BigBens Restart.

[BigBen]

I thought I'd start a new log following the house move, as the move didn't go too well but things seem to have settled pretty quickly.

My tanks are currently in our converted garage whilst we renovate the house (fairly hefty updating project). That means however I have some extra space so at some point I will get a breeding tank or two for the Cory's. In the mean time, I'm looking to rebuild my stock. I hope to find some C.Cruziensis again as I only have two of my group left and my Similis group needs a few extra bodies. But beyond that, I'm going to try and find some unusual fish again. The local shops don't seem to have anything unusual at the moment, but I now have the choice of 6/7 shops rather than my two in Somerset.

I've picked a couple plants up today with the intention of making the Cory tank look good again. Visited a number of shops yesterday in Plymouth/St Austell and another today and no one had any Anubias. I had planned an Anubias bomb. I have a couple I moved with and I picked up a trident fern and a Buchephalandra (spelling?).

I've also started fiddling with my phone cameras macro settings and the PicsArt app. Hopefully I'll get some good results once the tank is thriving again, but for now it's just this chap:

[BigBen]

Deep clean in the discus tank this afternoon as the new filter (and hoses) arrived. I'm hoping the additional flow will aid my cyanobacteria battle. I've also ordered some Vallis and Sagittaria to hopefully take some nutrients from the substrate. I'm down to 9 lemon tetras, from about 17 since the house move but today I only had 0.25 on the nitrites so I'm nearly there on the cycle front.


The Cory tank is doing much better, immediately settled with no cycle, so I've added a L471 (Hypancistrus, mini snowball) that I've caught glimpses of since adding, but not a lot.






(I'm planning to get some Otto's so I'm leaving the algae on the back for them ).

Positive news on the fish tanks, but in not so positive news, I lost my Tortoise this week. He woke up from his hibernation but passed away 48 hours later. He never really grew as you'd expect, so I suspect he wasn't from a particularly good breeder. We can't decide if we should get another at the moment, we will maybe look to rescue one.

[Gingerlove05]

Sorry for your loss Ben
The tanks are looking good, hopefully the cycle from the move will settle soon.

[Stephen]

Sorry to hear about your tortoise

[plankton]

Sorry to hear of the loss.
Fingers crossed the cycle has nearly sorted itself out.

[F3l1ss]

Sorry your lost your torty

[BigBen]

Today's job was to get a sponge filter running in the Cory tank so I can set up my small tank as a breeder/qt in a few weeks. So glad to be actively fishkeeping again after 6 months of waiting to move house. Has anyone had any experience of the big dug work benches that are rated to 400kgs? I'm undecided whether to get one of those, or build myself a small stand for some tanks.

[BigBen]

I got a nice glimpse of "Arnold" (my wife names some fish) this evening, he'd been out for food before he finned it to the sponge filter to hide upon my arrival. Managed to get a photo just before he dashed.

I'm confident that Arnold is a male, he has a lot of very small odontodes. Almost impossible to photograph as his size though:

[Gingerlove05]

Very pretty
If it does turn out to be a female you can always name them Helga instead

[BigBen]

Very pretty
If it does turn out to be a female you can always name them Helga instead

I'd like to find more so I could have a Helga at some point!