Planted Tanganyika - plantedtanganyika

Update 6/09/09 - The babies are so much bigger now! The caudopunks are almost at their adult size, and the white Calvus aren't even close (but they have grown). Judging from the size of the Caudopunks, I have 3 males and two females! It looks like I have three male, and three female Calvus. The largest male Calvus is starting to lighten up, he's going to be a stunner once he's full grown, cause he's already super flashy now! I'm so glad I got F1's! They say male calvus grow faster than females, but their growth rate in general is SUPER SLOW. Well feeding these little guys NLS seems to help, my top dog male calvus is just about 2 inches...and when I got them they were all about 1.25". The tank is doing so well!

The tank has been set up since 11/01/08, and it's had its share of ups and downs since. First, this tank didn't start as a planted tank. I'd heard around my favorite forums, that it's not imperative that africans cichlids have plants in their tank. They come from a lakes in Africa that are deep and rocky with very little vegitation. But really why shouldn't I put plants in an african tank? The plants make great perches, provide shade, cover, and extra filtration. It was a win, win situation, so I decided to just add some and see how they do.

I began planting it with small species of Anubias to see how the fish did with it. I had stocked the tank with 5 Pseudotropheus sp. "Acei", herbavors from Lake Malawil. The Acei didn't touch the plants, but they did start to outgrow their hiding places, and they still had about 3 more inches to go! So after a couple of hours fishing with the net (smart little buggers!) I caught them and traded them into my local fish store. After some thought I decided to switch from Malawian fish to Tanganyikan.

Most fish stores don't carry Africans, and if they do it's usually mixed Malawi in my experience. The specific tangs I wanted are impossible to find out here. So after some research into the matter, I decided to go with www.reservestockcichlids.com, a mail order breeder in New York that would ship them aircargo. I'm in California, so I was a little leary of shipping live fish from the East Coast to the West Coast. I needn't have worried be cause all my fish arrived alive, beautiful, and healthy. On 04/14/09, I became the proud parent of 6 F1 Altolamprologus Calvus "White Chaitika" and 6 F1 Neolamprologus Caudopunctatus "Red Fin." I absolutely love my new fish, and I don't think I could ever go back to Malawi Mbuna again.

04/24/09, I removed one of the male caudopunctatus from the tank. He was hyper aggressive, not just attacking conspecifics, but ALL the fish in the tank! Once he was removed all the aggression in the tank mellowed out, and EVERYONE gets along now. The calvus are hanging out in the front now. And another male caudo I call Bug-Eye (because he has HUGE baby blues) leaves his little corner territory to swim with the rest of the fish. I'm so happy everyone is mellow and getting along!

Bleh! I've been having some brown algae/diatom troubles since I started the tank. I thought they'd eventually go away once the silcates were used up in the tank, or once I upped my lighting to 2 watts per gallon. That was NOT the case. The extra lighting made the algaegrow faster, and soon all the plants and structures in the tank was covered with it. And to top it off the extra silcates in the water, comes from the cities water supply! So following some advice on the forum I decided to buy some Olive Nerites snails aka. the Best Damn Algae Snail on the Planet!

I purchased 24 Olive Nerites from AZgardens. The nerites went into the tank on 04/24/09 and emerged victorious, not a drop of algae left anywhere two days later. They really are amazing algae lawnmowers, anyone with a planted tank should have these little guys! And my Tangs (though they are only 1.25") haven't batted an eye or even noticed the snails, which is a very good thing because my Mbuna maimed the one apple snail I had in there before. Talk about defective herbavoirs!

General Tank Info:

Filtration: Penguin 350 and Rapids Mini Canister with Surface Skimmer attachment.

Lighting: Coralife 96 watt Freshwater (6700k bulb) Compact Fluorescent Aqualight.

Plants: Anubias Barteri, Coffefolia, and Nana. Crypt Lutea, Italian Vallisneria, Apon. 'Madagascar Lace',Taiwan Moss, and Narrow-leaf and Normal varieties of Java Fern.

Ferts: Flourish Comprehensive Plant Supplement, Flourish Potassium, and Flourish Excel (used only occasionaly).

Journal

Argh!!! Out with the old in with the new...

I had to take out the narrow leaf Java Fern a week ago. It didn't all completely die (the rest I transferred to a tank at work), but most of it did. When I was vacuuming, I moved the plant and a whole bunch of leaves came off in my hand. Damn!

The other normal Java Fern is doing great. The only thing I could think of is that it the narrow leaf Java Fern wasn't getting any ferts - or where it's placed in the tank, it's not getting enough water flow over it's rhizomes which led to its eventual death. While the java fern was slowly dying in my tank, I purchased some Aponegeton Ulvaceus bulbs from Pmart. Lemme tell you once those things sprout they grow INCHES A DAY! One day I had two little springs growing out of the tiny coconut-like bulb. The next day after I got home from work there were 6 springs growing from it and the original ones has grown literally 4-5 inches! So today they were about 8 inches long, if this type of growth keeps up I'll me able to put them in the empty spot the narrow leaf java fern left by next week!

It's all good...

My java fern has made a comeback after super excessive pruning! I've also got my tank planted enough that I'm cutting back to one water change every two weeks. I'm getting zero nitrate readings, a week after a 20% change. In two weeks it might be about 2.5ppm. Sweet!

Jeez it looks like crap!

My large (normal leaf) Java Fern mat might be dying. The nerites cleared it of algae, I pruned extra/dead leaves, plus dosed the tank with Flourish, Potassium, and Excel...AND it still looks like crap! I'm thinking about shopping for a replacement plant...

Extended water testing results...

Got my tank water tested at Leslie's Pool Supply! I have friends that work there and they have a very cool water testing machine. I'm always curious about the rest of my water parameters, but never enough to buy the extra test kits. They sell for $14-$19 dollars at Pmart!

Anyways here are the new results:

Total Alkalinity: 150 ppm

Calcium Hardness: 100 ppm

Total Disolved Solids: 350. Note: Not sure if this has any relevance to anything but pools. But here is the side note on the sheet "2500-3000 ppm Max. Partially drain and refill if high."

Phosphates: 300 ppb. Note: It was kinda high. When compairing the colored water results it was between the third and fourth step.

Pictures