They're back!

Ther archers are finally back, out of their hideouts. The trick was, apparently, to give them some fun, i.e. some CRICKETS! I got some huge ones a few days ago, they're long gone, but since then the archers never went to hide again, and stay alert all the time for some more to come. Great.

The "good" mangrove has now 6 (!) leaves, and still only small roots, whereas the "bad" ones have no leaves at all (or better, they lost all of them), and a great root development. Unbelievable.

The Vallis are not doing very well, they keep on the yellowish side, even the new leaves now, but they do keep generating new runners, which is, I believe, a good sign. I only set a few tablets of Tetra Plant Crypto fertilizer at the end of July, when I settled the plants into my bare sand substrate, and then randomly provided small amounts of liquid fertilizer. I'll try to go for more. Pity the Fe test I bought just doesn't read anything else than 0 mg/l...

Eheim, what's wrong with you???

Yesterday I decided it was time to check & clean the filter, especially in view of next 3-week trip...

As usual, detaching the tap from the head was an impossible mission: it just stays stuck in there, no matter how much one pushes that damn red button. I eventually opened the filter head without removing the tap, causing the expected flood in the cabinet. Later on I noticed that forcing the flow lever towards the OFF position may do the trick. To the next time....

Apart from the usual brownish mud, the filter was actually quite clean.

Again, problems afterwards: no matter how full the tank was, priming was simply impossible. I scratched my fingers to bleeding point in the attempt to restart, to no avail. The impression was that simply no water at all was sucked in. Spent the evening with that, and eventually gave up, leaving also the inline heater off, inevitably.

Today morning, thanks to the usual good advice of the folks in the TFF, I "solved" the problem the old way, sucking in the water from the pipe's end.

Now, Eheim, for the cost you charge your filters, a bit better engineering would be appreciated!

Nitrites still at 0 mg/l

New water test this afternoon, bad guys still at 0 mg/l. Normal amount of food provided. I'll check the water tomorrow morning again. The main problem is, I'm leaving on saturday for an entire week, and if the bacteria are gone, I'm in trouble. Best solution I could think of, no food for the entire next week. Which is surely OK for the archers, but the small ones?

Big mistake

Two days ago, while fiddling with the filter in order to change the water flow, in an attempt to understand what better fits the archers, I forgot the filter off. It stayed like that the whole night, and I found out in the morning, yesterday. The risk is, of course, that the aerobic bacteria in there all died. A quick water test in the afternoon showed ammonia still lower than detectable (<0.01 mg/l), but nitrites between 0.1 and 0.2 mg/l. Bad. Quick water change, more than 50%. No food.

Water test today, NO2 at 0 mg/l both in the morning and in the afternoon. Tiny amount of food provided.

OOOPS!

Wait a minute... I measured the water parameters, and it just CANNOT be that NO3 are down to less than 10 mg/l: the tap water contains almost 40! Then I recalled that the reagents of the test for NO2 and NO3 do have an expiration date: and that passed LONG AGO! Fortunately I have another package I bought time ago. Results: around 75 mg/l! Good enough that the bacteria are doing their dirty job, and NO2 are still at 0 mg/l.

The archers don't come out!

So, yep, after more than two weeks from the arrival of the rainbows and the Vallis, the archers are stubbornly hidden in the darkest corners of the mangroves: they keep staying there all day, even at feeding time, the only apparent exception being when the lights go off, when two (!) of them shyily come out to slowly munch the food the rainbows can't get, 'cause it floats or it's too big. The thing is, the two species do share pretty much the same hideouts, e.g. at night, and I never saw any evidence of direct distress caused by the rainbows to the archers: they simply peacefully pass in front of each other, like all well-educated fish should do. Still, this behaviour clearly started about 48 h after the Boesemani went in; the only other changes occurred during that time was that the water was slowly turned into fresh, in order to give an easier startup to the Vallis. I have also reduced the exposure to light, covering parts of the tank with black sheets of plastic, but to no avail. Another situation when the archers finally appear more confident, and indeed jump out of their hideout and go swimming below the filter output, is when I start changing the water, and the water level goes down: they always reacted in this way, and apparently still do, and I have no clue why.

The rainbows instead are just happy: the males are starting to get more colour, two of them in particular feature a stable orange rear half. Today morning I was at home, and before the lights turned on one of them was actually the long-term expected blue & red! I therefore took a few quick shots, shown below.

The striking colours shown before the lights went on today morning. Not bad for such a young specimen.

The same male with a female.

The two most forward males.

 

Updated layout

Here's a picture of the new aquascape, of which I'm not yet very satisfied. It just... doesn't look natural. I have added more hanging leaves, and more I have yet to add. The Vallis is experiencing the expected removal trauma, let's see if I can make it just LIVE.Three mangrove roots left.

The rainbows are doing quite fine, especially one of the females appears very confident. The archers, on the contrary, are shier than ever: they're spending the entire day hidden, and freak out as soon as I get close, histerically jumping or trying to go through the glass. They haven't really eaten in the past couple of days. I noticed that switching off the light will make them come out and eat a bit, though. I do have to decrease the amount of light, at least in certain parts of the tank; but now with all those plants around it's a bit complicate. Or else, I haved no idea what to do: I expected that the new neighbours would make the archers come out a bit more, but so far the opposite is happening.