Journal Fishstery's Garden/Nature style hybrid

[Fishstery]

Day 10 since planting:
I didnt have time to update yesterday, but it was the first day I couldn't monitor the tank since I had work, and I was pretty nervous, even though I felt confident with my co2 settings on Sunday, I was itching to get home and check on the fish. I think a pH controller may be a priority in the future due to the price of the Cenepa. Thankfully everyone looked good when I got home, the lights shut off 2 hours before but I clicked them on briefly just to take head count, check over the plants, and see the drop checker color.

I'm awaiting a delivery of more Hastatus cories which will be going in the breeding project tank for now, and my blood orange shrimp which are going in the display. I'm very excited to get the shrimp in there. I don't want to jinx myself, but I've made a point to get my hands in the tank for a few minutes every day to remove any melted or unhealthy leaves and keep an eye on stem and root growth, and I think it's paying off. I've seen very minimal hair algae but only on the glass and old leaves. The driftwood is starting to get this interesting spirulina-color algae on it, and I think the shrimp will happily clean it off for me.

In the absence of RO, dealing with the tank evaporation has been tricky. I did a 100% WC on Friday before adding the fish and I've already had to lower my lily pipes twice. My new glass pieces should arrive tomorrow to at least get the majority of the tank loosely covered, but I may need to do two 10%-20% water changes weekly instead of one 50%, at least until I get my RODI system set up.

Later tonight I'm going to try and get some good pictures of the plant growth posted here for comparison later on, and get a standalone post done on the Week Aqua T90 Pros, so keep an eye out for that!

 

[Koan]

I think a pH controller may be a priority in the future due to the price of the Cenepa.

The Yugang CO2 reactor was engineered specifically, by our member @Yugang, to give you the option to set a maximum level of CO2 injection in its design that physically cannot be exceeded by your system

It's called "overflow mode", have a look

Article 'Yugang CO2 Reactor - A Guide'

Contents: Benefits of Yugang reactor Calculate the reactor dimensions Overflow mode, regulator mode, pH/CO2 controller Overflow mode, step by step instruction Regulator mode, pH/CO2 controller mode, step by...

• Yugang
• Sep 15, 2025
• 20 min read
• Reaction score: 11
• Comments: 11
• Category: CO2 in the Planted Aquarium

Post in thread 'New Yugang Testing'

Dec 3, 2025

I realize that it might be helpful to explain how to actually dial in a CO2 setup!

First, you have to keep as many variables constant as possible. If you are constantly changing these, it makes it VERY hard to dial in CO2 injection:

Things that change CO2 levels in the water are:

• Injection rate (bubbles per second for bubble counters, or SCCM if using flowmeter. Also rotatable/adjustable horizontal reactors)
• Temperature (warmer = less CO2, colder = more CO2)
• Surface agitation (how near your filter/lily pipe is towards the surface of the water)
• Surface scum (more...

• Naturescapes_Rocco

• 
• 

 

[Fishstery]

I've had a lot going on the past week between work and my family, so I haven't been able to keep up with my updates as much as I'd like. I do have a BIG one though! I'll save the exciting part for last.

Not too much to report plant wise, algae has started to kick up a bit due to the light levels. Luckily it's just isolated to the front glass and the driftwood, and some brown diatoms on the substrate and hair grass. I was really excited to get my shrimp in there, but UPS totally dropped the ball despite paying for next day. They are stuck until Monday, fingers crossed they arrive unharmed.

The Cabomba and Bacopa Colorata are the best looking plants in the tank, I'm really happy with my selection there. The plants are really starting to throw out some aerial roots, so tonight looks like a propagate and replant night.

However, my Rotala Floridia is growing very slowly, and the new growth just isn't coloring up very well. I moved it out into a higher PAR area, but I'm wondering if it may be time to start adding some macros. The Limnophila Belem is alive, but also growing very slowly and not coloring up at all. The Persicaria started growing tiny new leaves, but now they are looking sad and it hasn't taken off like I'd hoped. I'm considering replacing both of those, perhaps with some Ludwigia Super Red and some kind of orange/yellow plant? Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm hoping @Dennis Wong might chime in, I'm wondering if I should stay on course with APT 1 since I've had minimal algae issues and add some Jazz Caps under the Ramisior, Bacopa, and Cabomba, or if I should move to APT 3.

Now the exciting part, I was cleaning my house earlier today and when I walked by the tank, I noticed my Pencilfish were showing some breeding behaviors! The males have been sparring like crazy, but I didn't expect them to breed. I was going to use my new Hannah co2 test to make sure my co2 levels were okay, but I think I'll take breeding behavior as a sign to leave it alone

 

[Fishstery]

Update without pictures (sorry!):
It's been 18 days since planting and things have gone well enough, but naturally I have run into some issues. My S. Repends seems to have taken on that weird brown spot fungus/disease, and it took out some of my AR mini that was near by. The Repends on the opposite side of the tank remain unaffected, but I honestly don't want to deal with it spreading to my more important stems, so I'm going to be removing it tonight and replacing it with Lobelia Cardinalis 'Mini'. I much prefer the sharp arrow-like leaves of the Repends over the round leaves of Lobelia, but with similar growth patterns it should be a fine midground replacement for my scape.

I also decided to replace the Belem and Persicaria with a street of Ludwigia 'Super Red' and Gold Nesaea. I got some Rotala BR SG on the way to bulk up my current street, and adding a small patch of Rotala Mexicana to counterbalance the reds some more. I also decided to try and grow some Cuphea Anagalloidea behind my Ramisior Florida since it seems to be faster and easier to grow with similar leaf shape and complimenting colors.

As far as livestock goes, I finally got my Blood Orange shrimp in after a massive delay from UPS. Unfortunately that delay means I can't monitor them for the day with the co2, but fingers crossed all is well when I get home. My Pencilfish have been thriving in the tank, and my Hastatus cories are finally settling in their breeding tank and one of my males has starting trying to show off to the females so fingers crossed I can get them to breed themselves into a larger group!

I've had a pretty decent breakout of green hair algae and diatoms but luckily it's still localized to the glass and driftwood only. The amount of shrimp poop I saw on the wood this morning is a good sign my shrimp are happy to eat all of it up over the next few days, and hopefully adding more plant mass will also help. I also ran out of Phosphorous, and my Phosphate is bottomed out which is for sure contributing to the issue. I had some powder ordered but of course with my luck the package was lost in transit so I'm thinking about adding the Jazz caps now while I wait for a replacement. Nitrate is 10-20 ppm due to the fish so I think i can stay the course with APT 1 and Phosphate supplementation for now.

I'll post some pictures before the weekend with the new plant layout!

 

[Fishstery]

Update: Day 20
Well I have some positives and not-so-positive updates. Unfortunately Amazon continued to fumble around with my Phosphorous fertilizer, and despite me over feeding my fish a bit to compensate, the tank spent a week bottomed out of Phosphate which caused a moderate GSA and Hair Algae bloom. The GSA spread a good bit on the driftwood, and the hair/thread algae started to migrate to the plants. Thankfully the new addition of the shrimp has helped keep it from getting worse, and I finally got some Phosphorous so I will be maintaining 1ppm and continuing with APT 1 to see if that helps. My plants started to suffer from the lack of Phosphate, the colors started dulling and the Ramisior is more than unhappy. If things don't improve after 2 weeks, I'm going to consider adding Jazz caps and possibly switching over to APT 3. Water column is still testing 10ppm of Nitrate.

I also must have not fully secured one of the clasps on my canister filter after Sundays water change which went unnoticed until last night's water change. Thank God for my motivation because I almost was too lazy to do it last night. It was a very slow drip but after 3 days, it managed to soak the bottom corner of my custom white oak stand and messed up some of the stain. It also made it's way down to a small patch of carpet. Unfortunately the stand is solid all the way down with no legs, so I'm completely unable to get to the carpet underneath the stand. I was up until 2am last night soaking up the worst of it with towels, then using a hair dryer to evaporate most of it. I set up a mini stroller fan I had from when my kiddo was a baby, and will run it pointed down at that corner for a few days and hope enough air gets underneath the stand to not cause any issues.

The good news? I finally got my buce import in....and good lord. Expect more (and better) pictures. I'll be trying to farm these out for sale later.

Elephant Neo 2015



King Devil




I also have some Helena 2013 and Pink Martini with more rare species coming in a few weeks!

 

[Kwyet]

Thank goodness you found the leak before it was worse! This is why all of my canister filters sit in plastic tubs with leak sensors.

 

[Fishstery]

Thank goodness you found the leak before it was worse! This is why all of my canister filters sit in plastic tubs with leak sensors.

I didn't know there were leak sensors! I'll have to try and find some on Amazon.

 

[Naturescapes_Rocco]

Here's the ones I use. 5 for ~$50. Loud as a fire alarm, have worked for years.
I've been grateful for them saving my A$$ way too many times to count!

They also have wifi-enabled ones so you can get a notification on your phone when a leak happens, but I've never needed that when these go off anyway.

 

[Fishstery]

Here's the ones I use. 5 for ~$50. Loud as a fire alarm, have worked for years.
I've been grateful for them saving my A$$ way too many times to count!

They also have wifi-enabled ones so you can get a notification on your phone when a leak happens, but I've never needed that when these go off anyway.

Thank you! Got them ordered.

 

[GreggZ]

Thank goodness you found the leak before it was worse! This is why all of my canister filters sit in plastic tubs with leak sensors.

I've kept my filters in plastic containers for many, many years.

Has saved me numerous times. Wouldn't be without them.

And the leak sensor adds another layer of protection.

Let's face it, if you've been doing this long enough you are going to a few dumb things over the years, so try to minimize any damage.

 

[Fishstery]

I've kept my filters in plastic containers for many, many years.

Has saved me numerous times. Wouldn't be without them.

And the leak sensor adds another layer of protection.

Let's face it, if you've been doing this long enough you are going to a few dumb things over the years, so try to minimize any damage.

I have my smaller canister on my nano in a Tupperware container, I may have to use a baking sheet for this one though. I got the Oase Biomaster 600 which is an absolute tank, and it's almost too tall for the cabinet. I have to pull it out just to pull the pre filter out.

 

[JayP]

The good news? I finally got my buce import in....and good lord. Expect more (and better) pictures. I'll be trying to farm these out for sale later.

That Buce does look great!

 

[Fishstery]

That Buce does look great!

The metallic oil-spill coloring on the King Devil is truly insane. I haven't seen this Intensity on another species in person before. I'm trying to leave them alone since USPS delayed them in transit for almost a week, so there was a lot of heartbreaking melt that needed pinched off, but it's hard to resist picking them up and watching the iridescence of the leaves shift under the lights.

Eventually I am going to tear down my 12 gallon long river scape to replace it with my UNS 45u and turn it into a rare buce farm tank. I couldn't help it and ordered a few more rhizomes of the King Devil and Elephant Neo. I have 3 Rhizomes of Violet Blossom with that as well, it was supposed to come in this one but my guy said it came in looking rough so we are going to wait for the next import in hopes for a better batch. Unfortunately it takes weeks if not months for these to be sourced and then imported, it's a game of patience.

I breed and sell Neugerus Kaiseri Newts, which pretty much pays for my aquascaping endeavors, and I've found a lot of joy in finding a way to make it financially self-sustaining. Farming and selling hard to get Buce is going to be my next attempt at using my hobby for passive income, albeit far less prolific than my newts. I could probably propagate and farm these much faster in an emersed setup, but I don't want to lose the leaf coloring and think other hobbyists would prefer to buy them already grown submerged, so I suspect this being a lengthy initial time investment. I was originally going to drop them in the river tank since it's very mature and snail and algae free, but since the shipping delay beat the heck out of the buce I figured it would have an easier time recovering in a higher energy setup with much higher co2 saturation and better lighting. I'm using the planter cups to keep them up and off the substrate since I'm having a bit of the new setup algae pains currently, with the exception of that one Elephant Neo Rhizome which is going to be a permanent resident in the tank. The urge to keep these all in this tank as part of the scape permanently is really high though. I may end up ditching the farm idea and dropping them down as midground accents once the tank outgrows the algae phase and stabilizes fully...

 

[MrJG]

Those buce sp. look amazing! I’d have a hard time not using them too.

 

[Fishstery]

Quick Picture Update:
Some photos to show off that King Devil iridescence



Here's the rest of what I currently have

Quick full tank shot as of today:
My Ramisior looking scrappy and sad, but the new growth is looking nice although small

The best lookers right now are the Cabomba (not pictured because they closed up for the night), my salzmannii, and luwdigia ovalis 'pink' which I have not kept before but have been incredibly pleased with
And my new shrimp with friends!

 

[gnatster]

That Buce has quite the coloration. I'm starting to get colletoritis. Must restrain myself.

I breed and sell Neugerus Kaiseri Newts

Those are very interesting-looking. Can you please recommend a resource for more info on their requirements?

 

[Fishstery]

That Buce has quite the coloration. I'm starting to get colletoritis. Must restrain myself.


Those are very interesting-looking. Can you please recommend a resource for more info on their requirements?

They're honestly incredibly hardy and easy despite their price and rarity. I keep mine at room temperature which fluctuates from 64F-72F, they can tolerate slightly higher temperatures than some other aquatic newts but I wouldn't reccomend exceeding 74F for extended periods of time. They can be kept in a Paludarium that is 25% land 75% water like I do, or keep them fully aquatic year round as long as you provide breaks in the water via driftwood or platforms. Mine choose to stay almost fully aquatic, rarely do I see them climb up to the waterfall or terrestrial portion. They do not eat their larvae either, so very easy to rear them in the parent tank if it is large enough. A 20L is sufficient for a group of 3. They prefer each others company and there is never any fighting, even during breeding season. They always huddle together or sit on top of each other. I adore them! I feed mine strictly live blackworm for best coloration, it's perfectly fine and actually the best food for them. I feed them chopped blackworm from a few weeks old onward. They take about 3-4 years old to reach sexual maturity, and live upwards of 20 years in captivity. They are not finnicky of water parameters as long as they are stable and not too hot. They are very bold once mature and settled in but mostly nocturnal, the juveniles spend more time out during the day but the adults don't come out until lights are off and the room is quiet. Cheeky little things
Here's my adults and last year's holdback. They lose the orange and the white spots spread as they mature


I do nothing but keep them fat and happy and their water clean. By far the easiest animals I keep. Mine came from a well known hobbyist in the Herpetology community, who kept the line clean bred from one of the last legal imports from Iran in 2010-11. I clean breed my line to keep it pure, they were critically endangered when I bought mine in 2019 but they have since been moved down thanks to conservation efforts from the Iranian government. They aren't nearly as rare as they used to be, but my line is hardy thanks to the clean breeding from legal zoo stock.

 

[Kwyet]

So cute!

 

[Fishstery]

Day 23:
Since recieving my Phosphorous, I'm back to daily dosing 1ppm, which is near bottomed out the next day. I'm unsure if my soil is still sucking it down or not. Nitrate is still consistent at 10ppm, so for now I'm just daily dosing 5ml of APT 1 and 40ml of liquid Phosphorous to maintain that 10:1 ratio. If I start to see nitrate dip off, I'll switch to APT 3 daily. The plants have started to recover from a week with no Phosphate, but the vivid green algae and hair algae is still there. The hair algae has spread to some healthy leaves now, but luckily it stays short in length, I'm unsure what kind it is. I considered using some APT Fix, but for now I'll just leave it. Surprisingly the Pencilfish have been nibbling it off the driftwood. I wanted to bump the light intensity up to 60% to get PAR a bit higher (160umols) to help bring out more color in my Bacopa and Cabomba, but since I'm dealing with a plateau with the hair/thread algae, I figure it's best to just leave well enough alone for now.

I decided to add a few more plant groups as well, the new additions being Liminophila Aromatica 'Mini' to the left, and Ludwigia 'Super Red' and Rotala 'Mexicana' to the right, Cuphea behind the Ramosior, Rotala 'Bonsai' next to the Ovalis, well as some Lobelia to the foreground. At this point I'm about done adding plants, although am considering another low growing stem like Rotala Mexicana 'Goias' or Hygrophila 'Chai' to the left of the Aromatica.

The plants are all doing very well now, color is good, growth forms good, and speed is moderate. The hairgrass carpet is taking its good ol time though, there's runners being sent out but I think I will trim some down at the next water change to try and trigger more runners. The only one struggling still is my Ramisior, with one plant still holding on. The lower growth looks awful, while the very top has some nicely colored new leaves:

I want to order some more, if anyone knows where I can get some established stems?

Also, the plants are finally pearling since supplementing Phosphorous again:


Here is the updated tank shot with new plants:


I'm not sure I'm 100% pleased with the layout, does anyone have an opinion on it? Also, any help with the Ramosior and algae would be much appreciated!

 

[CincyScaper]

I want to order some more, if anyone knows where I can get some established stems?

I'm not sure I'm 100% pleased with the layout, does anyone have an opinion on it? Also, any help with the Ramosior and algae would be much appreciated!

I think the layout looks great, it is quite unique and I don’t think I have seen an island scape like this before. My thought would be to let it grow out and see.

Not sure what your GH is, but Dennis reported it to need higher GH. If these are Rotala ramisor florida, you can get some great stems from @Burr740 .

From the hair algae perspective, I think several people have different opinions but probably would choose a strategy and stick to it. Personally I feel lowered light intensity and duration helps, my Rotala Florida seems to be doing ok with a PAR of 50. I would check parameters like ammonia and ensure you are keeping up with water changes.