#55g

Havoc meets Malachite!

hi fishblr its been a while. poncho passed away. im still heartbroken. here’s pingu, an adorable lil tricolor. also i need help

i screwed up instructions while i was on vacation so these guys ended up being seriously over fed. its been more than a month and the cycle still wont hold. nitrates are up though so idk why ammonia/nitrite wont go down.

ive put a lot of tetra safestart+ in as a last ditch effort and read online that you should leave the tank alone a couple weeks, no prime, while it cycles w tss+. i hate not detoxifying the ammonia and nitrite while its cycling, and not doing wc.

Oh my god??? Thats not an adequate stand for 55 gallons of water???? How did your tank not break????????

I cleaned the 55g out and rearranged things a lot. It's only got a couple of snails and a bristlenose pleco left in it currently, but I'm going to be bringing in the pond plants, rosies, and whatever ramshorn snails I can rescue before winter. I've already found a few blue-shell ramshorns, which I was ecstatic about- I only had one left when I moved them into the pond, the reds had taken over in the 30g. Hoping the blues will continue to breed well in the 55g, hoping I find a bunch more.

For reference, I bought a different, large anubias (I believe coffeefolia, whereas I'm pretty sure this one is barteri) at this same shop back in early September last year, though much smaller and in good shape, and it cost me $30. Here it is from the day I brought it home

Ever since, I'd been keeping an eye out for another big one, to put into the 55g. This one, the huge, sad one I had just found, was bound to be EXPENSIVE. Like, if it had been well-maintained, it was probably a $75-100 plant (at least from this store). It was hidden in some others plants and not even labeled, so I asked the guy that was helping me how much. He didn't know, but at that exact moment, the owner happened to be walking past, and he had his phone out and was just gawping at his little grandchild. He was so excited, in fact, that he showed this kid to me and I made adoring babbly noises and congratulated him, and as soon as my helper was able, he asked how much the guy wanted to sell the anubias for. The owner reached into the tank, turned it around a few times, and said you know, give it to her for $35 if she wants it, it could be a nice plant, but it's not currently.

And he walked away and I said I'd take it, and my helper "we caught him in an extremely good mood, we have some of these in the back we're getting ready to put out, they're $40 and not even half this size." It barely even fit in the biggest bag they had lol This thing was so massive that there was even an entire accidental frog in it that no one noticed.

So, I took it home. I cleaned it up, split the rhizome into 3 portions each 6-8 inches long, and plopped them into the 55g where they would get water flow. I've been checking them ever since, hoping for signs of recovery, but my hopes were not incredibly high for the two rhizomes with no leaves left, as I have had other plants give up at that stage.

But today, when I was checking the tanks over and re-distributing plants, I noticed this!!! All three of the rhizomes are starting to bud new leaves!! It will still take these plants a long time to fully recover and look healthy, but they're working on it and I'm so happy for them!! I'm not crying over my plants but I'm a little crying over my plants.