Sunday, August 23, 2015

Day 188 "Metaphor": Final Day, Shutting down

I decided to shut this tank down and do a major "rescape" on it. It's progressing well and was hoping that i'll be able to bring it to its previous lush and green state. However, I end up using the tank to keep my three discus fish temporarily. They were supposed to move to the new "Lullaby" tank but I later changed plans and decided to use that as a "farm" tank for stem plants.

It was very hard to clean up the tank from algae and bring back the plants in their best shape while keeping up with discus' feeding. The amount of organic matter from fish feces and food left over is just too much to control. The effort is just too much. It seems so much easier to just get rid of the plants and plant new batches. But if I were to do that, I might as well do a "rescape" right? So that's where this idea comes.

The only regret I have is that I was hoping this will run for a year, as that was the original goal. But it does not mean it's a failure. I learned a lot with this tank, particularly the layout consideration, flow, consistency on everything from nutrients, to CO2, to light. All these knowledge I gathered and i'm now bringing forward with the "lullaby" tank.

I had a very good start with "lullaby" and at less than two weeks there's an amazing growth and everything seems to be working according to plan. I guess the effort in sterilizing everything and choosing to use the best affordable stuff helps. That said, I will implement the same actions in the "rescape" plan.

I also have to give up these lovely discus fish. As much as I love them and enjoyed raising them, this is not yet the right time for me to have discus fish. I find it hard to mix discus with a planted tank that you plan on growing challenging plants. The amount of dirt they generate due to their extreme demand from eating is just hard to contain in a planted tank. This makes it very hard for me to control water parameters making the tank less ideal for plant growth.

The idea of investing on a big tank solely for the discus fish was in my mind but apparently, my wife is not really fond of that. So that plan has to be scratched for now. In any case, it was a short but good experience raising these three beautiful discus and what I learn will surely be handy when the time for keeping discus come.

So there you go, watch out for the new tank soon!






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