Ok first time blogging so here goes...

Day 1: preparation for the arrival

So excited for tomorrow starting to get impatient recieving a juwel rio 400

to allow room for the tank I have moved the Juwel rio 125 from the corner around to being flat against the wall

hoping it wont be to shabby as will be having the tanks overlapping slightly in an L shape fingers crossed pictures to follow on day 2 :)

This project is now on hold for a while as the tank I was going to use is now a fast flowing set up for Jon's White Cloud Mountain Minnows and Hillstream Loach.

I'm loving it: WCMM are much under-rated and I'm finding them to be very attractive and active fish.....I knew my procrastination on the Betta tank must have a purpose and now I know what it is

Well I managed to kill my first lot of daphnia. I'm not sure how, but they were very sluggish on arrival and though they rallied, I'd lost them within 10 days. I think I overfed them.

I'm starting again with a slightly different approach; reusing the container I received with the "starter kit", but this time I've put sand in the bottom, added a mini sponge filter and intend to put some MTS in there as well as the daphnia. To avoid the possibility of a problem with the daphnia supplied last time (seller has had some poor feedback lately), I'm going to buy a bag of live daphnia from an LFS and use them to start the culture. At least there's less chance of them getting too cold or otherwise being damaged in the post.

The microworms, however, have taken off well and I've been harvesting small amounts for a few days. I'm using a small paint brush to wipe around the sides of the container where the worms congregate and then rinsing them off into the Ember Tetra tank. The Embers are very keen on them!

My daphnia culture kit arrived today. I was worried the daphnia may not have survived as it had been posted 5 days ago and it's been so cold, but fortunately they were alive, though somewhat sluggish on arrival. After they'd been in their permanent set up for a few hours they were much more lively, which is encouraging.

I received a plastic container, a bag of live daphnia and some food pellets. I filled the container about half-way with a mixture of fresh dechlorinated tap water and water taken from one of my tanks. I acclimatised the daphnia just as I would fish by floating the bag and introducing some of the tank water every ten minutes for half an hour and then tipped the daphnia into the tank. I added a food pellet and piece of Java moss from one of my tanks so now I need to wait and see if they reproduce.

Here's a photo of the daphnia in their container:



I checked on the microworms too, and though I can't tell for sure if they're even alive, I think they are as there are areas on the surface that look kind of glossy. It should take about two weeks to see a big increase in numbers, but at least they don't smell at the moment!

Here's a photo of the microworm culture. You can see the mashed potato around the edges, but the main focus at the moment is the area with oatmeal as that's the medium they arrived in:



I'm housing the cultures in the cupboard under my Roma 90, and have a clip-on light in there to provide illumination for the daphnia. I'll be putting the shelf back in so I can run my brine shrimp hatchery in there too.

Well I haven't made any progress with the tank yet except in my head where I now have a good idea of how I want this to look, but my microworm starter culture arrived in the post today.

I'm hoping to successfully culture these as food for any fry the Bettas may produce, as well as for fry from other breeding projects. They'll make a good addition to the Ember Tetras diet and help condition them for breeding too.

I decided to use instant mashed potato as my culture medium as from reading around this seems to be least likely to develop very unpleasant odours. I used an empty butter container with about half an inch of instant mash made up to a stiff consistency; moist, but not at all runny and mixed in a little dried yeast. The culture was spread evenly over the surface and then the lid put on, with a good number of small air holes so now I'll just need to wait and see if the worms start to reproduce.

I'm going to be starting work on a new divided tank set up for a pair of Betta splendens very soon so will be documenting progress here for anyone interested.

I have a Juwel Rekord 700 which I will be dividing in the middle to make two 35 litre compartments and keeping a male on one side and female on the other. I hope to get cracking soon on this and will be documenting the whole thing from dividing and setting up the tank, through decor, planting and cycling to installing the fish.

I'll be concurrently starting some new live-food cultures as I'm hoping to breed the Betta pair at some point too along with one or two other breeding projects so will report progress on that as well.

I've finally got around to rescaping my main tank. It was a bit of a jungle style previously, so thought I'd attempt something with more hardscape. I decided to use CO2 injection and opted for fluval plant stratum and mini landscape rock. The lights were upgraded from the original twin T8s to Twin 54w T5s with reflectors.

After giving the tank a thorugh clean out using bicard of soda, I removed the 3D background. I've chisen not to replace this this time. I then used carboard to seperate two islands of substrate divded by a sand path:



I then placed the rockwork. The wood is sumatran bogwood:



I did a bit of minor tweaking of the rockwork and planted up:



Plants include
Bacopa monneri
Blyxa japonica
Cryptocorne parva
Cryptocorne wendtii 'green'
Cryptocorne wendtii 'tropica'
Hemianthus callichthoides
Hemianthus micranthemoides
Mayaca fluviatilis
Pogostemon helferi
Ludwidgia repens
Hygrophilia polysperma
Rotala rotundiflora

Until the plants grow in the lights are on for 6 hours. I'll extend this at a later date.

Just a quick update: babies are doing well a week after hatching. They're still extremely small and very hard to spot, but are growing and hopefully thriving.

Having given the peat over two days in water I haven't found any more fry, but have discovered a number of fungussed eggs which were presumably not fertile. Today I've disposed of the peat and in the other side of the container have at least three fry. There may be as many as five, but I can't be sure. I thought I counted five as I transferred them with the turkey baster, but can only spot three now. Maybe I've lost a couple, or maybe I missed a couple of times when collecting them and one was counted more than once

They are very hard to see, all approximately this size - and I have to look through my camera with the macro lens attached to see them at all, so today's partial water change was very nerve-wracking

The are still feeding on Liquifry and infusoria at the moment, but I have brine shrimp eggs percolating in the hatchery so expect to start feeding bbs tomorrow.

Here's are a pic where you can see they are already looking like tiny fish. The shot shows one of the fry next to a single strand of Java Moss, which gives some idea of just how tiny they are

Today is officially wetting day based on the date these eggs were harvested. I've finally got round to wetting the eggs a little later in the day than planned due to a blocked sink

I'm using a double well food storage container for the initial stages. This is new and unused and has been sterilised with boiling water. I've mixed some RO with Seachem Replenish, Alkaline Buffer
and Acid Buffer to give a gH of 5 and pH of 6.6. The water has been warmed to 25C and an inch or so poured into the right-hand side of the double container along with a few strands of Java Moss.
When the babies have hatched and are swimming I'll move them into this side of the box and start feeding them.







I've crumbled the peat into the left hand compartment and poured about an inch of water over it.



The container is sitting on a heating pad intended for keeping demi-johns warm when wine-making. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see if any of the eggs hatch.
That could happen in anything between two hours and two days, so it may be quite a while before I update again.
FX!

Update 11.30 pm

Just had a look and they are beginning to hatch; I've counted three so far. They're very tiny and not yet free-swimming; at most 2mm long: