The epic rimless starphire project

[fischkopp]

Thanks folks! The plan is to plant it this weekend. I was thinking of some little shrimpies for this tank, but not Cardinals. I will leave that to someone who can actually keep them alive.

[Sharbuckle]

Plant it! Plant it!

[fischkopp]

It's time for an update. I obviously I didn't get to plant the tank that weekend in January, but got at it early February. Thanks to some good friends in town I was able to source a couple of plants that I had in mind for this setup. The first two, three weeks were quite uneventful. I actually felt things were going to slow. At that time I had the lights going for 5 hours, so I increased that to 7 hours, and added a few scoops of fertilizer, just what I thought might helps to speed up things. Well, it did speed things up, unfortunately in a bad way.

Within a couple of days I had BBA and all sorts of other slimy stuff growing everywhere. Well, not so good. Maybe I should have done a water change at this point, but it seemed like a lot of work. So I opted for a clean up crew, starting with oto cats. These poor guys had a rough time, due to high CO2 and low temperature their numbers got decimated. This forced me to add a heater to keep the tank at least above 20deg. Then came a batch of neocaridina shrimp. They did ok but didn't quite make the impact I was hoping for. So finally, after 4-5 weeks, I did my first water change, 90%.

A bit annoyed with all that unwanted algae growth I started adding Excel (25ml). At the same time I also started doing iron and traces. Plants responded immediately, within 2-3 there was healthy new growth, at the same time algae spread was stalled. Yeah! I continued dosing Excel (5-10ml) and iron/traces (1-2ml) daily - or every second day when I forgot.

Next came a group of japonica shrimps, and these guys have been quite good at cleaning the rocklands. Unfortunately all of them passed when I did a second water change. Beside Excel/iron/traces I also added CaSO4 and NaHCO3 because plant growth was slowing just before the WC. Not sure which of these additions the japonica didn't like. My guess would be the slightly increased dose of Excel. But I can't say for sure.

Thanks to a good friend I got hold of the best cleaning crew so far: a bunch of baby bushynose. They have been polishing most surfaces in the tank tirelessly for the past few days, making the tank look much more enjoyable. Meanwhile the plants are starting to take off in a way that I can slowly move from just planting it to beginning to scape it. There are some plants which I don't like in their current setting, and others that just don't work at all, but are in the tank right now because I wanted to know how they would do in this setup. All tweaking is still early though. I will continue to experiment with this tank in t1he next little while.

Sorry, no pictures this time, I will see to take some soon. Meanwhile I will try to stay on top of those water changes.

[fischkopp]

A quick picture. It's nothing spectacular, more work in progress. Algae is pretty much under control, but BBA is still present. That stuff doesn't really go away on it's own as you may know, or only under some quite rare mysterious circumstances, but at least it's not spreading. Interestingly, ADA soil itself appear to be a pretty good base for BBA, this is where most of the BBA remains for me at the moment.

It's pretty wild looking fat the moment! What I like is the placement of the crypts. The center is way too dense though. It's mainly blyxa japonica, whoch is a little hard to see because it's surrounded by the the odd Hemianthus micranthemoides, Tonina belem and Didiplis diandra. Most of these will go to the sides.

There is a bunch of Pogostemon helferi on the left side that will go as well. The Utricularia graminifolia seems to do well, and I will split up the patch and plant is along the whole front. Ahh, the front: apparently it is desirable to have a straight and level line of gravel in the front. I will see if I can fix that.

That ugly bush of Lysimachia nummularia in front of the 'god' rock is gona as I type this. And so is the odd Echinodorus tenellus because it's runners are just a pain. The latter one is newly called HELANTHIUM TENELLUM, but who knows that really.

Stay tuned for some more updates down the road.

It's growing.

[daworldisblack]

*drooling* too dazed to type anything else :p

[sas]

I think it looks great , can't wait to see this tank evolve.

[exv152]

Looks great, nice and clean.

In my experience BBA loves ada aquasoil, but nothing a bit of H2O2 won't fix.

How are you diffusing the CO2?

[fischkopp]

Thanks! I can't wait to see it evolve either! I find my self sitting in front of it a few minutes every day wondering what has changed and what to do next ...

I am using one of these little Fluval CO2 diffusers. They are great, much better than the Rhinox diffusers, which I have as well. The Fluval sits below the return on the right. Eventually I am going to move it into an inline reactor to increase efficiency a little. But as said, it's doing a pretty good job already. I am currently running at ~1bps - but take this with a grain of salt since bubble counters aren't all the same. The drop checker says green, and so do the plants, and the fish. That's what I go by.



Maybe one thing: I noticed that the crypts come out a little pale, green at the veins, but much lighter coloured towards the edges. The are Cryptocoryne parva and Cryptocoryne retrospiralis in the tank, both showing similar deficiency symptoms.  Did anyone else notice this with ADA dirt?