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Sword question, plant identification, and gold ram info.
Hi all!
Well, my yeast-damaged tank is up and running after the combined forces of
all the filtration I could muster mowed through the yeast in a couple days.
:) I gave the water a barrage of tests to determine if everything was back
to normal, and everything checked out. After the smoke cleared, I noticed
that I had no more algae at all. Where before the accident, I had a small
coat of BBA (more like stubble after the SAEs got done with it) on my filter
intake tube, there is nary a spot remaining. It is perfectly white. The
moral: If you want to get rid of your algae, pump a goodly amount of
nearly-spent yeast-water into your tank. :) Not much damage was done to
the plants with all the slime and cloudiness. In fact, my radican sword,
which previously decided to give emersed growth a try out the top of my 20"
high 55 gallon tank (the taller leaves are entirely emersed, attaining a
height of over two feet) has sent out a flowering stalk, which is today
starting to scrape the lights. Is it self-fertilizing or does it need
another flower to exchange pollen with? Will the seeds grow right on the
stalk? What kind of care should I give the seeds?
On to subject two. I stopped by the LFS today, intent on beginning to
restock my tank. As luck would have it, they had just gotten a good
restock, and they had a good selection of fish. What caught my eye was
several gold rams in one of the tanks. Well, I had no information on them
save for what I had heard on list and managed to remember. That amounted to
that they are nice for planted tanks, and that they attack your hands when
they are spawning. :) I decided to hold off on purchasing any until I had
better information. I am slightly nervous about rams, because no matter
what I hear, these fish are still cichlids, and from prior experience, I
noticed cichlids beat up what they can't eat, and eat the rest. Can someone
confirm the ram's reportedly docile nature? Given that if I intended to
eventually breed these fish, I would need a male and a female, I began to
look for differences in the fish. I noticed that some were very bright and
rather bigger, and some were rather dull, and smallish. I would guess that
the large, brightly colored ones are male, correct? Anything else relevant
I should know about these fish?
And finally, The LFS owner, quite out of the blue, decided to just give me
the plant I had asked him to sell me for quite some time. It came in one of
his shipments mixed in with other plants, and was not identified, and he
wanted to try to grow it. The plant was sitting in one of his
standard-issue fish holding tanks in rather dismal lighting, and a month or
so ago I had told him that it needed more light than one ancient 18"
florescent bulb. So when I was in today, he just went to the tank, and
packaged up the plant, and gave it to me, free of charge. I was rather
surprised. :) The plant in question here appears to be some sort of
dwarf-lily, I believe. It is a very intense red, bordering on pink, with
slightly darker red mottled patches on the leaves. The stalks are about two
inches long, and the lily-shaped leaves are one to one and a half inches
long. It has no bulb, but looks somewhat like a crypt in the roots, with a
small rhizome (a half inch long) along which the leaves sprout from. Anyone
know what it is?
Thanks for any help!
Matt