The Puffer Forum

Unfortunately, choices may be depressing. I want a lot more than I can keep up with. Hobbies make yo greedy - at least they do for me.

I am limited on what I can manage, so I would definitely like to keep more species, but I unfortunately can't personally maintain too many tanks at a time. Right now I'm having a problem with excessive plant growth. I'm trimming every week, and even my 5 gallon snail tank is overrun with plants, and I have some just chilling in a bucket. It would be great if I had an animal to eat these plant trimmings, like the magnificent electric blue crawdad I used to have about 12 years ago. Chachi was his name, and fabulous was his game.

Here it was in April, big plant in the left corner is plastic since removed,:

And after battling some algae and water issues, thank you so much for all the help! The tank today:

Mortimer is still sick unfortunately. He remains in the infirmary indefinitely, currently on round three of medication. I hope this one works. He continues to eat well, so I have high hopes for his recovery.

wow a fish could get lost in there lol. Do you have any CO2 or anything special going on in there?

It's funny you say that, sometimes I don't see the fish because they like to hang out in the watersprite.
I have a small CO2 plant system with a ladder diffuser, I dose fluorish comprehensive, potassium nitrate, magnesium sulfate, sodium bicarbonate, calcium chloride, and I'm overdue for the fluorish root tabs.
The substrate is a mix of play sand, fluorite, and floramax.

I wanna do a massive planted tank like that, but that seems like so much extra stuff lol

Yeah, that part does kind of suck, I wanted a planted tank do badly though, I didn't want to accept defeat from the algae.
I still don't really have all the tests I need to monitor all the levels.

I have done full supplement high light tanks in the past, but no longer. The supplements are not really hard to do once you get it down to a routine (such as EI), but I really did not like all the trimming and resetting. That burned me out quickly. I went back to no more than moderate light, plants that would do fine with that and w/o CO2 supplement, and many fewer plant species per tank - which looks more natural and is fare easier. You will never see a dozen or more plant species in a square foot or two in the wild - it just does not happen. But then, you do not see a mixture of fish either - another of my "things".

Nor do we see glass boxes in the wild either, humans do strange things.

Since my levels seem to be in check, my plants have been pearling. Some days more than others, I've heard about it, but have never seen it. It looks like reverse rain, avd it's pretty amazing. I only have my phone for photo and video, it doesn't pick up the finer bubble trails, but it shows it a little, and you can see the bubbles on the surface.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2znBGMD ... ata_player

Your pennywort is huge!

For real! That's good, it's my favorite plant

The best of news for our little polypterus buddy, Mortimer, he's back home. It was a long recovery, but his tail has grown back and you can barely tell that he ate it at all. The fish have grown quickly, so there is only a small chance of him eating any, so far he hasn't bothered trying.
Here is a short video of him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RGJKEUX ... ata_player

I wish I could get Bloats tank to look 1/2 as good as yours.

Lol... Thanks, I'm unemployed, so I kind of have the time :/