are no little tiny bubbles floating in my tank at all. All of the CO2 is complete dissolved before it ever gets to the tank, which is a big plus in my book.




4. Also, I'm having an issue with fine dust/dirt particles floating in the water. And on one end of the tank there is apparently a lack of circulation because a lot of this fine dust/dirt is slowly settling on the upper leaves of my plants (particularly my Pennywort). Personally, I just think this compliments the algae on the lower leaves so well. I'm sure to win many awards for the most grungy tank. I think I could even compete at the Pro level. Hahahaha! Anyway, this dust/dirt issue really only became an issue over the last week or so... right after I added a school of Corydoras and after installing my DIY CO2 reactor. It is my belief that the reactor may be slowing down my canister flow slightly and that my Corys are digging up my sand too much. Anyway, if you want to know more about that story you can read this .

That is about all the news for now. Some good things but mostly a bunch of setbacks. Oh well, no one ever said that fish keeping would be easy... but I'll get there eventually!

 

Beautiful fish!

 

Woohoo! My GBRs paired up and laid eggs!!! Gonna have some babies!

Unfortunately, I didn't know that they had spawned when I did a HUGE tank cleaning and water change today... and while I was trimming out some plants by their nest, I may have accidentally disturbed the eggs. I'm not sure... but there are definitely eggs there... but not that many (maybe 25). Mom and Dad are taking turns fanning them. These GBRs are still fairly young so I'm sure it is their first spawn. Maybe there is a low number of eggs because they are so young and it is their first time? Not sure... I just hope I didn't mess up the nest while cleaning and trimming.

I would post a picture... but they laid the eggs on driftwood in a hard-to-see area that is covered by Anubias.

 

Here are some updated pictures of my tank.

Current full tank shot:



Just for reference, here is the one from almost 2 months ago at setup:
View attachment 106765

And here are a few more closer s... (sorry my camera is not the greatest).

 

awesome!! I love the rich plant life.

 

Nice!

 

Beautiful

 

Wow, gorgeous tank.
I wish. In my dreams it is

 

Thanks guys... this is still a work in progress. After two months I'm still ironing out the kinks and I'm sure I will continue this process for some time... but I really appreciate all the feedback.

 

Your tank looks fantastic.

You have great looking GBRs.

 

Sad news today... all my GBR eggs disappeared last night. I'm not sure if the parents ate them or if someone else did...

Oh well, I hope they will try again soon!