# Newbie 3 Month Progress Report



## Siberian (Jan 16, 2011)

Few months ago I posted a thread with some questions since I was just getting started out with a natural tank and aquariums in general. Since then things have largely gone well so I thought I'd post an update. For those wondering the tank is a 50g tank, with a substrate made out of soil I dug out of my back yard, didn't "mineralize" it but I did soak it and drain off the water a few times. More detail on the setup is here in my newbie question thread. I have run the filter that I got with the tank the whole time to keep water moving, but I had taken out the charcoal element of it almost immediately along with the filter media for the smallest particles around the same time. It's mostly being used to flow and some biological filtering. I test pretty regularly and have barely ever even seen nitrate / nitrite in the tank and the most ammonia ever in a test was .5ppm. Right after adding the barbs and that fell to almost 0 again (which is normally what I get in a test, there's a tint but it's less then .2ppm) the next day.

Here's the tank as it was when it was first setup mud, cloudiness and all. Had just a few bunches of what were supposed to be fast growing plants and some white cloud mountain minnows. I bought the tank off craigslist so the minnows were in part to help ease my mind that there hadn't been soap or something in the tank:


















2 days later, added some java ferns, crypts, an anubis nana that was in poor shape (free) and a plant I forgot the name off it's easier to spot in the images later):










Tank after adding new light after realizing from feedback and discussions on this forum I didn't have close to enough. It's T5H0 off ebay, wasn't too pricy and based on the light tests I was linked to moves the tank to "High" light given the position I have it mounted. I have it on a timer with a siesta period setup. But, I still got a bit of an algae issue after that:










Around this time I spot the first snail in the tank. I have quite a few at this point, not a huge overwhelming amount but some that look like this guy and have gotten to be about 1/4" long and some that are still smaller but showed up more recently that are shaped like a ram's horn for a shell.










I've done nothing about the snails, had absolutely no evidence they are damaging the plants, most of the time they seemed to be cleaning things off them or eating clearly dead/distressed leaves rather than healthy growth so I haven't done anything about them.

Since this was designed to be a largely unheated tank, about a month in I added my first non-white cloud minnow fish, a "Flame" Paradise fish:










He immediately takes to nipping at snails he sees climbing the glass. For a while the snails appeared to have vanished and I thought he was actually managing to get them. They've since returned however.










First of my algae issues is really evident here, brown on the plants, brown in the rocks, lots and lots of ugly brown on the plants:


















I tried a tank blackout at this point, it helped seem to kill off the brown but it replaced it with green hair algae which was even worse from my point of view because the snails seemed to eat the brown but didn't care about the hair. And the hair was very difficult to get off the plants. It was around this time that the snails also seemed to vanish, maybe due to lack of brown algae I dunno.

So, going by the books advice, I added floating plants. Some Limnobium laevigatum (Amazon Frogbit), some duck weed from a local pond (  ), and some Salvinia Cucullate (Watermoss). At the same time since I was ordering it online off Aquabid I picked up some Rotala macrandra (which has been struggling) and some Ludwigia ovalis (which is doing really well):










Then I made a series of mistakes, all at once it seems. I bought some barbs (4 green tiger barbs and 3 "neon" rosy barbs) and added them directly to the tank (I knew I shouldn't do this, but I did it anyway... ). I also tossed in one bumblebee catfish since they do okay in my water temperature, he's hard to photograph though. Well, then I read that the tigers could be aggressive if in too small of a group. So I bought and added 3 more moving the group to 7. Note how much hair algae is visible on the plants at this point as well, the one thing I immediately noticed was that the rosy barbs in particular were going nuts eating up that hair algae. They had it all cleaned off in a matter of days and there isn't a drop left at this point:


























Then it turned out that the rosy barbs where what I probably should have worried about since while the tigers sat happy at the bottom just milling around the rosy barbs decided it was fun to chase and nip the paradise fish. So I moved them out of the tank temporary. Now, here's where the warning bells should have gone off.

I went back (4 days after buying the first of the barbs) and couldn't buy any more neons because their tank was quarantined (!). But, they had some regular rosy barbs, so I bought them and brought that group up to a total of 9.

Put the original rosy's back, everything seems fine and calm the next day:










Well, except over the past few weeks I keep thinking there are less minnows in the tank. But I was never sure until I saw this:










I'm pretty sure the Paradise fish is eating them. This is the only body I've ever seen but I know I had over a dozen at one point and there are now only 5.

Then I saw this, I had no idea that this was a reason for concern but it was odd. I had a couple of barbs that liked to run into the plants and flip over... 










Turns out this is a warning since for ich from what I've read now, since I have few hard surfaces this is likely them "flashing" to try to scratch themselves. Cause I got ich right after this and lost one of the green tiger barbs to it. He was fine one day and absolutely totally covered in white marks the next. Most likely the rosy barbs were quarantined I think at this point for ich. And that's how I got it.

So I treated the tank with what the LFS recommended (Quickcure at 1/2 dose) and raised the temperature up to the low 80s while I did it. I've backed it down to normal now ( 68 ) and they seem fine and it's gone. But, to be safe I'm still treating the tank now still with Ich Attack (it's marketed as herbal treatment for ich, isn't toxic to fish/plants/inverts) and plan to keep at that for a couple of weeks so I'm certain it's all gone since everything I've read on it says it shouldn't cause any problems at all for anything but the ich.

Which brings us to the tank now, which is doing pretty good I think, I have just an explosion of runners lately out of a lot of the plants. Even have a new small java fern & crypt growing. Barbs don't seem to be aggressive at all anymore really except to each other occasionally. Paradise Fish is probably the biggest bully at this point but he doesn't do much. Well, except to the minnows... there are now only 5. Contrast between the first weekend and now is pretty awesome:


































I have one mystery guest in the tank now though. It looks like a plant but I have no idea what it is or how I got it, it's the very hard to see, it's the chain of green growing along the Egeria Najas:










Overall, I'm pretty happy with how things have gone so far. I've had my share of trouble but nothing so terrible that I want to throw the whole thing out the window (which is good because there's no way I can lift that). Mostly just me kicking myself for doing stupid things (and then mainly only as far as the ich outbreak).

Not planning to add much of anything to the tank at this point. Just going to let it be and trim the Egeria Najas as it gets too much out of control.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

The tank is looking very good!

Your mystery plant is _Utricularia gibba_, you can look it up in the Plant Finder. It usually comes in as a hitch hiker on other plants.

Your white clouds may have jumped out, especially if they were being harrassed by the paradise fish or barbs.


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## Siberian (Jan 16, 2011)

Michael said:


> The tank is looking very good!
> 
> Your mystery plant is _Utricularia gibba_, you can look it up in the Plant Finder. It usually comes in as a hitch hiker on other plants.
> 
> Your white clouds may have jumped out, especially if they were being harrassed by the paradise fish or barbs.


Hmm haven't found any on the floor though I suppose they could be behind it.

Finding one laying on a plant minus a tail though to me pointed to them being munched on. Particularly when I came back 15 minutes or so later to fish him out and he was completely gone... 

Oh well!


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## hornedtoad1 (Jun 24, 2011)

nice looking tank. my 10-gal is about a month and a half along, still fighting algae. i also got one of those mystery plants, good to know what it is.
my big mistake was getting too many fish early on--9 at one point. resulted in amm spikes, plants melting; it was a mess. fish are now 4 adult platies and maybe a dozen babies, a much better number. now if the algae would only go away...
thanks for showing this, it's really good to see your tank's progress. encouraging.


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## Spookyfish (Jun 14, 2011)

Wow Siberian! Beautiful tank! I hope to have that much success(minus the ick[smilie=l Thanks for sharing it. Definitely inspiring! Thank you again. I wish your tank continued success down the road!


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## mjking (Feb 16, 2011)

nice looking tank, how many watts per gallon are you using?


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