Horrifying.
Let me know if you want to see more of my shrimp.
I just noticed we had a pet comm so I had to post but also I don't have a more interesting pet to share, I don't have the space for a dog/cat/birb. So you're stuck with my tiny shrimp.
A place to see all of our furred, feathered and scaled comrades!
Rules:
1: Post most have a picture/gif/vid
2: Only pictures of your pet (no random cute animals pictures found elsewhere)
3: Pictures of arachnids and insects should be marked NSFW
4: Animals are friends not food. No posting of animals that are intended for slaughter.
I'm trying to set up a 7 gallon blackwater for a beta and some ghost shrimp!
That is a perfect size for a blackwater tank! Prepping blackwater for water changes in bulk is a pain so nano tanks save you a lot of work. I just throw a few alder cones in a gallon jug of RO water overnight with an air stone and it is good to go.
The betta will love the blackwater, though. I've also got a betta in my setup and the tannins really do calm them down. Mine is a male so I was really just hoping he'd tolerate the other fish, but I never expected to see him get along with the gourami so well. They even shoal together sometimes.
What are your tap water parameters? I've got pretty high pH and kH, so I'm wondering if tapwater + botanicals will be enough to keep pH manageable. I don't think I'm going to go for a full on sub 6 pH blackwater at first, but I want to reduce my pH at least
I actually collect rainwater for that tank and mix it with some RO from the store. I also add just a dash of tap to put a tiny bit of mineral content back into the water column. To be 100% honest, though, I have no idea what my pH is - I mostly judge by the health of the flora and fauna. I've got visible fungal colonies starting to replace the nitrifying bacteria as the pH drops so I think I'm on the right track?
One thing that I think made the process a lot easier was the way I setup the tank. I let plants dissolve in a bucket of rainwater with some small snails and rotifers to speed things up. Once I have a thick layer of mulm, I go ahead and use that as the bottom layer of my substrate.
The idea there is that the decaying organics will provide a semi-permanent layer of humic acid to serve as a buffer. I mostly came up with this process through trial and error, but I was inspired by Alex from The Secret History Living In Your Aquarium on YouTube. He has a whole series on blackwater that I would highly recommend. He lacks the polish of the bigger fish streamers but his content is super easy to listen to in the background and extremely well researched.
Hey thanks for the insight! I'll check out that channel as well. I think I'm gonna start off by cutting my tap water with purchased distilled water, see if i can't knock off some of the hardness without too much fuss and then just keeping an eye on the stability of tank parameters while it cycles and seasons with some plants