New Lighting!

Hello Everyone!

I got a new NICREW light for Christmas to replace my old crappy fluorescent one. It is the normal SkyLED, the 30-36". My plants much appreciate it and were pearling like crazy. Also for some reason my Amano shrimp actually came out from hiding for once. Dunno why a new light did that but it was awesome.

And I finally have a way to take good pictures so I thought I would post a picture now and one in a month or 2 and see the difference in the tank, mainly to see plant growth.

Also I know that a few leaves on the Amazon sword aren't doing so great. I have now done work on it and removed the browning and super algae covered leaves.

The shrimp might be coming out now due to different wavelengths of light coming from the new light unit.

You should turn the flower pots so the opening faces the front glass so it's easier to see inside them.

You need some more plants. Some Ambulia and narrow or twisted Vallis would look good along the back. And a Water Sprite plant on the surface would give the Betta and any baby guppies somewhere to hide.

There is frogbit in the tank already. It is still new and wasn't doing so great with the old light but it has now already started to grow roots with the new light.

That is very interesting about the shrimp.

Do you actually mean I "need" more plants or are you saying that it would just look better? If its the second one then I want to see how it looks after I get all the current plants grown and thriving before looking into what more I need in the aquarium.

Thanks for the suggestions though!

The tank appears to have 1 sword plant in the middle and some small clumps of another plant around it. I am not sure what the small plants are but if you don't have enough plants, you will probably get algae growing on the glass. If you add some taller plants along the back, they will use some of the light and reduce the chance of algae growing.

If you get 1 or 2 Ambulia and 1 or 2 narrow Vallis plant, they will both grow quickly under the right conditions and you could have a wall of them in a few months. The Vallis spreads by runners and the Ambulia can be propogated by cuttings or laying the main plant on the gravel and holding it down with small weights. The plant will then send up new stems and give you a wall of plants that can be cut into single plants after they have grown.

The small plants are dwarf hairgrass, and I know what you are going to say about it lol. If I could direct your attention to page 3 of this thread: https://www.fishforums.net/threads/...suddenly-and-i-need-to-know-why.466706/page-3

When it grows it will create a really nice carpet of grass and should help use up the light.

My impression was that swords grow quite big. I thought once it grew fully then it would be essentially a big bush in the middle the fish could swim in and then the outer parameter could be a more open swimming space. At least in my head it looks super cool and plenty full of plant material. Especially with the frogbit roots hanging down in the water, and then as previously mentioned the carpet of DH.

It depends on what species of sword plant you have. Some grow big and others stay small. They aren't fast growing plants either and most take 6-12 months or more to get full size. If they get lots of nutrients and light they grow faster.

Hmm I don't really remember the exact species. Maybe I can find it somewhere.