169 replies to this topic

[waruna]

Thank you

[Dr Cucumber]

Just took the time to read the entire thread. Amazing patience and attention to detail - the results are there for all to see. Man, where do you find the time? With two small children, I doubt I'd ever find the time to replicate something like that. I like your approach though of using slow growing low maintenance plants (I have adopted a similar approach, as this is the only way I can get by).

Keep the updates coming. Its really great to see the time-series photos.

[waruna]

Thanks for the nice words

Man, where do you find the time? With two small children, I doubt I'd ever find the time to replicate something like that.

Ha! I think you answered your own question.. Bit too young to have kids, or i should say not the correct time to have kids But always have had time for a fish tank..

All the best with your tank!

[waruna]

Update.

Its been year since ive started this project, and i have not posted an update for a while so i figured it's time..

I lost 3 Discus one day (in Jan) after my air pump hose disconnected. I had programmed the air pump to come on at the same time the lights go out so i didn't realize this till the next day. The temp was above 32c and the next day when i noticed this about six Discus were struggling really bad, later that day i lost three. After that i turned the Co2 off for almost three months, during this time i did not add fertilizer to the tank. I had quite a bit of algae. It took me a few hours of cleaning to get the tank to the state where it is today. I collected at least two full 10lt buckets of dead leaves and snails..! I'm quite surprised how quickly the plants started to pearl and grow once i turned the Co2 on and adding ferts. Another few weeks and it'll be back to where it was, hopefully!

Two weeks ago i decided to change things around, i managed to catch 9 Discus and sell them to a friend, the other five are impossible to catch!!! I decided to stop trying to catch them for a little while because of the stress, from trying to catch these guys they got so scared and didn't even come out to eat for two days. So in the mean time i decided to concentrate on getting the plants and the system healthy.

Once the Discus are out i'm going to turn this tank in to a planted Tropheus tank. I have decided on a colony of Katoto, about 15 young from a local breeder. It is impossible to catch the Bleeding hearts and the Cardinals without emptying the whole tank so i'm not going to worry about catching them. I'm hoping Ts. will ignore them. I have reduced the Co2 levels quite considerably, will play around with this for the next week or two. The PH is at 7.5 before the Co2 is turned on.

Will update with pics soon.

[Anka]

Looking forward to some pics

Can you give me some tips on growing glosso? Mine keeps dying

[waruna]

Hi Anka, Use a mineralised substrate like ADA AS. Glosso needs very high lighting, as you can see from my pics i didn't have enough for a nice growth in my tank, that's why it started to grow higher instead of a nice flat carpet. Chose your plants carefully (for this specific tank), go with plants that need high lighting and fast growing similar to Glosso , otherwise the other plants may struggle to compete for nutrients with glosso.

Good Co2 and fert levels are a must! Do some reading on "Co2 misting", i believe this is a lot better way to inject Co2 this way, i noticed overall improvements in my tank straightway.

[waruna]

Anka, how long the tank has been running? Is it fully cycled yet?

[waruna]

This will be my last post on this thread since i no longer have any Discus (or Altums) in this tank. I am picking up the Tropheus tomorrow, will start a new thread soon.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread, for all the kind words and encouragement . I really appreciate the time some of you took to try and explain things to me, i learnt a lot

Cheers.

[Westie]

what happened to all the plants?

[Craig]

They are still in there Jason

Edited by Craig, 18 May 2012 - 03:49 PM.