January 10, 2010
Nanocube in 2010
It's been quite some time since I've updated this particular blog. Almost 3 years. I guess having our first baby will do that to one's time and priorities. ;-p Since my last post, I'm sad to say that my poor Nanocube and its denizens have suffered from neglect. It wasn't until this past Friday that I finally got around to making some stock changes and cleaning up and redecorating the cube.
For the past few months, the sole remaining hearty souls remaining in the Nanocube were all bottom dwellers: 4 yoyo loaches, 2 true Siamese algae eaters, 3 upside-down catfish, and a pleco. How they survived on the sporadic food that I'd drop in for them I'll never know. Particularly the upside-down catfish as I only caught glimpses of them every now and then since they never came out when the lights were on. I didn't even know all 3 had survived since they were first introduced to the tank. But somehow they flourished. Particularly the loaches and the upside-down catfish cause they were pretty darn large. But, I finally decided to begin my reconstruction plan and unfortunately they no longer included them.
So I fished the 4 loaches and 3 upside-down catfish out of the cube and traded them in for some new stock. Now I've had a pretty annoying tiny snail problem for a long time, mainly infesting the porous filter material in the back of the cube. Not really too much of a big deal but still annoying. But I hadn't realized the extent that the loaches were eradicating these snails from the cube itself until I had lifted out all the decorative pieces in the tank and found a mass grave of tiny conical snail shells littering practically the entire substrate. Was quite impressive. Now that the loaches are gone, I'm using some anti-snail drops to hopefully deal with the remaining live ones (if any) in the filter material.
As for the new stock, I picked up 6 each of my old-time favs, the furcata rainbow and panda cory along with 3 otos. The rainbows and otos seem rather young so hopefully they'll have room to grow in the cube. Still on the lookout for some albino koi swordtails but haven't seen any in the stores recently. Wouldn't mind picking up a paired set of German blue rams either but it's tough finding a matched pair. Will also probably try to add some more plant-life to the tank which is currently dominated by the massive clump of java fern that's grown onto the driftwood as you can see in the photo above.
But, I'm in no rush so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully I can get this cube back in decent shape again within the year. ;-p
Posted by ronin at 2:13 AM | Comments (0)