Wishafish’s tank log

[Wishafish]

This is a problem with Corydoras with sand and plants.

PUDDLE TIP: One trick you can use is to place small pebbles around the plant and will to stop the roots being disturbed. You can remove the stones later once the plant get better established.

Oddly it’s not something I’ve really had a problem with except for stem plants, which mostly always die on me and I don’t think it’s the corys’ fault. Thanks for the tip, but it was just a joke really - these plants are well rooted enough they didn’t move, they just look silly with half their roots hanging out!

[LookoutTrout]

No sign of the tiger lotus doing anything yet but they were added more recently - the bulbs are just sat being bulbs.

Make sure they are half buried in to the substrate, they'll soon root.

They might have rooted, they are part buried and I won’t disturb them. They’ll either grow or not!

My tiger lotus positioned itself, the fish uprooted it at first so it hovered above the substrate but the plant put roots down and lowered itself so it was nestled on the sand.

[Wishafish]

Looks like the trilli are doing well.

They are doing great, they spawn regularly, although they eat their own eggs within an hour or two! I might try to collect some eggs at some stage, but I don’t have the space or time for another tank at the moment.

[Wishafish]

Sadly lost the big nerite yesterday. I will miss him - he was about 7 years old.

Here he is being perched on by a shrimp a few weeks ago!

[Martinspuddle]

Sorry to hear that.

Seven years is very good, it's believed they only live one to two years in the wild.

[Gingerlove05]

Sorry for your loss
It does sound like a long happy life for a nerite

[Wishafish]

Thank you both, yes he was very old, and it’s all his fault I got a new tank last year instead of packing it in as I couldn’t bear to rehome him!

[plankton]

Sorry to hear.
Good age as everyone has said, and you did get a new tank.....

[Drifty]

sorry to hear 7 years is a very long years

[Wishafish]

A small update- another’s member’s topic made me realise I never updated the filter story on here.

When I originally set up the tank I used some filter media bags and biological media that I already had to replace some of the sponges. This seemed to work fine. More recently I also upgraded the pump to the 1000 lph version and the filter immediately started spitting air. Every 30 seconds to 2 mins approx it would spit out a batch of bubbles. This was annoying, so I set to solve it. Air trapped in filter media? Nope. To cut a long story short it seems the flow through the media bags was too restricted for the increased power of the new pump, and so it was sucking air into the top of the filter box. Very reluctantly I deconstructed my filter setup and the flow more than doubled. It was ludicrous, my baby Endlers were fighting for their lives and the corys were refusing to feed. So, I swapped back to the 600 lph pump and gradually moved the biological media into boxes. The flow is now as good as it was with the bigger pump and the bags in place, but with no air spitting.

If anyone needs some filter bags I now have some spare (they were sent to me by another forum member so free to good home). I am keeping the spare pump as an emergency backup, although if I need to use it I’ll have to find a way to break up the flow.