Replanting Looking For Some Thoughts

Well its been a while since I have done anything with my tank, which it kind of shows.. So I went out and brought some new plants which should hopefully be here on wednesday. I have a rough idea of what I want to do, but I thought I would ask you guys if you have any other ideas. Currently the plants I have in the tank
2 x amazon swords
2 x moss balls (however I don't know how much longer they will last)
2 x patches of micro sword
1 x Anubis (which could be split if needed)
Some Ludwigia palustris
A little java moss

The incoming plants:
Dwarf Baby Tears
2 x Nesaea Red
10 x dwarf onion plants
10 x some-sort of vals (corkscrew or jungle)

My thought was to combine the amazon swords and move them in the left corner, and the Nessea Red in front of them, with a mixture of the onion plants and vals behind. Then have the Dwarf baby tears potted in the middle of the tank to allow them to spread out, leaving the microsword in the corner of the tank. Then with the remaining vals/onion plants just line them up in the back. Any one have any thoughts or ideas? Here is a pic of my current tank.

Seems like your trying to put some BIG plants into a small space. The swords you have there are big, and moving them closer together will be bad for them both, you'll reduce the light getting to the bottoms of each and they'll thin out and look rather bare underneath. If anything i'd suggest taking one out and selling it on (even doing so on TFF?). Or alternatively split them either side of the tank, it'll look a little symetrical so you could off-set one a little closer to the centre of the tank instead. Split the anubias if you can as you said and have them both toward the forground, perhaps one under each of the swords (wherever you plan to put them), or one under one and the other elsewhere if you get rid of a sword.

Be carefull with the "dwarf onion plant", onion plants are notoriously big. I had one and it grew well over 2ft in length and soon blocked out all the light to any plant in the tank. Not saying these won't be dwarf, but i've never heard of them, and information online seems vague so be warned. If you get one/them have them toward the back, prefereably the corners.

In the centre at the back is where i'd place you vallis your getting. Again with this plant it gets tall, very tall. There isnt really a small vallis as such, you jsut have to keep trimming it, and the trimmed leaves look ugly. Again, just a warning. But if you get some keep it to the rear and central, it'll spread like crazy and it'll be everywhere before you know it, if you don't want it to spread simply pinch out the runners.

As for the Nesaea Red, alls i can say is good luck! If your dosing ferts and have high lighting (upward of 3WPG) and are using CO2 (30ppm) then you should be ok with this plant. If not then don't expect to keep the red colour as its only achieved in such conditions. Any red plant indicates it needs the previously mentioned conditions and shouldnt be attempted to be grown by the faint hearted because it ends in failure more often than not. Not trying to cut you down, just warning you so you don't waste your hard earned cash.

Lastly if this were me i would skip the Nesaea Red, Onion Plant and the vallis. I would place both of your swords in the rear corners of the tank. I'd split the Anubias and have it placed on a piece of rock/stone under each Sword plant creating a blend from sword to anubias then the foreground. The foreground i would have as your Java moss, with whatever is left of your moss balls scattered wherever you want. The micro sword is the ideal plant to have growing inbetween the swords from the back coming into the foreground and mingling in somewhat. I'd also perhaps get a nice decorative tangly piece of wood to have in the middle, something like a piece of root-like redmoor wood that you can have vertically between the two swords with your "grassy" plant growing around, up and infront of.

Hope this helps, its just my suggestion.
-James

Thanks for the advice, after i posted, i started thinking about getting rid of one of the amazon swords, I will have to see when i get the plants. I had couple Nesaea Red's that had survived for a couple of months, but I ran into a rather large issue with BBA and green cloudy water, so while I tried to take of that, my co2 was turned off for 6 months, and unfortunately the Nesaea Red's didn't make it. So hopefully I wont have the same issues. Also attached is what my tank used to look like back in January (notice how small the two amazon swords are!!).

Would it be possible to trim the amazon swords back down to being small? or is that not possible at this point.

Also with the onion plants, I have had two in the past which they last for about a year or so, and then the tips of leaves start turning yellow and no new leaves form and the plant dies, any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong?

shadowhywind said:

but I ran into a rather large issue with BBA and green cloudy water, so while I tried to take of that, my co2 was turned off for 6 months

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Why would you turn the CO2 off? That would only make things worse.
BBA is commonly associated with low/unstable CO2. Green water is due to lack of nutrients.

RadaR said:

shadowhywind said:

but I ran into a rather large issue with BBA and green cloudy water, so while I tried to take of that, my co2 was turned off for 6 months

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Why would you turn the CO2 off? That would only make things worse.
BBA is commonly associated with low/unstable CO2. Green water is due to lack of nutrients.

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i turned off the co2 because I was having some problems with it not turning off, and I got some advice from the LFS to turn off the co2 till we could take care of the green water. The BBA was mostly caused by the DIY yeast-based co2, one reason why i switched over to a pressurized system. Still have no idea what caused the green water, but a 2-week blackout + some algae control liquids took care of the problems.
But at least now, everything is turned back on.

shadowhywind said:

Still have no idea what caused the green water, but a 2-week blackout + some algae control liquids took care of the problems.

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If the tank is indeed planted then "algae remedies" are not the way to go. The underlying cause should be treated. The underlying cause would be a combo of lack of nutrients and too much light. Atleast its gone now but for the future.........keep the plants happy and algae is not a problem. If you do get algae, it's a sign telling you that the plants are missing something which they need.