Maintenance day - 13 days after setup

Some people think that keeping a planted aquarium needs to spend a lot of time in the maintenance, but they are wrong. If we spend 5~15min every day doing small things, like add liquid fertilizer, feeding the fishes, cleaning the glasses or maybe a water change; the general maintenance is easy and fast! We just need to schedule very well all the needs and have some rules.

Even if we don't do something daily, a balanced aquarium can be easily cleaned, just see the following video:



To have an idea, I spent 45min doing this maintenance and I was worried about the camera, seeing if it was recording or not... so usually to do something like this, I spend 15~20min at most.
Some algae appeared but nothing to complain... It is quite normal in a new layout, but if you detect on time, is very easy to control and remove it. On the video above you can see the difference between before and after! No tricks and no photoshop...

Day4 - Bad fortune :-(

Today unfortunately, something unexpected occurred! All my Micro Rasbora died after a water change :-(
I forgot that a maintenance company was on the building cleaning the water’s deposit; and on the afternoon during a normal maintenance to my aquariums I decided to do a water change to my small aquarium. Fortunately, I didn’t change the water of my 350L aquarium, which was scheduled for today; otherwise the problem would be more dramatic than this.
When I saw the fishes reacting differently and tremble, was too late for do something. My first reaction was went into the kitchen and fill a cup of water and taste it, the smell was very strong at chloride and when I tasted the water, I just noticed that wasn’t normal. Usually I don’t use any anti-chloride on my aquariums and even that I had some at home, the fishes died so fast that no product could save them…
I’m very pissed off because I simply forgot of the water’s maintenance and it was very difficult to find those fishes!!! I hope that nothing happen with the plants… wish me luck!

Another Video - 2nd day after setup

New pictures of my new layout

After planting my new layout, I was with several doubts in add the fishes so soon, but I found during a visit at one fish shop the Mosquito Rasbora as known also by Rasbora brigittae. I couldn't resist and bought a few... In order to supply the best bacteria inside of the aquarium I used ELOS AquaUno; it was the first time that I used enzymatic bacteria in my aquariums, because usually I use recycled water from my other aquariums. In this case I preferred not use the water to avoid add exceeded nutrients in so newest setup. AquaUno can be used during the setup on the bottom of subtract or inside of the filter media; and this was what I did. To avoid damage the Hemianthus Callitrichoides, I opened a few capsules of AquaUno and added inside of my Hang on filter bellow the wool. This circulated on water column for a 1h and after that, slowly I adapted the new fishes to the new water conditions.

Here they are the pictures of my new layout with some Rasbora brigittae.

Setup:

Setup date: 15 of April 2011
Aquarium: Elos custom made in optiwhite 55x35x35
Lighting system: E-Lite (Led Technology)
Filter: Hang On Filter
Temperature: 18~21º ambient temperature (no heater)
CO2 System: ELOS Set ECO with ATO-10, Bubble counter and EV2000 (Solenoid valve)

Substrate: Elos Terra Zero, ELOS Bottom Mineral and ELOS Terra Small
Fertilization: Not yet

Plants: (special thanks to http://www.aquaflora.nl/)
Hemianthus Callitrichoides and Anubias nana mini

Fishes: Rasbora brigittae

1st Day after setup

Pictures of Workshop ' Arca de Noé - Viana do Castelo

How to take pictures of our Aquarium by Danilo

Having problems to take pictures of your Aquarium and fishes? My friend Danilo wrote two articles where explains how to do it! You must read it!

How to take picture of our aquarium: photography course part I

How to take picture of our aquarium: photography course part II – The Pictures