brief tank notes

I had serious overflow on the main tank again this week- sigh. I let it go for a few days, thinking well if it's just a trickle maybe I'll just ignore it. This morning it was overflowing more than I've ever seen. Tested the water quality- that was fine- but the fish were hanging around not swimming much which was alarming. I rinsed out the filter media again- more normal-looking mulm and some fine white hairs- decaying plant fiber? or dropped hornwort needles? (but that plant looks really healthy). I also siphoned out the back of the filter box in case some debris is stuck there. Runs fine again now and the fish look happy with the clean flow and a small water change. Maybe I need different filter media that won't clog so quickly...

Oliver's hospital tank got a large water change today- two, actually. I set about to do the first one this morning because it's the end of his med dose with General Cure. Noticed up close that there was a lot of pale mulm on the tank bottom. It looked gross. And the hornwort is all dying, needles everywhere and falling-apart stems. Not sure if it just ran out of nutrients and gave up because there's so little light, or something to do with the medication. Regardless, I took all the hornwort out and siphoned the bottom well. But shortly after finishing the water change more mulm had settled, so I did it all again. Spirodela polyrhiza in here doesn't look healthy- I picked out lots of yellowed and decaying leaves. Subwassertang in here is doing okay- but collecting some pale hairy algae. Oh well. They were all goners anyway, when I tear down the tank and sanitize.

To keep a decent amount of live plants in here while Oliver finished out his hospital time, I'm moving over handfuls of spirodela polyrhiza once or twice a week. Float them in a container for half a day in case there's any parasite on there that left a snail and wants a fish (supposedly they die w/in a few hours if they don't find the new host).

main aquarium

All I did in this one the past friday was trim some stems, and take out a few apono leaves that were dying off. Still have minor overflow. I took out the ceramic rings. They settle and wedge in the space before the outflow- maybe that's the problem? but no, a few days later it's trickling overflow again. I can't figure out what's causing that...

rescape

I redid Oliver's tank today (he's still not in it).

First removed all the hardscape pieces with plants on them.

Tank looked very empty without them.

Then replaced things in a different arrangement. I added a new piece of driftwood I've been boiling all week to remove tannins, and tied onto it some of the plants off the old driftwood log (which stinks).

Biggest difference is that I have hidden the skull behind the new log. Plan to get some subwassertang growing on that end of the driftwood to soften and obscure view of its edge.

I thought that all my rotalas in here looked poorly the way their tops hang down, but once I trimmed some of that off (and replanted elsewhere) looks decent in the corner.

On the other end I've turned around the piece that had smaller anubias on it- looks quite different this way. Windelov fern is like green tongues of flame. Wedged a bit of mopani wood in there too with some subwassertang on it. In the very front corner is one small plant left of some unidentified stem that I thought had all died. Still not sure what it is...

The most striking plants in here are the buces. I don't know if it's just the way their colors look against the dark mopani wood, but suddenly they seem to glow and look very blue. I love it.

Also tried to get a quick overhead shot, just because it is so different from the last time I did one.

I'm happy with how it turned out- but was surprised at how much dark, fine mulm came up when I was gently trying to move plants and hardscape around. And it stank. I siphoned out water twice and refilled fresh, because it got so cloudy couldn't see anything. The snails seem okay with it all. But I am not putting Oliver back in for a while- and will test parameters make sure there isn't a huge ammonia spike or high nitrates.

the garden

Well, it's kind of been pathetic this year.

The basil at least is looking great.

This volunteer plant crawling across the garden sure looks like a cantaloupe to me.

Small yellow flowers under the broad leaves.

Parsley is decent- I've finally used some of it in cooking.

Oregano has nice leaves on the top- its newer growth.

But the lower leaves are pale, mottled with insect damage. You can see it on the cantaloupe leaves too. Probably most of the plants will get trashed later this fall, not composted, to see if I can avoid having so much whitefly next year...

Marigolds have lots of foliage, but very few flowers- and they are all bitten by whitefly or stinkbugs, too. So I don't know how much they helped my garden, as the scent from the blooms would deter the pests.

I am still picking caterpillars off the ratted broccoli, but not very many lately. This big fat one the kids found in another part of the yard. I tried to look it up and it's a plain kind of moth- a brown one- but I forget the species name now.

Not pictured: the cucumber! I have one cucumber. I didn't see it because it was partly buried under the mulch and that part of the fruit blanched white. I've set it up on an upended yogurt cup, to keep it off the ground.

Other plants- I have more peppers. The cherry tomatoes are winding down. Pulled the last few beets and they were small. Tasted good, but the foliage was so insect-damaged I didn't want to eat the leaves. There are still carrots growing, and perhaps I will get another bunch or two of swiss chard before the season is done. I cut down all the large tomato plants on the lower deck, they just weren't doing well there. The two brandywine plants are still producing. Herbs I tried to re-seed in the planter did not really come up- summer savory is gone to seed and the young plants died from the heat. So I don't have any more savory or green onions or dill. Maybe I'll do better with that next year.

yard plants

The weather is a bit cooler and it's not so uncomfortable hot outside; I have started spending more time tending to my landscaping plants and the shade (not anymore) bed in the back of the yard.

I am continually pleased with the hellebores. They look healthy no matter what comes- rain or sun. I never worry about insets on them or about watering extra (though I do give water when it occurs to me).

Also glad to see the bee balm- monarda- does fine with the summer heat and bit of extra sun they get now (after neighbors cut down their trees).

Most of my echinacea have survived and are getting a bit bigger- they look pretty good, actually. I started with nine and only have seven now. Not sure when the second missing one disappeared...

Daisy clumps are coming up with a second flush of growth. I've started cutting down the older stems as they dry up.

To my surprise, astilbes seem to be coming back too, now that the weather has cooled and we are getting a bit of rain. I thought they were all goners.

Hostas are suffering. I think it is scorching from the direct sun- none of the other plants nearby have this symptom.

And it looks like lysimachia has died- at least this one.

The other still has some pale foliage. I am wondering if they will revive in the spring.

On the deck railing- another area but I consider it a "yard plant" since it's not part of the veggie garden- sweet potato vine is doing great. A few nasturtiums have begun sprouting from where seed fell. I have a few cuttings of potato vine in the house in a jar- growing roots like mad- will probably pot it up eventually, to carry through the winter.

second treatment

Oliver's hospital tank has cycled!

It felt like a magic trick when I walked back into the room after testing for nitrites this morning, and the little test vial was bright aquamarine blue, not the dreaded purple. I am so pleased. Now I don't have to do twice-daily water changes for him (which was feeling tedious), can give a final treatment and then prepare to move him back into his home tank. I dosed API General Cure this morning, it has metronidazole and praziquantel. This is just to be extra-sure I have wiped out all the parasites.

It probably isn't really necessary, though. I have done quite a bit of reading, and got some help from plantedtank members in diagnosing the issue. My best guess is that he had contracted clinostomum marginatum, a fish parasite known as yellow grub. Apparently it is really common among all freshwater fish species, lots of people get alarmed when they catch fish to eat and find them infested with the grub (harmless, easily killed when the fish is cooked). The parasite goes through its life cycle on three hosts- eggs hatch in the water, look for a snail, grow several stages in the snail, leave it and look for a fish host, can live up to four years inside the fish, finish their life cycle if a water bird eats the fish, leave the bird as eggs in the feces and hatch into the water again. It took me a while to find a diagram that showed the time period for each stage of the cycle- it lives up to four weeks in the snail and then must find a fish host within a few hours or dies. The only thing I can guess at is that snails introduced this into my tank- nerite snails are usually wild-caught and ramshorn snails are common carriers of the parasite too.

So if I keep Oliver out of his home tank for just over four weeks, pretty sure that whatever parasite lingers among his snail population will die out. I can't just get rid of the snails- it would be easy to pick out the nerites, but impossible to get rid of all the trumpet snails unless I tore down the tank. I have removed the few trumpet snails that were in hospital tank with him.

Now that I think about it, I remember seeing something similar to this parasite one one of my male cherry barb a while back. I didn't know what it was then, I gave the fish salt baths and the thing disappeared. None of the other fish in the main tank have shown symptoms, so I assume that if that was also yellow grub on the barb, it has all died out in that tank by now.

Incidentally, I made a few changes to his hospital tank setup. Found that the watersprite does not do well in the low ambient light, it was all looking ratty so I threw those plantlets away. Spirodela polyrhiza and subwassertang do okay, and the hornwort I put in there is holding on, too. It does shed a lot of needles- I am constantly cleaning them off the glass at the waterline when I do water changes. But it grew enough that the buoyancy of the stems was lifting their wood anchors off the tank bottom, so I fastened them to stones instead.