My 46 Gal Community Tank

[bdement]

Hello all, here is a pic of my 46 Gallon Community tank:



Equipment:

• 46 Gallon All-Glass Bow Front Tank
• 2 x 96 Watt Power Compact Fixture (SunPaq Daylight 6700°K & SmartPaq Daylight 10000°K/Actinic 460nm)
• DIY CO2 Reactor
• Hydor HydroKable 100 Watt Undergravel Heater
• Eheim 2215
• Penguin 330 (Run only at night)

Animals:

• 2 Discus
• 4 Cardinal Tetras
• 5 Rummy Nose Tetras
• 4 Pentazona Barbs
• 2 German Blue Rams
• 2 Clown Loaches
• 4 Siamese Algae Eaters
• 2 Chinese Algae Eaters
• 1 Bristlenose Pleco
• 1 Clown Pleco (I think...)
• 2 Otocinclus

Plants (from left to right):
Back:

• Cryptocoryne Spiralis
• Tiger Lotus
• Nymphoides sp. 'Taiwan'
• Echinodorus martii
• Hygrophila Polysperma Varie
• Amazon Sword

Front:

• Cryptocoryne Beckettii 'petchii' (I think)
• Echinodorus 'Kleiner Bar'
• Chain Sword

Semi-Daily Maintenance:

• 5ml Iron
• 5ml Potassium

Weekly Maintenance:

• 20% water change
• 5ml Flourish
• 10ml Trace
• 2.5ml Nitrogen
• 20ml Excel

All my ferts are Seachem. My test kits are too old to get any readings, which tells you how often I test. Any comments or suggestions are welcome!

[Jessie]

I love it! I always love the look of discus swimming amoung broad leaf plants. Everything looks very healthy

Do you feel that the Seachem iron brings out the potential red of the lotus?

[bdement]

Originally Posted by Jessie

I love it! I always love the look of discus swimming amoung broad leaf plants. Everything looks very healthy

Do you feel that the Seachem iron brings out the potential red of the lotus?

Thanks! Just about everything is healthy (now).

About 3 months ago, I introduced some cardinals from PetSmart and my tank was infested with ich. I treated with Heat+Salt and all my animals survived, but it really set most of the plants back, and destroyed some others (Jungle Val and a stem plant I never knew the name of).

The Tiger Lotus has always been fairly red, but Iron does help, and it makes a huge difference in the color of the fresh growth of the Hygrophila Polysperma Varie, which I have to top off every week.

The greatest contributing factor to success with the Tiger Lotus has been root tabs though (oops, didn't mention them). Before using them, it would shoot leaves for the surface whenever possible, and the growth rate was about half of what it is now.

[bdement]

I rescaped over the weekend, and here's a pic from today:



I planted glosso from my desk tank in the front, the loaches have pulled some of it out already, but not too bad. I also cut all the hygro I had in half and replanted it really densely, I can't wait till it fills in!

Yesterday I got motivated and replaced my yeast bottles, as well as one of my lights (rotating one out every 5-6 months). When I came home today, almost everything in the tank was pearling! That was really, really cool. Even a little bit of the glosso that's not shaded was pearling.

My parents got me DrFosterSmith's Semi-Automatic CO2 System! Is it just me or is the pricing for CO2 tanks pretty much standard? I looked for a used one on auction but couldn't find any, so I just placed an order from KegWorks.com.

[dangmatic]

cool

[bdement]

Can SAEs or Clown Loaches do this to my Tiger Lotus? The Pentazona barbs maybe? Nutrition, help?

[bdement]

Is this burning or bronzing on my Cryptocoryne Spiralis? It's right under a lot of light and it's a crypt, do they all prefer lower light?

[ed seeley]

Originally Posted by bdement

Can SAEs or Clown Loaches do this to my Tiger Lotus? The Pentazona barbs maybe? Nutrition, help?

My SAEs have completely stripped the leaves of my lily. There's almost nothing left! Hoping the new Steatocranus, who seem to making their territory around that area of the tank, will keep the SAEs at bay and give it chance to recover. Otherwise the SAEs may have to be moved!

[bdement]

I got my pressurized CO2 system set up this week and I'm running it into the intake of my Eheim filter. I haven't seen any pearling like I did just a couple weeks ago when I replaced a light and started the DIY bottles, so I'm upping the output a little bit every day. It's running pretty fast now, at least 5 bubbles per second. Will I have to go really, really high to see the amount of pearling I saw before?

Thanks for the note about the SAEs Ed. I've been thinking that I only need 1, maybe 0 for a while now. They did a great job of cleaning out my black brush algae problem, but if they're eating leaves then there must not be enough algae to keep them busy anymore. Now I have to figure out how to catch them...

[bdement]

I got a hair raising text message from my roommate at 4:51 today:

Dude I think something is wrong with the tank, the discus is upside down and everything is acting weird.

OMG.

Actually, when I read it, I yelled F***! Strangely enough, that barely turned any heads around the office. Apparently that's not out of the ordinary, at least from me.

I started pressurized CO2 a couple weeks ago and have been fiddling with it and the tank a lot lately, so I knew immediately what was going on. The flow on my canister filter has been steadily decreasing the past few weeks, so last night I cleaned it and inflow pipes out real good an wallah! flow is back to normal.

So I left work after explaining the emergency to one person and flew home. When I got there the scene was grim. Sure enough, my 5" discus was upside down in the front of the tank. My 3" and 4" clown loaches were next to him (or her) on their sides. Everyone else was laying around in various positions, motionless and panting. The only fish that seemed oblivious was a full size and healthy cardinal tetra, he/she was swimming around with seemingly no ill effects.

I had my roommate turn off the CO2 before I left work, so I started to drain water. I drained about 30% and started pumping it back in. While water was going back into the tank, I dusted the high flow areas with baking soda and liberally applied Stress Coat. I left the water line just below the spray bar so the outflow created tons of splashing. I even moved the plug to the air pump I run at night to the always on outlet.

Within 15 minutes one of the loaches and the large discus had righted themselves. Within 30 minutes the loach was moving around a bit and I noticed a cardinal tetra had righted itself. I decided I had done all I could and left the house. When I came back 4 hours later, everything was BACK TO NORMAL. Absolutely unbelievable. As far as I can tell, I didn't lose a single fish. The tank is buzzing with activity again and they even ate at the regular time.

Lesson learned: I had my BPS very high to compensate for the poor flow rate I was getting through my dirty and clogged up canister filter/CO2 diffuser. When I increased the flow rate, the diffusion rate increased with it and nearly wiped my tank out. I'm very thankful my roommate told me in time.