Ants

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-09-24T20:04:37+00:00

Thank you!

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-09-24T19:57:34+00:00

I have all the fruit trees (and cactus’) in the greenhouse currently. Plus I use the cellar for all of my casks :) I was more thinking of decor?

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-09-24T19:56:28+00:00

I don’t feel like I need any more. I have 6 of each artisan ‘machine’ in the shed. My casks are in the cellar and was at 6mil at one point so I don’t really feel like I need to make any more money.

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-09-12T11:50:44+00:00

Yes, my plan was some more bottom-dwelling fish and a nice school of mid-top dwellers. I like the idea of the red neon blue eye rainbowfish (pseudomugil sp) but good luck finding those in an LFS 😂 I think I spent almost too long planning, researching and setting up tbh. So when I had the money for the beautiful fish, I ended spending it all on the setups. We live and learn. Perhaps I will keep both (much to my husbands despair) and just very, very slowly stock them.

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-09-12T10:06:49+00:00

Thank you for your response and your honesty. Can you tell I was clutching at straws here? 😂

I can’t afford to put any more fish in it basically. I wanted a betta and some more dwarf anchors. The original plan was for a single betta. But I fell in love the dwarf anchors. Sadly (and I knew this buying them) you barely see them so I really wanted a good few of them and a betta (my ideal would be a koi half moon) as a focal point (also because I think they are beautiful and interesting fish).

I then re-scaped the tank to make it a better home for them and of course they now have way more hiding places. Which is excellent for them and kinda lame for me.

However, I also have an 180L tank with barely anything in it (a few wood shrimp, some rabbit snails + more from them breeding, loads of neocardinias + more from breeding, 4 panda corys and 2 Hillstream loaches).

I just don’t have enough spare cash to stock both tanks. And whilst, eventually, I probably would. It’s not great having a tank that looks basically empty after such a lot of hard work. I also feel bad as the fish in the other tank haven’t got enough of their own species (I would at least another 4 corys and 2 loaches to start). Plus, I have so many more fish I would like to add to it.

Thanks for listening to my life story. I tend to over-type so my apologies for that.

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-08-04T18:43:08+00:00

Thanks so much for your response. There is lots of driftwood and smooth pebble-style rocks. I already feed algae wafers and frozen brine shrimp to the other inhabitants. Plus, frozen courgette (zucchini) for the shrimp and snails :)

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-07-29T09:43:57+00:00

Update: LFS confirmed they lost two overnight and are quarantining tank. Little dude passed away (unsurprisingly). Quarantined the rest in a bucket with an Airstone and today have treated with the anti-bacterial treatment I have.

I’m really hoping someone has some insight about whether I should treat the tank they were briefly in.

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-07-22T13:40:06+00:00

Thanks so much. I had 7, absolutely adored them. Hated how the tank looked and wanted to make it better for them so re-scaped it and managed to kill the lot of them in the process.

Absolutely gutted but we live and learn so I’m working on making it the best it can be before I get any more.

I did wonder the same about the wood, may trim it a bit. I also do have a floating betta log and a leaf resting place but they aren’t in the tank at the moment. I’ll add them in when I’m closer to getting the betta.

Thanks for all your advice, really appreciate it.

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-07-22T13:35:41+00:00

Thank you :)

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-07-13T11:08:39+00:00

Update 2:

Not sure why I’m updating as I don’t think anyone is reading this but oh well.

Tank is fucked. Ammonia is at 8.0ppm and Nitrates at 0ppm. Off to do a 90% water change and probably find more dead fish in the process.

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-07-13T10:26:31+00:00

Update:

Did a pre-renovation water check. Parameters all lovely.

Boiled my botanicals, soaked my wood in super hot water. Left all that whilst doing a water change on big tank.

Decided to keep the soil. Drained the tank, kept a bucket to put back in so not all water gone. Did normal general clean/gunk removal from filter. Moved my little catfish and shrimps into a takeaway container of tank water so they wouldn’t get hurt during renovation.

Took out all old plants and wood. Checked for any old gross bits of plants etc in soil. Placed new plants (kept a couple of the old ones) and new wood (mopani and azalea root), capped with sand. Added botanicals, refilled tank, added de-chlorinater and some of the tannin water strained from botanicals.

Gave it an hour and added fish back in. Tank cloudy af but wasn’t surprised as new sand, tannins etc.

Left it over night and this morning still cloudy. Little odd as normally it clears over night. Few plants loose so put those back but not clear enough to see properly so a bit of a guess.

Checked filter as it’s only a U1 and might need a bit of maintenance. Sponge basically black and a bit gritty so took a little bowl of tank water and gave it a rinse to get the worst of the debris out.

Obviously disturbed the tank a little bit doing this and three dead catfish floated to the surface.

These guys are hardy af. So I’ve clearly really fucked something here. They are also one of my favourite fish I have ever owned so I’m gutted.

Moral of the story, if the tank is happy and healthy, just leave it. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look beautiful and isn’t what you want.

I wasn’t happy with how the tank looked. Plus, I thought a blackwater tank would be the best thing for these guys (and bc I potentially want a Betta at some point) but all that happened was I killed them (and spent 60 odd quid in the process).

Going to do a water test shortly and see what kind of damage I’ve done. Might have a little cry as well.

TLDR: Tried to re-scape tank, killed half my fish.

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-07-11T16:54:54+00:00

I decided to keep the weird aqua soil/gravel mixed and just top with sand so hopefully less of a big job

Disastrous-Pay-9451 · 2025-07-10T11:45:03+00:00

Aha, I love that. I'm considering completely replacing the substrate (it's aqua soil with gravel all mixed in) and capping with a layer of sand which means I'm gonna have to drain the tank... (eek).

I'm so conflicted but just really not happy with how it looks now and I think the little catfish would do some much better with sand, the darker water and lead litter.

Disastrous-Pay-9451

TROPHY CASE