New foreground plants to replenish the dwarf hair grass which the fish in the tank like to munch on. The sacrifice we need to make to maintain a community fish tank with aquascaping. We will just have to keep making changes till find the right plants which they are not interested in eating.
The Umbrosum Plant was planted in the Display Tank this afternoon to replace the Hygrophila Corymbosa Kompakt Plant. The Kompakt Plant had been eaten by some of the fish in the tank. The Umbrosum Plant is an aquatic plant. I think it looks nicer than the Kompakt Plant. I hope this plant will grow well in the tank.
Spent Sunday fishing at Portsea Pier. It was terribly windy but managed to land a Gurnard Fish and a massive Southern Calamari Squid.
The squid was delicious but not so for the Gurnard. I’ll release the Gurnard in future if I catch them again. The flesh of the Gurnard is quite rubbery and has the texture of lobster meat.
Lots of crystal red shrimps and crystal black shrimps are heavily pregnant from a few weeks back and last night one of them gave birth to around 10 shrimplets
The baby Guppy Fish are doing well in the Yabby tank. I have released them from the confined breeding net earlier this week and they have certainly grown bigger since as they will feed on the algae off the drift wood.
The Siamese Algae Eater (SAE) fish is a good fish to have in an aquarium. This fish is a ‘cleaner’ fish and helps in maintaining the aquarium by eating algae off drift wood and aquatic plants.
For some unknown reason, one of the SAE in the tank has recently taken a liking to human skin. Whenever my wife or me cleans the tank and have our arm in the water, one of the SAE will be happily nibbling on our arm. I’m thinking that it is eating the dead skin on the arm. It is certainly not painful when the fish nibble but is rather ticklish.
This fish is very peaceful and goes about doing its own thing. It never bothers the other fish in the tank. Definitely nice to watch when they feed off the drift wood or plants.
The Banana Lily plants have been growing very well in the display tank. Both plants have ‘flowered’. As you can see, the flower is floating on the surface of the water and looks like lilies.
I broke down and decommissioned the old three foot aquarium earlier this week and managed to transfer some of the filter media from the old Eheim Professional II 2028 External Filter to the current Eheim Professional 3e 700 external filter.
When I set up the Juwel RIO 300 tank initially, I added filter floss to make up for the lack of filter media since I had plans to transfer the filter media from the old filter to the new one. So I transferred some Seachem Matrix and Eheim Substrat Pro over and removed the temporary filter floss. All went well until it was time to restart the filter. Then the world of pain reared its ugly head!
Air Lock occurs when water is trapped on the output/return path of the filter. In my case, water was trapped in the UV Steriliser, CO2 Reactor and the return hose to the tank. Because of the trapped water, it created pockets of air in between and prevents the self priming function to work properly.
After two and a half hours, I finally managed to restart the filter. The key points for success are:
The Seachem Purigen is a chemical filtration that can be used to clean and ‘polish’ the water. I normally add this into the external filter and it lasts between three to six months before requiring regeneration. The Purigen is deemed to be dirty and requires regeneration when the beads have turned from white to dark brown or black. I find that three to six months is ok. Anytime longer than that may push the Purigen beyond no return and makes regeneration quite impossible.
To regenerate the Seachem Purigen, I will soak it in 1:1 bleach:water solution for over 24 hours in a plastic container. Generally I will do this twice as I’ve discovered in the past that once is not enough as there will still be dark brown or black beads in the pack.
Next soak the pack of Purigen in clean water and add Seachem Prime to remove any traces of chlorine. The Purigen is now regenerated and ready to be re-used.
I tend to have a few packs of Purigen and cycle through them as required.
pH = 7.2
Ammonia = 0
Nitride = 0
Nitrate = 10
Nitrate is a little high so I will be changing seven buckets of water in today’s tank maintenance.
Fish Spectator 