WaterNotes

20: Nine months

February 25, 2006 on 2:01 am | In aquaria |

At nine months I must say that I’m pleased with the progress of the tank, but I had envisioned it to be a bit further along than its current state. I was actually hoping at nine months to have an artistic composition for an aquascape instead of the continual mish mash. Still, its exciting to see some of the newer developments.

Judging from the photos, the Halymenia has once again doubled in size, now easily reaching to the water’s surface in this tank. I added some Halimeda, I think its H. tuna, to the tank as well, along with a little bit of rock towards the back to help with depth perception and give the Halymenia more to grab on too as it grows. Nearly a trellis effect if you will. I also thinned the Caulerpa significantly. I realize I mention that I continually harvest Caulerpa from this tank but I made a major dent in the bed this month. On a typical monthly rotation I harvest enough C. prolifera to fill about half of a ten gallon tank. This month I jam packed the entire 10 gallon tank! My grass shrimp culture is in heaven.

In the absence of stargrass I wasnt sure who would end up showing as the strongest player in the tank. Stargrass had been such a nutrient hog and explosive grower, I figured one of the macros would win out or I would be battling nuisance algaes once again. Instead, I’m happy to report that shoal grass took over the niche and has been rocketing all about the tank the last four weeks. I would conservatively estimate there are a hundred new plants in the tank (!!).

This is interesting, as it mirrors somewhat the natural successional stage changes you might encounter in open mud flat areas in the wild being taken over my grass species. First the colonizers like Halophila and Halodule come and stabilize sediment, along with macro’s like Caulerpa, then Halodule climaxes as a large thick bed, Syringodium tends to come along, and then Thalassia if things are favorable. Its interesting that we’re seeing a tiny bit of natural reflection in a tank environment.

This also makes me wonder how we can manage grass growth in tanks where we want all the species to thrive and not just have a single monoculture of a species with accents of others. Something to ponder at least. I’m pretty confident it can be done.

As before, Halodule is throwing new plants into the water column as a segmented rhizome and it is also creeping along the substrate tossing new plants, then roots and also producing side shoots. I wish I more fully understood how to influence the growth patterns but at this point I’m just excited to see it doing so well. Another month or two of this kind of growth and I’ll be fragging colonies of Halodule just as I was for Halophila.

Which brings me back to my troublesome Halophila woes. I have not been able to reestablish stargrass in this tank with the remaining sickly colonies in my keeping. Right now we are attempting to recover them in a tissue culture setup, but they still dont look good. Also, I’ve heard from the biologists that an interaction with the hormones I was dosing is pretty unlikely, which makes me feel a little bit better about the whole disaster. I’m hoping to relocate a colony from FL, or perhaps I’ll bug one of the guys who’s currently culturing it for a starter bit.

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In other news, I started CO2 injections this month as well, which might account for the nice steady production of new plants out of the shoal grass. All the plants bubble nicely, even the macros, so they seem to get some benefit out of the situation. Whats really nice is that I do not have to monitor alkalinity so obsessively and my pH, which was always towards the high end of the acceptable range, now stays at a nice uniform 8.1 all day long and throughout the photoperiod. 

CO2 is being provided through the typical yeast reactor setup:

1 cup sugar
3/4 of a 2L bottle full of lukewarm water
1 tsp. of yeast

Shake till mixed and hook an airline to the cap through the bottle (drill it and silicone to make a tight seal). Run the airline to the tank and either hook to a bubble ladder as sold for planted aquariums in freshwater, or, stick it near the intake of your powerhead. I let the bubbles travel through the powerhead to allow for nice dispersal of the CO2 as well as the large bubbles to be broken up by the impeller.

You can also, of course, go with pressurized CO2 systems and solenoid valves but I just dont have the patience or the cash at the moment to get that crazy. I’ll upgrade to MH light and a wavemaker before I do that honestly.

Pics of the tank:

Compare the above to just a month ago as below..

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Now, the other fun occurrence happened on Feb 15th around 3am while I was watching the tank and being an insomniac. I noticed the jawfish darting about the tank in the most unusual manner (he always just hovers over his burrow) and excitedly nipping at things in the water column. The grass shrimp haven’t held eggs in weeks so that couldn’t be it.. what the heck was going on. I looked in the tank but didnt see anything obvious, in fact I thought my fish had lost his mind.. here he was picking at air bubbles from the CO2 injection! 

Or, wait, are those air bubbles??

After shutting off the pumps and observing for a few moments I realized that an un-ID’d snail from Florida had climbed to the top of the water line and was shooting eggs into the water column! What the?! Still, it was very cool to see yet another invertebrate reproduce in this tank. I am not sure if the eggs were fertile or not, but just allowed Mr. Jawfish (who still doesnt have a real name) to enjoy a buffet of plankton. You can see the snail at the top of the pic below as well as the swirls of 1mm or so white eggs.