New Fish

Its been a while.

So with a combination that I felt I needed to get some catfish and to try and tame the troublesome male guppy I bought some more fish. 

3 Otocinclus and 6 female guppies of unknown variety.

Interest little lot. I quite like the Oto's as they are kind of cute and funny in the way they behave. Sucking at the glass and plants. Wiggling along.

The female guppies have been introduced and appear to have settled in with no problems. So its watch and learn and see what happens. I am curious as to how the Otos will work out, as I decided to go with these instead of Dory's or Plec's.

A switch back to injected CO2 from liquid CO2

Its been 2 months since using liquid carbon in my fish tank.


This is partly due to the fact that since my supplier of CO2 had a refilling issue you I had to switch to liquid carbon, which I felt (naively probably, was not as much benefit to the plants as the injected method) and thus felt I was just keeping the tank going and not much to write home about.

Interesting to note that during the 2 months of using liquid carbon, I did on average 10ml per day which was 2ml over for my size of tank. This was due to the measuring receticle not being granular enough for me. But what was more interesting was that none of fish seemed to mind. 

What else happened during the 2 months. The plants appeared not grow as aggressively as the injected method. For me the liquid carbon method was easier to administer as my injected method has no solenoid and is extremely difficult to get the right BPM due to turning the valve by a hairs width causes a considerable change.

Anyway this week saw me get a refilled CO2 canister, with plans to switch at some point to a FE and appropriate regulator (with solenoid) to make my life less stressful. With the injection of CO2 saw more pearling on the plants than the liquid carbon.

Have also been more ruthless with the trimming.

Question:- Was thinking about putting a black background outside of the tank. Only the back of the tank and not the sides. Is there any impact to the fish health, light levels? Will it make the tank look nicer? Is it simple as going to an art and crafts shop and getting some black paper and short of blue tack coloured black what suggested ways are their to affix to the tank.

Or do I have a moss background like the Tropica video of layout 7

Algae Issues

So coming up to the 4 week anniversary in a few days.
Fish are still alive.
Found a leak in the CO2 valve which made me go through a .5kg can in 2 weeks. Have a new 1.5kg now connected.
Algae
Hmmm

What the hell is that mutation under my Microsorum pteropus?

The brown stuff on the rock seems to come back very quickly after a bit of toothbrush action

The brown stuff on the wood is that the same as on the rocks? Can I scrub it, leave it, employ some cherry shrimp?

What are the white things on the glass?

Hmmm


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Day 13 - Another water change and slug

Fish seem to be enjoying the tank and are being fed every other day. 

Have found another snail in the tank bringing up the snail population to 2. When the first one is a bit bigger I will post a photo for identification.

Changed about 40% of the water. Added the appropriate amount of Aquasafe liquid into the freshly filled tank.

As I was closing everything up I noticed a what looked like a tawny coloured slug on one of my plants. Immediate reaction blimey. So I got my aqua tweezers and hoiked the little critter out. Grrrr. How the hell did that get in. Perhaps it was the bucket I use for getting the water out of the tank for the water changes.

Also changed the white pad in the Juwel filter a weekly task. Interesting brown colour. 

Started to notice some of the rocks have started to get a bit of a green coating. Should I be getting them out and brushing with a toothbrush?

Onwards.

R