This page is still under construction - I'll be filling in some
missing parts from memory when I get the chance.
- June 1997
- The aquarium was first set up in early June, using a substrate
of #16 silica sand over a 2 inch layer of Hartz pH5
kitty litter.
Osmocote fertilizer pellets were mixed with the clay.
The two otocinclus were added within the
first week of setup to get a head start on any algae.
Since this was my first attempt at a planted tank, I pretty much
ignored any aquascaping and planted things wherever they fit.
The plants grew fast right from the start. Pretty soon it was a
matter of deciding which ones to keep - Ambulia got canned because
it grew too fast and kept taking over the water surface.
- August 1997
- By now the tank had been growing
jungle-like for a while,
so I got brave enough to add some cardinal tetras. The first few
batches were pretty sickly - nearly every morning I'd find another
fish sucked against the filter intake, and most of them came down with
Ick. Finally I found a LFS that had a big school of very active,
healthy-looking cardinals, and brought home 12 of them to add to the
3 survivors from previous stores. One of the store employees also
gave me the very helpful tip of drip-acclimating the fish to their
new home. (That's where you slowly drip water from the tank into
the fish container over an hour or two using airline tubing and a
check valve.) Anyway, that did the trick - no more fish deaths.
Sometime in late August/ early September the tank went through a
"cloudy water" phase. It was a couple weeks after the tetras had
been added, and it also seemed to coincide with a heat wave that
pushed tank temps up to 83 degrees F during the day. No ammonia or
nitrites were measurable (to this day, I've never detected any
ammonia or nitrites), and when the temperature dropped back to the
regular 78F after a couple weeks, the cloudiness went away on its own.
Snails - Some ramshorn and pond snails had been in the tank since
setup, and from what I gathered on the aquaria newsgroups, pond snails
were overly prolific and annoying. So ever since the beginning I'd
been catching and squashing the larger pond snails. Around this
time I noticed that the pond snails had died out completely. I don't
think I could have squashed them all, and as far as I know tetras and
ottos don't eat snails. :-) So it's a happy mystery to me how this
happened. Maybe it was the competition from the ramshorns combined
with my snail-squishing efforts. The same thing also happened in my
30-gallon tank - I haven't seen a pond snail anywhere for months.
- October / November 1998
- Got tired of the jungle look and rearranged the plants to
create some open spaces. Now you can actually see the cardinals.
- December 1997
- Took some photos using ASA400 35mm
film, manual exposures, and a tripod.
- January / February 1998
- Plant growth slowed down a bit - some showed deficiency symptoms.
Alternanthera had smaller leaves, java fern developed holes and
black spots. Green thread algae started appearing among the
Lilaeopsis and on the leaves of other plants closest to the light.
Hygrophila polysperma and java fern had paler leaves than usual.
The fish seemed fine, so I didn't do anything for a while.
- March 1998
- Figured it was about time to re-fertilize the substrate, so
I pushed some bits of Best-Tab fertilizer tablets into the kitty
litter layer. I also changed two of the four light bulbs over the
tank. Plants started growing normally again after a couple weeks,
although the thread algae still grows around the Lilaeopsis.
Java fern sometimes develops some black sections and holes in the new leaves.
One cardinal tetra has disappeared - I assume it died and got eaten.
Then again, last month one of the ottos vanished for the whole month,
but popped up again after a good plant trimming.
- April 1998
- Most plants are doing fine, but that green thread algae sure
is stubborn. Trimmed back a lot of the Lilaeopsis hoping to get
rid of the algae. I also started using Thiel Aquatech trace element
fertilizer, thinking there might be a trace element imbalance in the
tank. Now I've been using mostly Thiel for about 3 weeks, but
still a drop of Kent once a week or so.
I've cut back to adding 1 drop of trace element fertilizer every other
day instead of every day. I don't have test kits for
iron or low concentrations of nitrates, but I'm thinking of getting
them if this keeps up. The algae doesn't look that bad, but it bugs
me since it didn't always use to be part of the tank.
- May 1998
- May 9 - Got LaMotte phosphate and nitrate test kits. Phosphates
are undetectable, nitrates are at 0.5 ppm nitrate-nitrogen. This
test was made a few days after I added some KNO3 to the tank, so
I'm guessing my nitrates may generally be a bit low.
- June 1998
- June 28th - Changed two of the light bulbs.
Been adding KNO3 regularly now, haven't used the test kits again
though. I think the black spots on the java fern have stopped
appearing on new leaves.
- July 1998
- Pushed some Jobes fertilizer spikes into the substrate under
the Alternanthera and under the H. polysperma below the filter intake.
The java fern has become a monster and taken over half the tank,
so I trimmed it back severely, leaving only a few sprigs to grow back.
- August - October 1998
- Well, I've been a bit of a flake about updating this page
in a while, and now I can't remember exactly what happened when.
What's happened since July:
I've been trying to add KNO3 regularly, and the difference is
noticable. Leaves get bigger and healthier. I've been using a
higher ratio of tap water for water changes, so the water should
be harder and higher in pH. Once I forgot to change the yeast
generator for a long time - the pH rose to over 7.6 and the fish
were not happy. 2 cardinal tetras died (not sure what their life
span is supposed to be - these are from the original batch over
1 year ago).
I think it was early September that we had our annual heat
wave, which caused tank temperatures to reach 83F. This once
again coincided with cloudy water - not too bad: things
at the back of the tank looked hazy. The cloudiness went away
after the temperatures dropped a couple weeks later.
- November 1998
- Nov 15th - one of the light fixtures in the hood is broken,
I'm not sure since when (less than 1 month). So we've got only
3 20-Watt bulbs at the moment.
The green algae isn't so much "thread" algae anymore - it's more
like short strands that clump together and attach themselves
firmly to plants. Trimmed back more Lilaeopsis to get rid of it.