Wednesday 8 July 2020

Fluval Spec 10l, update

A few weeks on and I have made all the modifications that were planned and the tank is growing like crazy. I have just had to pull out a crypt runner and relocate it to the crypt space down the right hand side. Of course pulling out that runner meant the marsilea hirsuta came adrift because it simply does not root well in the fluval soil, it needs something much closer to mud to get a grip.


You can see that the java moss has gone mad, I've added a bamboo stake on the left and twirled it around that to add a new feature and the shrimp love it. I have also found that giving it a good shake washes out lots of debris which excites the fish and pulls some more rubbish into the filter.

I am a little worried because there is an increasing amount of black hair algae which I am pulling out as I can and luckily where it grows on the java moss the growth of the moss is sufficient to survive the loss.

Changes?

Well I have added a piece of plastic  that slides across the hole under the light and that reduces evaporation to a level that I cannot detect but I appreciate that it might reduce light entry so I tend to have it roughyl half way across as a compromise.

Meanwhile, in the filter area I have pushed the original sponge down further and added floss at the front and top so that there is always a fine filter before going into the black sponge. 
Not ideal from a filtering perspective but it does reduce the risk of anything small getting sucked into the filter. It is also small enough to lift out and wash easily which I am now doing weekly along with a jug of tank water as the water change.

The only new issue I have encountered is today I found one of the shrimp wedged vertically in the filter holes, I managed to free him and he swam off happily enough but no idea if he will survive. 

Water parameters still seem ok but I think there are only 3 red shrimp left but the amano shrimp is going strong.

The final change was on the other half of the filter area which seemed to me like a wasted opportunity and an inefficient way of using the heater.

I have now added a bag of media, followed by a couple of layers of floss and removed the extension pipe from the pump (so it now just has a right angle piece out of the top of the pump directly to the outlet) and put the pump at the top and wedged it in place with more floss. 


Not the best picture admittedly but you can see the pump at the top. The net effect is a large increase in media and filtering and a quieter pump so happy at the moment.