Freshwater for the Kids! Build

[Roshan8768]

Hey, it was nice to meet you in person today, your tank looks great!

Here's a decent picture of my tank:




And this guy seems to be settling in just fine:

[AHP]

It was nice meeting you too! Your tank looks great.
I will try to take some new pictures and post them from the nice plants you dropped off.

[jijome]

i have got a 75g tank...does anyone know there a good website to buy the stuff inside the tank?

[AHP]

Try looking into the For Sale section there tend to be full equipment sales from time to time.

[AHP]

I think my German Blue Rams might be laying eggs...
So the male and the female are very hostile right now to anything that is coming into there area. The female has a small white tube near the anus. Also the female will move over a piece of the driftwood where I think she is laying and I notice many small light brown/white spots on the driftwood. Now the male and female are acting as if they are eating something which I can only assume are eggs.
Yeap confirmed that they are laying eggs I watched the female shake over the piece of driftwood and she was laying eggs. The only problem is they are eating them. I guess the good news is they have paired off and I could have fry one day.

Here are some pics.
Before


After

[Roshan8768]

Cool!! They will probably take a couple of trys before they figure out what they're doing. I have at least one species of fish spawning most any day of the week. My Harlequins spawn 2-3 times a week in the morning, and both neon tetras about 1-2x a week closer to dusk. The cherry barbs spawn for a week straight after any water change, and the Goldfish spawn during the Spring when the temperature starts to rise. Would be cool to remove all my adult fish and kill the filtration for a couple of days and see what happens

[AHP]

After reading a bit about GBR's and breeding. It seems like like to find one spot and make that the nesting area. Do you think that if I laided a flat rock on or near the driftwood where the spawned last they would choose the rock instead of driftwood. Seeing how it would be easier to remove the rock rather than driftwood. OR should I leave it as is and hope they protect their fry when the times comes?

[troy tucker]

I don't remember what you have in the tank with them but Rams are very protective.

[AHP]

Crap... I moved the scape around because the flow of the tank was getting some dead spots. On Friday I noticed Ick again!
I keep stressing my fish out.
Agggrrr

[Roshan8768]

Maybe you need to add some more driftwood to have more hiding places? Fish that can easily find places to hide are usually more secure and less likely to succumb to ich. Did you end up finding any of that manzanita wood you were looking for? I thought you treated the display tank for 6-8 weeks right? It should be completely out of your system. How are those plant clippings doing for you?

[AHP]

I did find the Mazanita wood for some sick prices, I just haven't pulled the trigger on it yet.
As for the last ick treatment, I followed the directions and used it for 2 weeks (a week longer than the direction suggested). But it came back and I am treating it right now with Quick Cure. I just hope I dont lose any more fish.

The clippings are doing great! I think you gave me a dwarf tiger lily and the reds really look great. I also am dealing with green hair algae so I have been black out for the last 3 days.

Treatments:
Ick First then onto Green Hair algae.

[Roshan8768]

Cool, as I mentioned above- inorder to give yourself a chance of completely removing ich from your system you would probably have to treat for atleast 4-6 weeks for the ich. However, this is probably a bit over the top unless you quarantine and medicate all new fish for a month. I would focus more on reducing the stressors... most people have some amount of the parasite in their systems, it just doesn't become an issue because of how healthy they're fish are.




Hydrogen peroxide treatment is usually a pretty failsafe method of fixing algae issues... you can look into that. I think your tank just needs some more time and a larger volume of plants before it becomes stable. Until then you'll probably have to deal with these occasional bouts with algae

[AHP]

Ok... Maybe I didn't treat long enought. So I will be using Quick Cure for 6 weeks and I started on the 20th, lets hope that works and if not I will go longer.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. I did a trimming over the last couple of days and took out some plants to put the cutting in. I will try to take a couple of pictures.

O yea Roshan what were the plants that you gave me as a foreground/carpeting plant?
Did you say dwarf vals or dwarf sag?

[Roshan8768]

Pretty sure that it's just regular vals. They've stayed pretty short for me though and, you can mow them down to the height that you want

[AHP]

Ok.
Yea they are staying very low for me as well and kind of thinning out a bit. Right now I have some root tabs under them and seeing some small growth but not as much as I expected.

I am still dealing with Ick going on almost 2 weeks now using quick cure 3x a day with water changes and no carbon (I never use).

What I really like are the Rotala, they are growing fast and still holding leaves down at the bottom.
I also want to see if Dwarf Sag would work as a foreground plant, so if anyone has some I would be happy to try out and see if it works.