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My Lido 120

chris1805

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
333
Location
Odijk, the Netherlands
Well this is my tank and it's the home of my
  • Apistogramma Nijsseni 1 male 1 female
  • M. Ramirezi 1 male 1 female
  • 9 cardinal tetra's
  • 8 Hemigrammus erythrozonus
IMG_4059.JPG

Now i have this question about my amazone swordplant which as you can see is right in the middle and is getting way to big. I am cutting off some leaves week to keep him in controle but it's getting kinda hard. Would you guys recommend to remove it and replace it with something else (please give me some alternatives besides buying a new one)
If you have some other thoughts about things i should change please just let me know :)

Big thanks already!
 

Josh

Administrator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
496
Location
Redlands, CA
Looks great! Is the swordplant just growing too quickly to keep trimming it back? Will it perhaps slow down with the seasons changing?
 

chris1805

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
333
Location
Odijk, the Netherlands
i have no idea about seasons changing, i should have been a little bit more specific with the problem i think. You can cut the "old leaves" out the once who are on the outside of the plant. But the new leaves are getting bigger and bigger and start now floating on the top of the water and popping up out of the water. Because these leaves are still at the core of the plant i can't cut those away, because the plant will die if i do.

This is why i am thinking about it the replace him, however he provides a lot of hiding places and i think he has become a pretty important factor in keeping water levels stable.
 

dw1305

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,755
Location
Wiltshire UK
Hi all,
I agree with Josh, it looks great and I'd keep it. I'd carry on like you are, just trimming the older leaves from the outside of the rosette.

If you want a slower growing plant, with a similar look, you could replace it with one of the larger leaved Anubias cultivars.

Your plant looks to be Echinodrus bleheri which will grow large.

cheers Darrel
 

chris1805

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
333
Location
Odijk, the Netherlands
ooops i just saw that i forgot to mention him in my first post. It's sadly though, i had someone to pick him up but that person never came. Until now everything goes fine with him. I can't put in a female because that will cause huge fights. I have been thinking about bringing him back to the store, but that's not an option either. If i bring him back to the store for free, they just dump him into their tank with the other nanacara anomala's but not letting him get used to the water. Which will probably cause his dead since i have a kh of 1-2 and a ph of 6.5 and they are running on tab water which is about a ph of 7.3 with a kh of 5-6 there i believe.

So if you live in the netherlands close by, feel free to pick him up for free if you can offer him a better tank :) you have catch him yourself ^^
 

gerald

Well-Known Member
5 Year Member
Messages
1,491
Location
Wake Forest NC, USA
I had two swordplants in a "55" gallon (48 x 13 inch base, 18 inch high) and eventually had to remove them. I trimmed them for years, but they sill kept getting wider at the base, and eventually looked "pressed" between the front and back glass. I dont think I will try swordplants again (other than dwarf species) in any tank narrower than 20 inches (0.5 meter).
 

chris1805

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
333
Location
Odijk, the Netherlands
I am planning on redoing my tank, which includes switching from the little gravel to sand (i have really much regret from not choosing sand at the beginning). Than i will replace the swordplant and will look for a spieces that stays smaller than this one. Sadly this change will have to wait until my christmas holiday so i can just take a whole day for the preparation and the changes. (and ofcourse save some money, life ain't easy when you are a student with a hobby :p )
 

chris1805

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
333
Location
Odijk, the Netherlands
Well last evening my ramirezi got eggs, which brings a lot tension into the tank. It really sucks i have no separate tank at the moment. As i woke up this morning my ramirezi seem to have about half of the tank as their territory and tension is less now. The A. Nijsseni male is not really planning on staying on his half of the tank and the ramirezi have to team up to keep him at distance. Luckily the fish didn't harm them self yet. The Nanacara luckily stays away. I don't expect the eggs to be here for another day but guess only time can tell right now. Will try to post a picture somewhere tomorrow.
 

rr16

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
536
I came home to find my A. nijsseni male at the "wrong" end of the tank, gesturing at two female aggasizi, one male barlowi and an unsexed possible barlowi juvenile! Not quite sure why he wasn't up his own end! Hope all goes OK. I have had rams that layed repeatedly but never got past the fry in a pit in the sand stage (but then I had Corydoras and lots of tetras in that tank though!).
 

chris1805

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
333
Location
Odijk, the Netherlands
My eggs were already gone this morning. I have had the same experience with rams before, they are not really the best parents. I think we can conclude that getting ram fry to survive in a community tank is really hard/ impossible.
 

chris1805

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
333
Location
Odijk, the Netherlands
Well last friday the day was finally there! i rescaped my tank! On thursday i already washed all the sand to make sure that was ready. Also had bought the rocks and wood the week before which i washed and let it soak for about a week. I started of like this
IMG_4225.JPG
I filled 1 of the black buckets with water from the tank with the bucket containing about 50L. I than caught all the fish and put them in this bucket as well and added some plants and the coconut in there. I had no other choice than doing this since i also wanted to replace the substrate (from gravel to sand). I would not advice doing this since catching your fish is a pain. The fish will hide underneath plants and even underneath the background like my agassizii female did. (i think i forget to mention but i have replaced the Nijsseni by a pair of Agassizii) Also some piece of advise which i learned the hard way, don't pull out the plants before you got al your fish out!! I had only my agassizii female left which was hiding under my swordplant. I though to be smart and remove the plant, biggest mistake ever! Water turned completely brown, like there was a mudstream in there. Female would not stop hiding and eventually i had to remove almost all the water until there was about 1 cm left, still not seeing the fish. I than toke the whole aquarium turned it 90 degrees and poured it all in the bucket, still not seeing the fish.. Had to pour all the water through a net and well there she was. Luckily the fish survived because i was kinda scared she would die by some sort of nitrate shock that would come free when all the gravel moves. I put my heater in the bucket and also my filter to make sure my bacteria in the filter would not die.

Now the next part, rescaping the tank! i sadly forgot to take pictures from this part :( I started with placing the new substrate, when the substrate was in there i started with the hardscape. I first put my 2 pieces of wood in, 1 piece of spider wood, and 1 piece of driftwood which was already in my tank. I also had bought some stones, 2 big pieces of dragonstone. I smashed them into pieces with a hamer and washed the now smaller pieces i had. When i was sure about the setup i was going to use it was time to fill the tank again!

Since i have a small tank contain about 120L from which probably 100L is filled with real water and the other 20L by the substrate and the hardscape, i only use RO water in my tank. This allowed me to get rid of a lot of dirty water and replace it by some new fresh water. So i added about 20L of old water which was in the black bucket without the fish, and 30L of fresh RO water. I than placed all the plants in there and made sure it looks nice and the plants had enough space to grow and nicely fill up the tank. When the plants where in there i checked the temperature of the water, which was a bit to low so i decided to add about 2L of hot tap water to increase the temp a few degrees. When this was done i checked for ph and kh to see if it was the same levels as in the bucket and luckily it was. I placed back the filter and the heater, caught my fish once again and released them into their new home. Filled up the tank with all the water from the bucket and there it was, my new decorated tank!

As now when i am writing this it is sunday and all my fish are still healthy and alive. My rams even decided to lay eggs on saturday!! :) I tried to make sure there are enough hiding places and that the hardscape and plants break the sightliness so that the Agassizii and the rams won't get into fights. Here are the pictures of the newly decorated tank, let me know what you thinking about it and if you have any suggestions are advice, i would love to hear them!!

The frontview
IMG_4229.jpg


The sideview
IMG_4231.jpg


And here is the little bonus!! A picture of the eggs, which is a horrible picture and really hard to see since the eggs have almost the same colour as my background. The only things that is really strange is the fact that my female is not defending them at all and that my male is the only one who is taking care of the eggs. The eggs are those little round thingys right underneath the wood at the background.
IMG_4236.jpg
 

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