courtesy of tobym

Really smart people may not have this problem, but a planted aquarium, it seems, always winds up with a duckweed infestation. I guess they call it a weed because it grows like one. A few years ago when I started doing major additions to my aquarium collection, I bought huge amounts of plastic plants in hopes of avoiding duckweed and snails. The plastic plants are now in a large bag in my garage. Live plants are so good for the aquarium environment that I decided to put up with the attendant problems, but yesterday I made something of a duckweed breakthrough.

During my weekly partial water change and duckweed dip routine, something kind of interesting became apparent. Duckweed and hornwort don’t much like each other. In aquariums where hornwort growth is lush, duckweed grows slower. No doubt it would take over the aquarium if the weekly duckweed dipping stopped, but the hornwort really helps. In fairness, it’s appropriate to point out that duckweed probably improves water chemistry just like any other live plant. I hope it’s also good for the lawn, because that’s where most of it winds up.

See also the thread going on - a Dollop about Duckweed

NPTs stands for Natural Planted Tanks a way of aquascaping, it is an ecosystem where plants and fish balance each other needs an approach pioneered by Diana Walstad, author of the book ‘ecology of the planted aquarium- practical manual and scientific treatise for the home aquarist’.

This “el natural” style fish tank aquascaping that is low maintenance needs no worrying a bout the plant placement or composition, be a ware this is not an approach suitable for someone who likes to rescape their tank to often. this school of aquascaping also saves you money, want to know how? click here to read more tips on NPTs.

courtesy of Lanids

One of the monthly aquarium magazines just published an interesting bit of information about cycling a newly established tank to get rid of the ammonia spikes that are deadly to fish. Fish waste, food waste, and plant decay all produce ammonia, which is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. Beneficial bacteria, so conventional wisdom goes, convert the ammonia into nitrogen or a nitrogen compound that plants can metabolize. The bacteria, when well established, then eat up and convert all of the ammonia in the aquarium. Getting the bacteria established and doing their thing is what takes all the time of cycling an aquarium. I suppose we’ve all read that before.

The magazine article stated that live plants can control nitrogen spikes from day one. In other words, they say that cycling is not necessary if the aquarium has plenty of live plants. Usually when I’m setting up a new tank, I start with live plants and a little bit of gravel from an established aquarium, and i don’t bother testing for ammonia for about three weeks, when the cycle should be in its last stages. I always get zero ammonia, but now I wonder if that’s due to the plants or the completion of the cycle. Of course, you should never add fish to an aquarium that has ammonia, but I’m going to experiment with two tanks that are just now in the setup process. Maybe the plants will make a difference. I’ll let you know.

I’ve been breeding Angel fish since January.  I don’t really consider myself an expert… but I’m getting better at it.  So much better in fact, that in June I decided to add a different species… Rainbow fish.  Now I say a different species… but there are so many different kinds of Rainbows that I don’t know if that’s the correct way to say it.  So June 8th was my big day…  I had bought 3 mops of Rainbow eggs off a seller on Aquabid…  Irian Jaya, Milleniums and one of the Running Creek varieties…  On June 8th I had my first couple of fry hatch out into the Millenium tank.  I was SOOOO excited.  A couple days later I had several Milleniums and a few Irian jaya.  I never did hatch out any of the Running Creek ones…  Bad mop I guess.  Anyways… the fry have been growing and growing and I have 14 Irian jaya and probably about 40 Milleniums.  They’re starting to show their sexes… which excites me greatly.  I also along the way gathered a pair of Parkinsoni - which have been breeding like crazy!  And groups of fry that will soon be large enough to spawn themselves… Lacustris, Bosemani, Praecox…  So the Bow craziness has been really good to me…

So now… I’ve been thinking it’s time to move on… time to try for another species…  Well… what’s next?  Both of my LFS said they would purchase all the spotted cories I could get them…  So I thought WOW!  Cories are next!  So I buy a group of 12 Cory Pandas.  Good to go right?  Well… they came in kinda small… and I lost 2 due to shipping stress… lost another for unknown reasons…  But I’ve had them for about 5 weeks now.  They’re hiding little fish… They congregate and talk about me when I’m not looking in the back corner and side of the tank…  Rude little fish they are…  I’ve done water changes… I’ve drained the tank (20 Gallon Long) down to 4 inches and piled in the ice cubes…  I’ve done what’s supposed to be done.  To no avail… UG!  So now I’m thinking that maybe they’re just not old enough yet…  Although, if they’ll hold still long enough, you can sex them…  So I’m just waiting on that tank…

So now fast forward to last week…  I was sick of the Pandas not spawning… so I bought the bristlenose… and the calico bristlenose… and I’m waiting AGAIN!!!  These guys are proven spawning groups… I acclimated them, got them in the tanks…  And I’m waiting…  Doing water changes and waiting…  I’m keeping them at 78 degrees and then doing the water changes with 70 degree water… and I’m waiting… and I’ve fixed coconut shell breeding caves for them… and I’m waiting… I’ve fixed flower pots for them… and I’m waiting…

SO NOW I’M READY TO PULL MY HAIR OUT!!!!!

So last week there was a cool little auction on Aquabid, 6 breeding Green Cories and 6 breeding Albino Cories… and the bid was just $10.00…  So I bid on it, just $10.00 cause I didn’t want to run the price up…  Well… I had totally forgotten about it… and Tuesday I get an e-mail that I won an auction!!!  I was like… Won?  I haven’t even bid… Well… I did bid, and I did win… and now… I have 0 empty tanks… So I HAVE to get out the silicone and fix the one that I’ve been holding off on fixing… UGGG!!!

So I have to go… Got work to do… Need more tanks… MTS strikes again!

courtesy of sas_pictures_2008

Sometime ago I’ve written about Sarah’s experiment not separating the discus from the eggs and I just happened today to check what has happened to the fry.

Sure enough all the fry was eaten so if you’re trying to breed discus better keep the fish and the eggs apart as they are known to eat the fry.

There is always next time and at least they got some good quality food.