Planted Fluval Roma 125

Bonjour, hola and guten tag!

I started fishkeeping again about a year ago after a decade-long hiatus and discovered and fell in love with aquascaping. I currently have just a 20 litre tank running so i'm super excited for this project.

I'd like to share with you my journey in creating a densely planted 125 litre tropical aquarium. I've had this tank for a few months now and have been desperate to get it up and running. The hardscape has gone through many, many, many iterations over the months but now I've finally settled on a design I'm happy with.

I'm trying the dry start method with a photoperiod of 10 hours. I'm using a Fluval Pro 2.0 Fresh & Plant LED (2,350 lumens) and the stock 10 watt LED (I can't find any info on the brightness of the light - help?!). I've used around 20 litres of ADA Malaya with a layer of ADA Power Sand at the bottom. I'm misting with tap water.

The plants pictured here are: Micranthemum monte carlo; Eleocharis acicularis 'mini'; Alternanthera reineckii 'mini'; Hydrocotyle tripartita 'Japan'; Hygrophila pinnatifida; Microsorum pteropus 'windelov' and Rotala 'Vietnam H'ra'.

I also have some flame moss, java moss and weeping moss to add as soon as I can find some yoghurt with Lactobacillus acidophilus. I have some anubias nana bonsai to add as well once the tank is flooded.

This picture was taken on the 5th so it's been almost a week; I've already seen loads of growth out of the Rotala (with the tips going orange) and the monte carlo seems firmly rooted in place. I look forward to showing you the progress!

Hi and welcome to the forum

Out of curiosity, why are you adding yoghurt to the aquarium?
Most yoghurt has Lactobacilis bulgaricus not acidophilus. If you want acidophilus get some "Inner Health" probiotics from a chemist or health food shop and put a few capsules into some yoghurt.

Colin_T said:

Hi and welcome to the forum

Out of curiosity, why are you adding yoghurt to the aquarium?
Most yoghurt has Lactobacilis bulgaricus not acidophilus. If you want acidophilus get some "Inner Health" probiotics from a chemist or health food shop and put a few capsules into some yoghurt.

Click to expand...

Thank you!

From what I understand it's anti-fungal and the yoghurt provides a good growing medium. I've had limited success gluing moss onto hardscape and it attaching well on its own, but that was in a low-tech tank.

Honey has anti-fungal properties but yoghurt doesn't. However, the bacteria in yoghurt does eat yeast, but the bacteria is anaerobic and dies when exposed to oxygen. So I don't think it would be a good growing medium in an aquarium. But if you know of any literature about it, I would be interested to read it. It sounds rather interesting

I meant the lactobacillus acidophilus. I'm following this guide: https://bolbiaquarium.blogspot.com/2016/02/attaching-moss-to-hardscape-yoghurt.html?m=1

The method seems to be mostly used with fissidens but I think it should work with all mosses.

Im concerned about the wood though; I've heard it's difficult for anything to attach to spiderwood (I'm guessing because it's quite smooth and hard).

That's interesting. I think the yoghurt is being used as a glue to hold the moss onto the objects for the first few weeks so it can gain a foothold. I can't see it doing much else tho.

Java Moss will attach to anything if it's given enough time. I use to tie it to objects with string, dental floss or fishing line, and sometimes even use a rubber band. After a month the moss will have attached and you can remove the string. We even had it growing on the side of plastic and fibreglass ponds.

That's good to hear! What about other types of moss? The flame moss is going on the steel mesh in the bottom right of the tank, around the white sand (I'm changing the sand to match the bottom left, it's just leftover from a different hardscape I was trying). I don't think I'll have any problems with that attaching, but I'm not so sure about the weeping moss on the spiderwood.

no idea about other mosses because we only get Java Moss here. But most mosses are the same basic plant so they should attach without too many issues.