[mommyeireanne]

I had a nice surprise last night. I did my usual water test and Nitrite, nitrate and ammonia are still undetectable. However, my pH and KH dropped. That's a first. Never have any of my NPTs varied from my tap readings before. I have to figure it's from the driftwood. pH went from the usual 8.4(or more that's the highest reading option) down to 7.8 and KH went from 300 ppm (at least, ditto) to 150 ppm. Still high but I am happy. Plants alone never did this in any of my tanks. I did put 21 gallons of distilled water in this tank at set up. But for nine days it read the same as tap.
Everything else is good with the tank on day 11, here. I see growth in all the plants, even the annubias. My crypts haven't died off, but I'm still watching them. Well, duckweed isn't doesn't show growth but that's probably because of the charcoal filter. What's there looks ok, but not reproducing that I can tell. Fish are happy, even the Oto. Snails and shrimp still look happy with half dozen cherry girls saddled. Still watching for evil BBA, but looks ok so far. I plan on running charcoal for a month, maybe 6 weeks. Then I wan tot take that HOFront filter off and go back to just UV for water movement. I'll wait a while for another 'update'.
Cheers!

 

[gravy9]

Are you making sure that you're taking the reading around the same time of the day, MEA?

 

[mommyeireanne]

I was testing morning and night; then mornings; then every other day but in the same time in the morning; now every third morning. Not as often now as it's been ok and I see a lot of plant growth, but still testing and at the same time of day.
My Turquoise Rainbow male spawned this morning with an unidentified Rainbow female. (M. inornata or axelrodi would be my guess but they are not full grown.) I didn't think I'd have to worry about that yet as they still seem small to me, but it clearly happened. I noticed them yesterday over the Java Moss, and no eggs were apparent. This morning they were at it again and she released eggs. It was not my intention to breed or raise fry. And they shouldn't be hybridized. But I saw the other rainbows eating the eggs immediately and I'm betting the shrimp cleaned up the rest. I can't see any eggs left, now. If there are fry, I doubt I'll even see them before the gouramis. I'm glad they are happy but I don't want them to reproduce.
Anybody else keep different Melanotaenia species together? Do the fry survive if you don't remove them or remove the eggs?

 

[dwalstad]

I Anybody else keep different Melanotaenia species together? Do the fry survive if you don't remove them or remove the eggs?

I keep many Rainbowfish species together in one tank. Usually the fry get eaten so fast that you won't see them. However, if you look closely at the water surface, you may get lucky and see some fry.

When I was breeding Red Rainbowfish (Glossolepsis incisus), I netted the babies from the breeding tank and put them into a 5 gal that I had set up for raising these babies. I had set up the 5 gal tank with plants from another tank. Those plants apparently brought in eggs from Neon Rainbowfish and one Turquoise Rainbowfish. Now, I have a group of Neon Rainbows, and one Turquoise Rainbow (the few baby Red Rainbowfish I netted didn't survive).

Breeding Rainbowfish is fun. Sometimes all you need is to have a plant from a tank where Rainbowfish are spawning.

 

[mommyeireanne]

If they come right up to the surface, I won't worry about being overwhelmed with off spring. I kinda figured that fry would be eaten, but my shrimp have managed a good colony so I wasn't sure.
I didn't know they'd spawn so easily.
I hope to get more Turquoise and some Boseman's at a club auction this weekend. Having empty tanks will be a huge temptation knowing they breed this easily. My son would get a kick out of growing babies.

 

[tames]

I really love your lighting setup. This would be really great to get emergent plants to grow!

 

[nkambae]

hi mommyeireanne! luv the project and how the tank looks. do you have any photo updates?

stu

 

[mommyeireanne]

Hello and thanks guys. The plants closest to the ends show considerable leaning. I'm not thrilled about that. And our house is so dry that emergent growth isn't happy once it passes the surface. The Sprite and Vals that float across do well, Hygros and Ludwigia not so much. But everything is growing like crazy. I have made three partial water changes (1/4, 1/3, 1/4) since the set up Oct 5 and I no longer have charcoal or the HOB filter. I really need to take some pictures but things have been busy at my house lately. I'll try to post a real update soon with a pic.

 

[mommyeireanne]

I decided to update on the original thread, because it looks like it had more hits. My last update was here.
Let me start by saying the tank is doing well overall. As you can see it grows like crazy. I trim when it plants to the top because the house is so dry in the winter that my Aerial shoots die. But the duckweed aren't growing fast, a first for me, so I figure the water can't be over rich. pH has never dropped again, just that one time. it went back up and stayed up even though I test at the same time in the morning. Maybe a dead snail I didn't see or something. ? I didn't clean up for the pictures. Didn't even use the magnet to clean the glass. I was thinking about whether or not I'll be taking out the Vals because they aren't doing well. I thought I'd replace them with some more of the Sprite in that corner. I'm going to give them some time to see if they perk up from the Potassium I just added. I had noticed small holes in many of the plants leaves this week. Yesterday I threw in about 1/2 tsp of "No Salt" dissolved in water which I then de-chlorinated. They were looking rough before this so I don't know. I'm thinking they are loosing to all the Hygros in the tank, just failure to thrive in the plant chemical warfare. I'm sure it's because our plant club leader said he'd had a hard time with them, and I blythly responded, "Oh they've done great in both my little tanks." Well now I just have the one bigger tank and they are grossly outnumbered. I jinxed myself I trim them and they don't come back, they just get worse. The Amazon Sword is doing well. It lost the original leaves, you can kinda see the last of these turning translucent in the back. I haven't trimmed it off yet because the baby Ancistrus seems interested in it. I also saw a single molly fry in the plants. Just one. And I couldn't find it again when it swam away. I was hoping not to have a population boom with the Rainbows in there, and they must have done the job. If there's only one though, I'll wait a bit to do the big trim and water change, give him a chance. I've changed water about four times, about 25-30% each time. I put salt in when I first added the mollies, but haven't replaced it with water changes. And it was very little, like 2 tsp total. The plants didn't seem to notice. I don't see the MTS much, but I wouldn't have thought it was enough to bother them. I know for sure that the Red Cherry Shrimp eat the snail eggs, because I've seen them more than once. So MTS probably aren't growing as a colony, but with the shrimp and 2 sucker mouthed cats that's ok. The shrimp have a good colony and the fish seem happy. I really enjoy my tank.

 

[gravy9]

The tank looks very nice MEA. Congratulations. Wish I had your aquatic-thumb!

 

[mistergreen]

nice.. but watch out leaving you pictures next to the lights. It'll fade with time.

I'm going to start a 75NPT soon but will cheat by adding CO2.

 

[mommyeireanne]

MrG, bet you'll have out of this world growth, hope you'll share your results.
My husband didn't want to take them down. He's a prof. photographer so for him, it's just an excuse to put up more pictures
we have pics on the wall of every room, even the bathrooms!

 

[mommyeireanne]

***UPDATE***

Hello fellow NPT-ers. I wanted to update this tank journal as I reset the thing last night. This tank did very well until spring (October to April 2009) when I got some BBA. I was worried about it because I once had BBA take over an entire tank- covering every plant in my old 10 g. So when this tank faced that problem, I cut the plants back a lot and then dosed it with glutaraldehyde. If that's all I did I think it would have been fine, but this was on top of a previous trim. Then I did another drastic trip a month later before a plant swap. Of course I came home from the swap with new plants, so then I proceeded to yank out lots of foreground dwarf sag so I could put in new plants. Now I know this was just too much, but keep in mind that NPTs have always been resilient for me. Now I see the limit... The tank never fully recovered. I got anaerobic pockets where I pulled out dwarf sag, and it spread. The plants weren't old plants weren't able to come back in fast enough and the new plants never did root. Since all the fish, shrimp and snails were fine (still breeding in fact), I watched and waited. Recently my older established plants roots burned out and started floating. All the creatures were still ok, but I didn't want my house to smell like a swamp. I could see bubbling now and the aerobic areas were continuing to get bigger.

I ripped it out yesterday and spent the day resetting it. (I never want to do that again!) Today all the inhabitants are back in and happy. As I pulled out plants I was afraid I wouldn't have enough to replant it, because more than half my stock had their roots burned black. But I did. The fact that the tank limped along for so long and I didn't loose the fauna is a testament to the NPT setup. I still believe. :biggrin: But I will be more careful going forward. So back to the basics!

I cut my chunk of driftwood in half with my mitre saw so each piece would sit flat to the glass, but didn't use any other rocks this time. I can't see them anyway after about a month. But I knew my Bushy-nose cats would need it with the glass spotlessly free of algae. Next I used about 3/4-1 inch of plain topsoil, same batch as last year, so I didn't bother airing it out this time, just broke it up enough to spread around. Over that I used plain black aquarium gravel, but just enough to cover the dirt. It's a bit bigger than recommended, but it's worked for me before when spread thin like this. Then I planted back in the:
Sagtaria subulata
Hygro Compacta
Rotalla
big Amazon Sword cut back
baby sword-lets
one Sagitaria platyphila (sp?)
Marimo 'moss' ball
Java Moss
Water Sprite, floating

I used 30 gallons of rainwater this time, instead of buying distilled. I have extremely hard alkaline water. (19 gallons of distilled water added the first time didn't put a dent in the pH or hardness. ) I only used about 10-12 gallons of old tank water, which went in last, with the fish. The rest was dechlorinated tap water. I do add conditioner. It was pretty clear even though I didn't rinse the gravel, but I still waited overnight to put the fish back. Now they all seem happy. Lots of spawning activity. The shrimp are doing their usual; now I can see them more clearly because there is space between the plants and more light reaching the bottom.

My Animals are:
'Western' Rainbow girls
'Turquoise' Rainbow male
about 30 Mollies, silver, dalamtion, black and marbled three generations of them
a couple of Swordtails
a male Beta
2 albino Ancistrus
a brown Ancistrus
2 Amano shrimp males
many cherry shrimp
many Malasian Trumpet (Livebearing, burrowing) snails

I'm sure I lost some shrimp fry and small MTS, maybe even fish fry in the move. I'm pretty sure I got all the adults though. It took forever. I'll take some pictures tonight. It sits opposite a large window and the glare is too much right now. I do plan on getting some more fish when the soil settles in, as well as some blackworms. I can't find them in the store and will have to order them. I hope they will be added protection.

 

[mommyeireanne]

Here are the pics for my reset. I forgot to mention the red mangrove pods I suspended. I always wanted to try them so I'm giving it a shot.

 

[Dustymac]

Here are the pics for my reset. I forgot to mention the red mangrove pods I suspended. I always wanted to try them so I'm giving it a shot.

Wow, your tank looks a lot clearer than mine at one day old. What's your secret? Are you using a filter?

 

[davemonkey]

It looks good. I just did the same thing last night due to other algae problems (and a broken regulator), except I made the jump from high-tech to El Natural. Tanks like yours have inspired me to give nature a try.

-Dave

 

[mommyeireanne]

Thanks davemonkey.

Dustymac, I don't have a filter per se, I am running the new/reengineered 14w Submariner UV sterilizer which has a thin (1-2mm) "prefilter" sponge with big spaces. It's only to keep big chunks from ruining the sterilizer. It gets cleaned every month so it doesn't turn into a bio filter. I turned it on as soon as I filled the tank to help clean the rainwater which sat for a week or so.

We have supersized mosquitoes right now and even though the water was covered, I was worried about the possibility of mosquito larva eating my few fry, thought the rainbows and Beta wouldn't mind them.

The gravel went from bag to tank without rinsing. The UV sterilizer doesn't seem to effect tinting from tannins, and eventually my water will be lightly tinted green again, because I rarely change it. I like not changing water but I wish it would stay this clear without it. Can't have it all, I guess.

 

[davemonkey]

I like not changing water but I wish it would stay this clear without it. Can't have it all, I guess.

My daughter's NPT was cloudy, then completely GREEN for what seemed like a year (I think it was 2 months). Then, it just cleared up. I've done a sinlge 50% water change in the past month and her tank is crystal clear. I wonder if it just depends on the substrate used. Hers was actually loamy-clay soil topped with gravel, probably much less Organic Matter than the topsoil you are using?

 

[mommyeireanne]

I used a bag sold as Topsoil from either Lowe's or Home Depot which sat in my garage for a year. I didn't pick out the stick bits unless I noticed them (didn't screen the soil). It seemed pretty sandy to me, like they mixed sand and mulch together. I probably should have aired it out though, because I got a nitrite and ammonia read and have already had to change water. I'm aerating at night and may put a charcoal filter on for a while.

 

[dwalstad]

Mommyeireanne,

Your tank setup looks like a winner! You've got plenty of plants and a nice fat Amazon Swordplant. Because the plants came from your old tank, they are already adapted to the submerged condition. So you're way ahead of the game.

I predict that your new setup has an excellent chance of progressing smoothly.