Pneumonic Journal

[Pneumonic]

Hey guys! So I thought I'd put together a journal of both my main tank, that doesn't have shrimp.... yet, and my jars! I'm including a history of where I started from with my 20 gallon.

 

Okay so here is where everything started!


Back when I had zero clue what I was doing  

 

8/2012
 

The 8/2012 pic might have been right after I got 4 goldfish at a wedding which started me down this path  and I think I might have had some sort of tiger catfish? (he hid in that crab shack and would snack on tetras at night lolol) My fish I still have from that time is my BN Pleco (Tucker) who I got as a tiny little baby. I had that emerald Cory from then that just recently died    (I got him at adult size)

12/2012

 

the 12/2012 pic I had a lot of val and I think even some dwarf sag with wisteria and who knows what else in there. I might have had an angelfish still and I still had mollies at that point. I decided to get mollies for a while but they were fin nippers and poop machines.

 

1/2014

The third attachment is from January 2014 when I had some great riparium plants: an echinodorus, a black mangrove, my ruellia (look how small it was!) and my good ol pothos. My lighting in the aquarium was fairly low at that time. I had crypts and other stuff. and I don't remember what fish I had at that point.

 

So this was a month ago when I decided to move this tank and rescape it

 

Here's the before picture from 11/2016

 

 

[Pneumonic]

Here's some pics from the move and rescape:

I was toying with adding a lot more wood, all of which is dead Japanese maple wood. 

 

 

Kids sand toys are amazing for removing substrate

 

The wife just helped me clean the glass. I've started adding soil.

 

Tank is in place in the other room!

 

 

It took 13 hours and I messed up the dirt cap a little but here's how it looked on 12/18 with my new finnex planted + 24/7.

 

The canister filter decided to be a bear and that took a good chunk of time. Also I added some new hardscape and decided to glue on some moss/ferns. And I added purple waffle and some palm in an extra shower caddy.

The riparium lighting. 

This is after adding the background and the light. 

 

Lights were for both tank and riparium plants but were very low light for the tank. I think they are 9.5W feit electric LED floods from Costco

 

 

Picture of some of the riparium plants. I had part of a stem of L. Aromatica that hadn't completely melted but had lost all leaves that I just shoved in that planter and I think it is going to do well! Also I lost most of my emersed Monte carlo in the process of moving the tank but it looks like this portion might rebound.

 

My purple waffle and palm experiment started with some serious wilting when the waffle was placed in a jar for a week but we will see if it will rebound. It looks like the palm will do really well.

 

 

Lastly, a night picture: 

 

Full plant list: 

 

Current plant list:
Riparium Plants
Pothos Vine
Ruellia simplex ‘Katie’
2 unknown house plants (a focus and some succulent-ish thing)
Purple waffle 
A palm of some sorts
A random emersed stem of L. Aromatica 
A little bit of Monte carlo

Aquarium Plants
Java Moss (Taxiphyllum barbieri)
Java Fern
Crypt wendtii brown (Cryptocoryne wendtii 'Brown')
Sword (Echinodorus palaefolius var. latifolius )The 
Telanthera Cardinalis
Anacharis (Egeria densa)
Anubias Nana (Anubias barteri var. nana )
Rotala rotundifolia (Rotala rotundifolia)
Monte Carlo (Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo')
Unkown plant in the middle, looks like Sag? 
Giant Hygro
Salvinia Rotundifilia
Sag Chiliensis
Pygmy Chain sword narrow leaf 
Echinodorus Xingu
Littorella Uniflora
Val Americana (growing out in jar fir now)
Sag Subulata narrowleaf 
*Najas Roraima
Flame moss.
Ludwigia "Mini Red, 
Microsorium pteropus "Windelov
Salvinia culcutta.

 

Fauna list:

 

1 peppered Cory

1 BN Pleco

1 oto

3 cherry barbs

1 florida flag fish 

 

numerous assassin snails. 

Possibly some remaining MTS from my old tank? (Likely all lost in the substrate change or eaten by the assassins, and I'm a little worried about getting this group started back up)

 

Shrimp are just in the jars for now until I get this stabilized and add more plant life, plus I want to make sure I can get a stable, breeding population before throwing my shrimp in here. 

[Pneumonic]

Pics when I got home last night! No one died while I was gone! Hurray!

[Pneumonic]

So here are my jars:

 

I started putting these together over a month ago.

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/rj2aO

 

 

So this is the plant list in the jars: 

Java Moss (Taxiphyllum barbieri)

Java Fern (Microsorum 

Crypt wendtii brown... I think

Telanthera Cardinalis

Ludwigia Repens

Anacharis (Egeria densa)

Anubias Nana (Anubias barteri var. nana )

Rotala rotundifolia (Rotala rotundifolia)

Pothos Vine

Monte Carlo (Micranthemum 'Monte Carlo')

Staurogyne Repens

Salvinia Rotundifilia

Pygmy Chain sword narrow leaf

Echinodorus Xingu

Littorella Uniflora

Val Americana 

Sag Subulata narrowleaf

Frogbit

Lobelia cardinalis small form

2 Blyxa japonica

 

 

And here is an update from a week or two ago.

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/EAa8G

[Nikolaus777]

Lots of stuff in that tank, wow.  Looks good.

 

I noticed one spec of the blue gravel in one of the riparium plants. 

Don't let the fashion police see that, or you will get a ticket.

 

[Pneumonic]

Lots of stuff in that tank, wow.  Looks good.
 
I noticed one spec of the blue gravel in one of the riparium plants. 
Don't let the fashion police see that, or you will get a ticket.
 

Thanks Nikolaus! TBH I have taken more pride in my plants and inverts than fish as of late, that all might change, as you'll see in my update post!

[Pneumonic]

Update: I got home to no deaths but for some reason my filter wasn't working, (after looking into it, it appears it was because of my water level, though it wasn't that low...)
I had decent growth on either my Pygmy chain sword or my sag subulata narrow leaf(I'm getting them mixed up, help would be appreciated... Haha); has grown four runners already. I had to do some trimming of my sword, it might be struggling with the move, but otherwise most everything is doing well. My sag chilensis has sent off a runner as well. It appears the najas in the back right has started rooting!
Here is a picture:



Since being back I have some updates!

Today is my birthday and my wife took me to the LFS and said that I could pick out any fish I want. So instead of increasing my schools of any fish I decided to add a female betta! My daughter named her gully

I was a little worried that my lone big flag fish would take issue with the addition of a betta, and that ended up being the case a little bit. No nipping, just general stress, so I went back and got 4 more flag fish to see if it would calm her down, and I think it did. Now we'll wait and see!

Also while at meijer I waltzed by their fish section and noticed the most gigantic potted crypt and that they had a sale going on so I said, hey it's my birthday! And bought it. The clerk also threw in two floating ludwigia repens stems for kicks, when I got home I broke the potted crypt into at least 10-12 plants.
between that and the raok I won coming Tuesday I'll be set on crypts for.a long while. Here's a pic from tonight!

[Nikolaus777]

Happy Birthday!

 

How do you like you birthday so close to the holidays?

 

 

[Pneumonic]

Happy Birthday!
 
How do you like you birthday so close to the holidays?
 
 

I liked it until I was old enough to realize it was lame, and then stopped caring when I realized birthdays aren't important

[Pneumonic]

So I was watching 'Gully' the betta and 'Betsy' the flagfish interact today and I saw no fin nipping from Betsy. She is too fast for Gully to be able to nip her but Gully follows her or the four juvie flags around. I'll continue to monitor. Here is a picture


My ludwigia mini red is so fragile that my Cory and pleco have broken many of the stems. Hopefully it recovers.

I've recently been having an aphid problem mainly on my frogbit and on some of my salvinia that originated from my one gallon Jarrarium. I've been moving most of it over to this tank so I can have my top feeders eat them. I've manually been removing them with both tweezers and a pipette either sucking them off or squirting them off. Dunking has worked okay as well. Here is a pic:


This next week I have some more plants coming from a raok and my manzanita I bought myself! It's two 24" trees. I'd love some recommendations on where to put them. I'd definitely get rid of the maple wood on the far left, and maybe my really cool piece on the middle. I could possibly break down one piece for my 2.5 gallon jar, but I'd prefer both stay in this tank.
Here is an example pic of the branches:
https://www.bloomsandbranches.com/v/vspfiles/photos/BBNRCH18-2.jpg

[Pneumonic]

Today I received a package of additional plants! I'm very excited So I ended up doing some rescaping.

First what I moved: So I took the E. Xingu out of the back left and moved it into the middle in front of the mopani driftwood piece. I also lifted that piece of driftwood up a fair amount, which I think looks better. I also removed all stems from the front half on the left and move them back as far as I could. I also moved more of the crypts back to make room for the new plants.

These are the plants I received:
Elatine Triandra which I put in the front, mainly on the right.
2 green crypts
2 blyxa japonica that I was able to break up into 4 plants in the middle.
a few sag.subulata which I put in the front left.
A bunch of Red ludwigia stems i added to the mini reds on the right.
some Bacopa caroliniana which replaced the E. Xingu in the far back left.
A BUNCH of Hydrocotyle japan which I was unsure what to do with. Most went into my jarrariums. For now it’s in the middle back.
More mini xmas moss that I’m likely going to be attaching to some manzanita.

I also removed the vertical piece of driftwood on the left to prepare for the manzanita I’m getting this next week.

We’ll see how everything does. Likely I have too many carpeting plants, but we’ll see what does well and what doesn’t! I really like my mid ground plants and the stems. I also thought I’d attempt to put some random plants such as my floating najas and some baby java ferns into the planter with holes in the middle back to hopefully grow in and cover it up. Happy New Year!

[Pneumonic]

So today I got home and noticed that I had almost zero flow in my canister filter and decided that I'm done with that filter for now. If I'm going for the Walstad method I should probably get rid of it at some point, so why not now? I'm a tiny bit worried about how everything will turn out so I added back in my two little sponge filters in the back corners. We'll see how it turns out. I had to do some rescaping and realized that the large piece on the far right was still buoyant :/ I added a little more moss to it and another baby java fern. I also moved the bacopa stems up out of the back corner.

So my plan is to just run the sponge filter at night between 12am & 6am. Should I just go completely filterless?

by the way my TDS meter came and my tank was running at 577 so I did a 4 gallon water change with RO water and got it down to 400. I think my tap water is somewhere around ~300. I checked and I had zero nitrates & nitrites as well.

So here is my question: Should I just go full walstad and get rid of the sponge filter and get some sort of powerhead for circulation?

I’m continuing to dose metricide at ~2 mL daily.

Here’s a couple pictures from tonight!

[Pneumonic]

Update! My manzanita came in the mail and it's beautiful and I love red manzanita. I moved a couple plants around as well and got rid of the black lava rock and the large maple branch.

The manzanita was gigantic so I had to cut the two branches down into smaller parts.


Hope you guys like it!