Post by gabor129 on Mar 27, 2020 19:06:13 GMT -5
Hello everyone!
I hope that you all are doing well, practicing social distancing, staying at home, and keeping up with your tank maintenance.
Well here is what I have been doing.
For the CAOAC convention I was going to enter a tank for the biotope competition, with Zoogoneticus tequila, (Tequila splitfin or Tequila Goodied). In all the research that I was doing, and the limited literature available on the subject, I was able to find that there are not many plants in their habitat, but there are a lot of different algae. So what I did for the past 2+ months is to grow all kinds of algae in my tanks.
You may want to know how? Well I did not want to increase lighting, so I opted for over feeding my fish and cutting the water changes from once a week to once a month in certain tanks. The betta sorority tank seemed to be a good choice for this as well as the guppy grow out tank. Well let me tell you, it was not as easy to “neglect” a couple of tanks as one might think. I cringed every time I went down to my fish room and saw the tanks. To me it felt like I’m failing as a hobbyist and a plant enthusiast. ( Especially seeing Christopher’s, Dawn’s, and Gary’s tanks being in pristine condition.) Well as everything got cancelled and I no longer need the algae for the biotope tank it was time to clean up! This was like when you do a spring cleaning for the house! Remove everything you deemed to be doomed, and deep clean everything else. I started with the guppy grow out tank as there were only 2 fry left in there.
The before picture....
The after picture
There is still a significant amount of algae on the filter and some of the rocks, however I did not want to shock the fish in the tank too much. I did a 25% water change along with fishing out all the algae, ( well a lot of it, not all), scrubbed the wood and cleaned the glass. Next weekend, a deep substrate vacuuming, filter cleaning and 25% water change.
Next up is the betta sorority tank.... This one is the one that gave me quite a bit of anxiety. I have a lot of cryptocorine sp. in this tank, and to see them all covered up by algae and basically dwindle away was heartbreaking.
Well it seems like I lost the before bicture... damn. Take my word for it, it was bad!!!
Anyway here is the after picture.....
Did a 70% water change, manually removed the algae, about a softball size mass that I threw out. Also vacuumed half of the gravel, and cleaned the glass. Next week, 80% water change, vacuum the other side of the tank, spot treat with H2O2.
Here is another tank I forgot about growing algae in.....
Just imagine the betta sorority tank was 10x as bad!!! I wish I could find the pictures!
I hope that you all are doing well, practicing social distancing, staying at home, and keeping up with your tank maintenance.
Well here is what I have been doing.
For the CAOAC convention I was going to enter a tank for the biotope competition, with Zoogoneticus tequila, (Tequila splitfin or Tequila Goodied). In all the research that I was doing, and the limited literature available on the subject, I was able to find that there are not many plants in their habitat, but there are a lot of different algae. So what I did for the past 2+ months is to grow all kinds of algae in my tanks.
You may want to know how? Well I did not want to increase lighting, so I opted for over feeding my fish and cutting the water changes from once a week to once a month in certain tanks. The betta sorority tank seemed to be a good choice for this as well as the guppy grow out tank. Well let me tell you, it was not as easy to “neglect” a couple of tanks as one might think. I cringed every time I went down to my fish room and saw the tanks. To me it felt like I’m failing as a hobbyist and a plant enthusiast. ( Especially seeing Christopher’s, Dawn’s, and Gary’s tanks being in pristine condition.) Well as everything got cancelled and I no longer need the algae for the biotope tank it was time to clean up! This was like when you do a spring cleaning for the house! Remove everything you deemed to be doomed, and deep clean everything else. I started with the guppy grow out tank as there were only 2 fry left in there.
The before picture....
The after picture
There is still a significant amount of algae on the filter and some of the rocks, however I did not want to shock the fish in the tank too much. I did a 25% water change along with fishing out all the algae, ( well a lot of it, not all), scrubbed the wood and cleaned the glass. Next weekend, a deep substrate vacuuming, filter cleaning and 25% water change.
Next up is the betta sorority tank.... This one is the one that gave me quite a bit of anxiety. I have a lot of cryptocorine sp. in this tank, and to see them all covered up by algae and basically dwindle away was heartbreaking.
Well it seems like I lost the before bicture... damn. Take my word for it, it was bad!!!
Anyway here is the after picture.....
Did a 70% water change, manually removed the algae, about a softball size mass that I threw out. Also vacuumed half of the gravel, and cleaned the glass. Next week, 80% water change, vacuum the other side of the tank, spot treat with H2O2.
Here is another tank I forgot about growing algae in.....
Just imagine the betta sorority tank was 10x as bad!!! I wish I could find the pictures!
