Cityscape.

**Mr X** · 17th Jan 2012, 08:37 PM

Hello everyone,

Well here we are, my equipment arrived today, internet purchase I am afraid, too busy to actually go to a shop at this stage and anyway knowing me I would spend way too much if I actually saw it on a shelf, internet purchasing means you can put as much in your basket as you want to of think you need at any rate and then at the end of it empty it out again without looking foolish.

Anyway I bought:
Fluval Shrimp Stratum 4kg
Algarde Under-gravel Filter 11 x 17
Interpet Air Stone Cylinder X2
Airvolution Pump 1
Taxiphyllum barbieri (Vesicularia)
Airline Tubing Metre 10

I cleaned the tank out as it was looking pretty vile after having me use it for my CO2 experiments over the last few days. I had to cut the under-gravel filter to fit the tank as it was just that little bit too big, I managed to get the two pieces overlapping enough to form a seal so no substrate would go underneath it.

The instructions on the Fluval was what I would call amusing as it say that you gently rinse it in a large colander before you used i. I got the colander out,, opened the bag of stratum and peered into it, looked back at the colander and then back at the contents, put the colander away and got a bucket out. Had the substrate particles been around the size of a small pea then yes I would have followed the instructions but even I could see that there would be nothing left in the colander had I followed their method.

I put the substrate in the tank on top of the UGF and put a plate on top of it so I didn't disturb it too much when I poured the water into the tank. As nothing will be going into the tank for quite some time I used Neptune Tapwater Safe in the water as per the instructions and half filled the tank, I then topped the tank up with 10l of water from the goldfish tank that has been running for the last four months and I also put two of the bags that contain the ceramic filter media in the bottom of the new tank so that perhaps some of the bacteria might migrate to the new media and then perhaps I might get a better end result in time.

At this stage I could not see one side of the tank to the other as it was more like murky tea which is what I suspected when I first looked at the substrate in it's bag but after half an hour with the UGF running it has cleared quite well. I know that I will most probably need a heater in there for the little shrimp to huddle round in this cold English weather but that is going to have to wait for next month when I can afford it.

I quite expected the Taxiphyllum barbieri to come already fixed to a stone as that is what it looked like in the picture of the online shop but that wasn't to be so I hunted around for a stone of some sort that I could attach it to. I was at work at the time and I work for a chartered surveyors office that also manages property here in the West Midlands, my desk is in the Service Charge department and the brick gave me an idea and while I in one of the other departments I noticed that there was a brick on the window sill and it gave me an idea for the tank ....... Sprimp Apartments, so I have put the Taxiphyllum barbieri around the brick and wrapped it in cotton which will eventually break away and hopefully the apartments will be covered in the moss. I am not sure if it will work as I have planned but as I mentioned in my last post that this is a learning curve and until I actually put some shrimp into it once it is safe I can have a little play around with it to see what happens. I did tests on the brick to see if it would be safe and it seems that it will, especially as it is a brnd new brick sample.

I have planted a few odd plants in there but I don't hole much hope for them as they didn't doo too well in the goldfish tank so I can't imagine they would do any better in this one. I have also popped a fake rock that I have covered with Java moss and cotton thread and I have also dropped two of my moss balls into the tank. A fair bit of the Taxiphyllum barbieri fell off but most of it sated where I had put it but maybe it might stick to something else in there after a while, so you never know.

I will be nice if the moss does manage to stick to the brick (sorry) Apartments as it will give the little shrimp somewhere to hide away a bit in the big city. I will, once I can afford it buy some bogwood and a bit more moss to make it look like little trees just for a laugh so pop back sometime and have a look to see how it is all getting along.

I did try to pop a picture of it up on here but once again I have not posted enough up on here yet to do that but I would have liked you to see how it looks this evening now that I have set it up, there is still a bit of much floating around but I daresay that will settle after a few days. Once it has settled a bit moreI am going to have to learn how to do all the required testing so wish me luck with that!

**ChiefWalksInSlips** · 25th Jan 2012, 07:10 PM

Any pictures yet? You should be able to add them as attatchments...

**Mr X** · 18th Feb 2012, 11:23 PM

The cityscape has taken a step back at the moment becuse I got the little tank and ended up setting that up first I am afraid.

**Mr X** · 26th Feb 2012, 04:23 PM

Having suffered a setback with the worm problem in my tank and not being able to function at my desk without shuddering in horror I decided to strip the tank down. The salt that my friend put in worked but it left thousands of dead worms everywhere and was putting me off just about everything I do so I made the decision to start from scratch. The picture shows on little patch of the worms but there were patches all over the place.

Stripped it down, washed it out, boiled what I could, scrubbed what I could and rubbed salt into anything that wasn't boilable, rinsed, rinsed and re-rinsed everything, left it all soaking in tap water for a day with the tap trickling all the time and then yesterday I set to work setting it all up again.

I had been having a problem with the Ph dropping badly so I decided against putting the bogwood back in and went for my original idea of the house brick, so cityscape is back on and this time I have taken some pictures of it. At the moment the UGF is sucking downwards but after a week or so I am going to reverse it. I have put a few filter bags from a mates established tank that I am looking after for him into it to seed it and I have bought him some new ones for his tank and I used the water from his tank when I did the water change as well as adding some fresh that I had left in buckets for the last week.

The water flow is like a torrent at the moment but I figured that it would help with the oxygenation of the gravel for the first bit of the process.

The pictures show, a small pile of the dead worms.
worms.jpg

The construction of my UGF using Binding Combs, a piece of Cable Tidy and some Reticulated foam so there are about two inches of space beneath the gravel and I can see the bottom of the tank in various places to see if it gets clogged up.
Villaggio del Gambero 3.jpg

A couple of pictures of the tank itself, one with the UGF running and as you can't see much because of all the bubbles, one with the power-head turned off. Looking at the pictures it looks more like a holiday villa than a city, but there you go, at least the little shrimps have apartments. I am not too keen on the plants in there as I would prefer a mossy "lawn like" look, I might even create a little roof garden on top of the brick which would give it another level.
Villaggio del Gambero 1.jpg Villaggio del Gambero 2.jpg

I have had three days off, achieved nothing except that tank and a load of shrimp watching in my little tank where there are now four berried shrimp somewhere in there, I should have ten in total but they are so fast that I can't count them. Because of the setback with my cityscape tank I feel that I need something to play with so I feel forced to buy another tank, Fully set up and ready to go with 30 Cherry Reds in it, well it will stop the Ghost Shrimp from getting paranoid with me sitting by their tank all the time watching them won't it.

I case you are wondering why I write so much rubbish and lengthy bits, it is because I am quitting smoking and with this new hobby and telling you guys about it, it takes my mind off wanting a cigarette!

**lillith112** · 26th Feb 2012, 08:06 PM

Wow that is a lot of worm things in your tank, ewww, do you think they came in with the gravel or the plants ?, I have a few bugs that came in with my plants but nowhere near as many in numbers as that.
Your tank is looking good, I would get a load of java moss and attach it to your shrimp brick appartment, it would look really cool.
Hey and well done quitting smoking

Julia.

**Mr X** · 26th Feb 2012, 08:26 PM

Hi Julia,

there were literally thousands of them and I can only assume that they came with the plants my workmates brough me for my birthday, had there been two or three I could have coped but seeing that many made me just feel queasy all the time, all gone now and hopefully for good.

I did try attaching Java moss last time but got impatient and took the thread off too soon and it had not attached yet. Got some sort of moss that I am trying to attack to a plasit grid that I made, so we shall see if that works. but having moss or a couple of different mosses on the brick would look cool I agree.

As for quitting smoking, it is far harder than I thought which is why I have taken up this as a hobby.

Neon

**Mr X** · 26th Feb 2012, 09:08 PM

Well something is working in the tank .......

Bearing in mind that I have used the filter media from another fully cycled tank laying it on the gravel for 24 hours to seed it with the UGF in the normal mode (downwards), 50% water from the same tank and 50% fresh water that had been in a container for a few days but not dechlorinated. I also dotted a few of the filter media rings around pusing them into into the gravel about 10 cms apart and crushed six of them into the flow of the powerhead scattering the tiny bits everywhere (like dust in a desert). The water temp was 86 but I have just brought that down slightly and I removed the net bags containing the filter media this afternoon leaving just the stray filter bits that I had pushed into the gravel and of course the ones that I crushed.

For ammonia I put 2cc of BioMature last night, it is supposed to be a Filter starter and it obviously is producing ammonia as the reading has gone up. End of the month so I did not have any dechlorinator, but I shall put a bit of that in once payday gets here.

When I fisrt started the process yesterday the moving bed filter with K1 was foaming a bit so I daresay that was adding a bit of ammonia to the tank as it had been previously boiled to kill all the worms and any eggs that might have been in it, I also boiled the gravel for 15 minutes, rinseed it and rinsed it and then put it in the oven to dry out. So all in all I think that the bacteria that I need are beginning to build up and do their thing. Of course the Nitrate leves rerading is from the fact that I used old water from the other tank but all the other readings seem to be progressing nicely. Well I think they are anyway, You tell me if you think I am on course as I am not the experienced one here and I appreciate advise from anyone who knows more than I do.

Day 1 the day I set it up
Ph 7
Ammonia 0.6
Nitrate 0
Nitrate 20

Day 2 After 24 hours
Ph 7 So that has held stable, it went to 5 last time after 24 hours
Ammonia 1.2
Nitrate 0.8
Nitrate 20

Neon

**Mr X** · 27th Feb 2012, 05:00 PM

Tonights reading are
Day 3 36 hours after setup
and I added 1 cc of BioMature last night
PH 7.2
Ammonia 2.4
Nitrite 1.6
Nitrate 50
Got the name down wrong last night as I was flustered with the excel document not working properly but they are correct tonight order-wise

**Mr X** · 6th Mar 2012, 03:46 PM

Well everything dropped to where it should be and I added 25 Chreey Red Shrimp, one of which had berries. I could hardly see them against the dark gravel so I sprinkled some sand over the top which gave a lovely effect as it now looks like a snow scene and because of the reverse UGF there were loads of tiny upwellings of the tiny sand particles.

Snowscene 1.jpg

I have spent hours watching them and the antics that they get up to, they seem to like swimming in the stream from the Fluval U1, it is very much like a fairground in there as they run along the bottom and then up by the heater before launching themselves against the flow and swim like mad to get to the other end of the tank, over and over again, looks like they are really having some fun in there.

While looking through the manifying glass I was saddened to see a worm crawling along the glass, I am gutted as I had worked so hard to get rid of them a few weeks ago but on a brighter note while looking for more worms I spotted something that I think is a shrimplet it looks a bit like a very tiny weeny tadpole but when looking against a light I can see that it has whiskers, it started out at the top of the tank against the glass and then worked it's way down to the sand where of course I lost it, I also spotted something that lookoed as if had two tails so I am a bit worried about that, but I guess we will see what it turns out to be when it grows a little.

So there is joy in with my sadness and it looks like everyone was right, the worms are there to stay, no matter what you do to avoid having them, trouble is now I can't put a fish in with them because of the tiny shrimp, catch 22 really isn't it.

Ah well ..........

I had to edit this bit as I forgot it.

There is a second berried shrimp in there , it has been like that for a couple of days now, it has green eggs wheras the first one had yellow egss, apparently that is what happens and I have noticed a lot of them with saddles of each colour too so there may well be more eggs along the way.

I am very curious about one thing though, I have been watching that little Shrimplet fo about three hours now, but the yellow berried female still has loads of eggs, does she normally drop them over such a long period of time or do you think that the thing I think is a shrimplet is something more sinister, it does move like a shrimp in tiny darting motions which is what made me think it but now I am worried about even that one.