Hi All,
I apologize for being a little late in my posting this week. I am on the Board of our local aquarium club, Greater Seattle Aquarium Society (gsas.org) and we had a board meeting last night that I had to prepare for. I did do my water change as scheduled on Monday.
2020-09-14
Today was the big water change of about 50% or 12 gallons. After the water change I took readings and these are the results.
I also took a full set of water parameter readings after the water change and plant changes; here are the results:
pH = 6.4
dKH = 2.0
dGH = 4.0
Ca = 20 ppm
Mg = 5.23 ppm
NH3 = 0.00 ppm (possibly from disturbing the substrate?)
NO2 = 0.00 ppm
NO3 = 10.0 ppm
The ammonia came down from 0.25 ppm last week to 0.00 this week which kind of confirms that changing the plants and disturbing the substrate caused the slight increase in NH3 that we saw. Because we have hit my target dGH and Ca and Mg levels I did not add any calcium sulfate (CaSO4*2H2O) or magnesium sulfate (MgSO4*7H2O) for the plants. The fish are doing fine and still eating like swimming pigs although they seem to feel entitled and only eat frozen bloodworms, live adult brine shrimp, frozen brine shrimp, and FD tubifex worms. They turn their noses up at krill flakes and Fluval Bug Bites, any suggestions as to how to encourage them to eat other foods would be appreciated.
Here are some pictures from Monday; first the overall tank shot.
The Rotala H'ra (aka 'Vietnam') is doing as expected. With the low nutrient levels in the water column the Rotala has taken off, can you see all the new stems starting to emerged along the original stems?
The Myriophyllum sp. Guyana is starting to branch at the top of the stems; the Oldenlandia salzmannii continues to grow toward the surface and will need trimming soon. And on the far right the Hygrophylla arcuata continues to grow slowly. Regrettably the Eriocaulon 'Vietnam' in the foreground continues to just sit there. It will be moved to another tank in the near future.
They Limnophila sp 'Curly' that was added last week is also growing nicely.
Just like the Oldenlandia salzmannii the Ludwigia sp 'Red' (*doubtful this is correct identification) is growing to the surface, this is after I removed the original emerged growth from bottom of the stems last week.
And a partial 'Family Portrait'
Lastly, for [MENTION=75210]Shan[/MENTION]_Evolved a video of the fish eating FD Tubifex Worms