Free Slate

Here's some left over slate I don't need, free to whoever wants it as long as they pay for me to ship to them. Take one or all of the pieces I don't care. Shipping it is probably much cheaper then buying this stuff at a pet store as it's usually ridiculously priced per pound.

The very bottom left piece is about 8 inches tall by 6 wide to give you an idea of these pieces. All are about 3/4 inch thickness.

New CO2 system

Just got a Red Sea CO2 Bio System, taking my tank up to 5 water pumps now. That seems rather ridiculous for a 45g tank but there isn't too much current so I'm not too worried about it for now. Besides the CO2 will only be on during daylight hours with my timer so it shouldn't bother the fish much being the only output at the bottom of the tank, at least they can sleep. Anyways, that's about it, long day and I'm beat.

Hopefully my new camera will arrive tomorrow and I can get some nice pics up of the tank.

Can't Sleep

It's now 5a.m. can't sleep tonight, as per usual. I did manage to get a decent picture of the gourami trying to hang out with the discus today, it's kind of cool he thinks he's one of them lol. He will sit with them, and swim with them all day, occasionally Peanut will nip at him if he gets too close but SA seems to enjoy his company. I need to find a way to shoot a picture of my harlequin school, they look stunning in my light during the day but all efforts to photograph them usually turn out as 4 bright eye balls and ghostly bodies.

I'm thinking about adding two angelfish to the tank, a cheaper alternative to adding more discus. I'm very afraid of losing the discus, I've kept them before very successfully but I can barely shell out the 30 bucks each to get ahold of them, let alone deal with one or both dying. You may call me cheap, I call it cautious. Maybe I'll wait a few months and see how they do, I would think at that point adding more to the school might not be a good idea though, unless they're smaller than these two at that time. We'll see, let me know what you think. Most information I find on mixing discus/angels online is either very for it, or very against it. I'd like something with some hard evidence so I can make my own decision.

Here's a harlequin rasbora, this picture does it no justice whatsoever. Mine are VERY orange under my actinic light.

PH dips

Today my PH dipped 1.2 down to 6.6, I've been trying to keep it between 7.0 and 7.4 but it seems my water is so little buffered it will dip even with momentary co2 injection. I've been using co2 fizz tabs while I wait on my co2 injection to come. A short tube to my powerhead breaks the bubbles up very finely. The system itself was rather cheap but would prove costly if used over a long period of time, the tablets only generate co2 for maybe 3 minutes each.

The bacopa monnieri is growing like crazy, and the hornwort seems to double in size every morning when I get up. The ludwigia repens along the back of my tank seems to be taking root very well, growing slowly tho, but from what I understand that is usual. The sword i'm afraid isn't going to last, it won't green back up and has quite a few brown spots on the stems, we'll see how it does over the next few days. The one I wanted to grow the best doesn't seem to be doing anything at all but rotting below the gravel, rotala nanjensha, never had it before but it was said to be a low maintenance, fast growing plant when I ordered it, I'm curious if I'm missing any nutrients in the water now. Half of the hygro difformis is growing like crazy, the rest just seems to sit and eat up my light all day, growing only a small amount so far. All of the egeria looks well but has only just started to turn towards the lighting, almost a week in my tank and again it was sold to me as a fast grower, 4/5 on the scale.

Here's a picture of Jimmy and Peanut to close out the post.

Blog: Day One

Day one of this blog, day... roughly 50 of the aquarium. Most plants have been planted, or at least put into the tank to grow out some. The fish are stocked pretty well for now, I plan on adding more but not any time soon. Currently there are 2 discus, not sure what variety, as my main fish for the tank. Very curious for discus, seem to enjoy watching me. The rest of the community consists of 1 dwarf gourami, 3 otos, 4 harlequin rasboras, maybe 60 or so malaysian trumpet snails and 12 neritina reclivata (olive nerite snails).

First picture is of the tank on day one, freshly set up with some river stones and the gourami and one oto began cycling the tank.

This picture is a few weeks later, cycling finished. Added are the background (obviously) and the 4 harlequins. Also I planted what I think is hornwort that my MTS were shipped with.

And finally, around day 50 or so I purchased these two discus. Dark one is Peanut, and the orange is SA. Bass player and singer for 311.

Over the next few weeks I'll add some pictures of all my new plants, after my new digital camera arrives the pictures should get better.