Back to my main point – I’m getting Killifish! My water is moderately hard, and with CO2 injection it becomes neutral. Since most killifish like softer water, my choices are pretty limited but there’s still some. I’ve already won an auction for 100 eggs of gardneri lafia gold. Challenge on these: they’re more successful with soft water, but they do survive in neutral conditions. Other than that, they’re fairly easy to keep and breed. They’re going to a 10 gallon tank, possibly 20 gallons depending on the amount of eggs I hatch.

Fundulopanchax Gardneri Lafia Gold

I’m also bidding on 25 eggs of Aphanius Fasciatus, mainly because they thrive in harder water. They’re not as colorful and they require brackish water, but they were recommended to me so they better thrive. I’m not going to get as excited over these guys because I haven’t won yet! I’m still hunting aquabid for more colorful killies that would survive in my conditions. I have a lot of small tanks to spare…

Aphanius fasciatus

So… another expense I just realized is that I need to buy brine shrimp eggs now to feed the baby killies. I’ll probably have to post a new entry on brine shrimp hatching, I’m eyeing the stuff over at BrineShrimpDirect, especially the super cool artemia hatchery dish. It’s probably overkill, especially since I’ve got the supplies I need to make a cheap DYI, but I know myself.

GH and KH are still high… but I hear it’s been worse for people and no big deal. The nitrates is what’s concerned me. I did the water change on monday, plantex dosing on tuesday, and I haven’t even dosed nitrates yet and they’re still high… I’m concerned about the german blue rams. Aaahh drip acclimation takes so long!

Oh yeah, and I refilled the co2 tank… well, I sent someone to fill it up for me, but for some reason they swapped it for another tank instead or refilling it… and ugly, blue, beat-up one. OK, I don’t care about the aesthetics (they said they’re giving me a aluminum tank next time I go refill…) BUT along with my cylinder my permaseal also went! So I go back to ask them for my permaseal, but the tank is already gone. I try to buy another one but they don’t have them in brass.. only disposable nylon washers. OK. I think that I can buy it online and I’ll just get one or two before my brass one gets there, but the minimum purchase with a debit card is $5 so I have to buy a lot of them…. at $0.30 each, that’s a lot of disposable nylon washers. Oh well.

Bad thing is that westair and the welding supplies stores that sell co2 are open when I’m working, so I’m going to have to see if someone can fill it up for me. Arrrg. In other news, my HC is growing so fast, but I definetively see the contrast in the HC that has no plants blocking its way and the ones that do. The shaded ones grow thin and long, and the ones with good light grow thick, shorter and carpety.

GH: 10
KH: 3
Phosphates: ~2.5

So my GH is really high but apparently you’re safe if you have it at around 3-12! KH seems normal and phosphates… are high to some. Supposedly you’re supposed to have less than 1ppm, but people with planted tanks have recommended to have them higher. It’s a debate. Phosphates pretty much tell you the purity of the water. Rex-grigg says you’re supposed to have them at 1-2ppm… so I’m almost there.

Assuming the phosphates is the problem, then I’d just need to try not to overfeed the fish. Also, I remembered that I haven’t changed the activated carbon in my tank for over a month! I’m thinking that’s probably it! So I took extra time this morning and completely switched it before I went to work. After I get from work I’m going to do another water change.

In better news… I’m feeling pretty confident in my water so I did place an order with Florida Guppies Plus for 25 cardinals and a pair of Wild German Blue Rams. Luis is shipping out on Monday and I should get my fish on Wednesday. Yay!

German Blue Ram

Cardinal Tetras

My surprise… the nitrates were at 60ppm! BAH. They’re supposed to be at 20ppm. It was tuesday – water change day – so I took out and replaced 50% of the water, and yesterday before dosing dry ferts I check the nitrates again. Still pretty high at 40ppm. I did some browsing and apparently those nitrates are harmless to fish… but so far I’ve lost 2 red platies and 4 sterbai cories.

Current stock of fish:

• 2 angelfish (5″ and 2.5″)
• 2 red platies
• 2 sterbai cories

I was planning on placing an order with flguppiesplus for 25 cardinals and a german blue ram pair, but I’m not sure about it now. I’m going to look up if I should do another water change to keep the nitrates down and for the meanwhile no more dosing kn03. Today is plantex day.

55g Planted Aquarium – main project

• 55 Gallon Glass Tank (dimensions 48″, 12″, 21″)
• Coralife 48″ Freshwater Aqualight with 2×65 watt 6700k compact fluorescent bulbs giving ~2.4 wpg
• Primo Pressurized CO2 System from Green Leaf Aquariums with green leaf drop checker and co2 diffuser 5000
• Dry ferts: micros and macros from GLA
• Marineland Emperor 400b Filter
• Eco-Complete Substrate

Since flora and fauna changes so often, I’m going to spare the listing in here and do updates on the blog… that’s what it’s for! In the meanwhile, here’s a video that was taken in its initial stages of planting:

6 Gallon Marineland Eclipse:

This tank is actually very neglected, I keep it at work so it’s hard to convince myself to stay extra for the water changes. It puts me to shame since I work at the corporate office of a large retail pet store, and if someone saw it … yikes! Major revamp coming soon. I don’t really even have a picture but to my recollection, I’ve got some kuhlii loaches, 2 amazon sword plants which amazingly are doing very well (so well they’re getting too big), a half-dead banana plant, fake plants, a piece of Malaysian driftwood, and not enough black gravel.