Tales from the 50: My first "big tank" and my mistakes

[Fish Heads]

I breed bettas only about 20 sucessful spawns to my name and no conference winners yet . . . but there's always next year.

Then I discovered aquatic gardening as if my own dead plants in my front yard weren't victims enough.

Then came the 50 gallon "bargan" from eBay. The compact lights purchased. The plants given to me by the Pres of GWAPA. The 3 bags of EcoComplete. Every thing was going great. Plants were growing, water was clear. pH was 7.8, a little high but tolerable.

Then it happened: I put in onyx sand - Oh boy what fun will this be. It's not really black, only made my substrate look dusty. And then . . . algae bloom. enough to terrorize even the bravest of hearts.

My pH is 8.4 KH at 8, GH . . well I was too disappointed to keep testing. Actually I dropped my last test tube.


And the algae became thicker and thicker until I can't see anything. Lights off for 7 days, no change. 50% weekly water changes only seemed to give the green ooze more to grow on.

I ponder: Do I change out the substrate?, Do I forget planted tanks and begin to learn about ciclids? Algae?? My bettas would love the Daphnia I could raise in this thing. Hummm, a good idea.

Stay tuned for more of the horror story.

[Fish Heads]

Well, I did a 25% water change and I can see that I have 2 black neons still in the tank . . . I took out their brothers because of the pH levels. And my Flag fish and my little ottos are getting really fat!!! Wow the plants are still growing even with all the algae. Set up an automatic water changing system to change about 5 gallons a day. Added charcoal to my filter system.

We'll see. Otherwise maybe I'll go into hydroponics. I also heard that one enviromental organization is asking people to grow sea grasses for the bay. . . . I think I'd kill that too.