68L HighTech Style Planted

Yes it could well be that new plants in new substrate and waters are still settling in and sometimes do melt and wither a bit at first and then bounce back once they become more established after a short while.

And true yes if you have bunches of plants together, it does make it more tricky to see if a plant or two are struggling amongst those.

But either way, normally takes a week or two before you’ll start seeing better plant growth. To be expected really.

Not sure if this is interesting to anyone else anyone else but was curious just how quickly these plants have grown now they are a bit more established. First image was taken Late Friday night, second one was taken just now. So in total its about 4 days of growth. It's quite a bit...

2nd picture, latest one, shows good plant growth and clearer water column.

Good going.

Plant order arrived today. Ordered from www.pro-shrimp.com and I'm really impressed. The first lot of plants I got off ebay because I thought they would probably be cheaper.

The quality was pretty bad (from several different ebay stores) and was fairly pricey.

All the plants from pro shrimp where in top condition. Also the price was basically the same as even the cheapest option on ebay. Will put a full plant list up at some point just for my own reference but this wil probably be all I add now.

At some point I might switch one of the background plants with the alternanthera rosaefolia but will wait until things are well established and growing before I start messing with it now.








Just got to sit back and wait now. Going to give it maybe a couple of weeks to grow in and then officially start a fishless cycle. I expect between the ammonia that has been the tank from the aquasoil and all the plants the cycle will go pretty quick.

Looks excellent I have to say. Real nice.

This will turn out real nice once everything has established and settled etc.

Ebay is always a dodgy place to buy ANYTHING I find, espcially for fishkeeping stuff, the number of times I've been disapointed, ripped off or items are not as decribed or even plain fakes is too much, have stopped buying from eBay to be honest.

Always recommend to buy from reputable places, pro shrimp is one place ive bought from before and have been fine, charterhouse aquatics as well, and Tropica as well as a select few LFS are my main go to places for fishkeeping stuff, worth paying that little bit extra for peace of mind and better quality things imho.

Ch4rlie said:

Looks excellent I have to say. Real nice.

This will turn out real nice once everything has established and settled etc.

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Thanks. It's starting to feel like it is all coming together now. I did want more colour in there but finding red/orange/pink plants that are small enough to to swamp the tank is difficult. Hopefully there should be enough colour variation in there though to keep it interesting looking.

Ch4rlie said:

Ebay is always a dodgy place to buy ANYTHING I find, espcially for fishkeeping stuff, the number of times I've been disapointed, ripped off or items are not as decribed or even plain fakes is too much, have stopped buying from eBay to be honest.

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Yeah, I really should have spent more time on it and checked prices elsewhere before just assuming ebay would be cheapest. I blame my partner though because she was the one nagging me to get the tank running. Also she isn't on this forum and can't see me blaming it on her

I've bought plants from eBay...some arrived as complete mush, another seller's were fine. The best ones I got were Tropica.

Bruce Leyland-Jones said:

I've bought plants from eBay...some arrived as complete mush, another seller's were fine. The best ones I got were Tropica.

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Yeah. a lot of the ones I got were pretty much DOA. The problem I had was I had ordered from a bunch of different sellers so really didn't want to waste time sorting through which plant came from where to try and get refund.

Some of the plants I got from Pro-shrimp were Tropica and yeah, they were really good quality. Compared to the plants I got off ebay all the plants from pro-shrimp where 100 times better looking. There was practically no difference in price either.

Had a brief moment of "oh no, whats wrong" yesterday when I got home and noticed some of the Crypts melting.

Then I remembered that it pretty standard for crypts that haven't been grown submerged. It's funny how little bits of knowledge like that disappear over the years if you aren't refreshing it.

Thankfully it looks like it is only a couple of the bigger leaves on two of the plants.

I also dialed my CO2 back a little from just over 1 bubble a second to just under 1 bubble a second. Doesn't seem like much of a change but will save a bit of CO2 and hopefully bring the levels down in the tank just a tiny bit.

So having a chat with my partner trying to work out what fish we are actually going to put in here. My daughter is pretty keen on getting Lampeye Tetras so been working around that.

Thanks to @Bruce Leyland-Jones Dwarf gourami photos recently I was pretty interested. The other half liked them too so that seems to be a win.

For the bottom of the tank it will most likely be some sort of cory (unless someone can think of something more interesting/compatible). I have only really gone for bronze cory's in the past as well so other suitable variant suggestions would be welcome too.

To finish out will be a group of tetras. Exact species TBC but I'm kind of partial to flame tetras and have kept and bred them a lot in the past.

Short version
X8 Lampeye Tetras
X8 Cory's (specifics tbc)
X4 Dwarf Gourami's (1 male, 3 female)
X8 Tetras (probably Flametail)

Now I haven't kept Gourami's before so if 4 in a 68l (18G) is too many I could drop it down to 3. I have been reading conflicting information on what would be best but almost everywhere said they prefer to be in groups and are quite social so thought 4 may be better?

I would prefer to just have 1 bigger group of shoaling fish but making a compromise with my partner as she prefers "different types of fish".

Four dwarf gourami would be a good combo...you might have to get your ladies on-line, as I had to.
It's a pity no-one appears to value the silver females, but, in good health, they're as splendid as any other silver fish and they do have a personality to them.

For your Corys, perhaps you could check out Pygmys?
These will shoal and school and generally spend time in all areas of the tank and not just restrict themselves to the substrate. They work together in a large group, or split into small groups, or just pair up or even explore singly. Ace wee fish.

Bruce Leyland-Jones said:

Four dwarf gourami would be a good combo...you might have to get your ladies on-line, as I had to.
It's a pity no-one appears to value the silver females, but, in good health, they're as splendid as any other silver fish and they do have a personality to them.

For your Corys, perhaps you could check out Pygmys?
These will shoal and school and generally spend time in all areas of the tank and not just restrict themselves to the substrate. They work together in a large group, or split into small groups, or just pair up or even explore singly. Ace wee fish.

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Thanks. I think the guy who sales them locally to me will either have females in stock or be able to source them for me.

Good Idea on the Pygmys, not sure why I always forget about them but yeah they would be a great fit.

So test kit arrived today.

Interestingly my tap water apparently has at least 20ppm nitrate.... happy days. It's not the end of the world, I can get water from my Mum's or sisters house during the week which I know is good. I was going to be dosing nitrate anyway so will just be a bit of juggling with water changes mixing two different waters and not adding nitrates to my dosing. Will have to sit and work out the math on it but its one of them things that once you have worked it out once you jut need to keep the ratio the same from then on. Just makes doing water changes a bit more of a hassle and means having a couple of big bottles of water sitting around taking up space.

Tank water is:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 30-40 (I haven't dosed anything with nitrate in yet so looks like something may have been happening with the ammonia leaching from the soil).
PH 7
KH 7Deg
GH 14Deg

Tank in general is doing ok. Trimmed back some of the background stem plants a little. Had a little more melt on the new plants but nothing too bad. Little bit of hair algae still kicking about but not coming back anywhere near as quick as it was.

Starting off the fishless cycle tonight. 2ml of 9.5% ammonia about to be added. Will be interesting to see how fast it processes. In the past when I have used the ADA amazonia soil and had a heavily planted tank by the time I got to this point it was pretty much cycled already. They was normally in bigger tanks with brighter lights and more plants though. Will test tomorrow and see where it is at.

Having nitrate straight from tap is handy for plants but not essential imo.

My tap is showing 30-40ppm nitrate but mixing with RO water as so this will be cut in half basically, not worried as keeping lower tech plants and will be dosing liquid ferts and root tabs anyway.

Algae sounds like it’s slowly coming to be under control, good going as I know this is not all that easy to do.

Be interesting to see first few results of your cycling process to see what comes up re ammonia and nitrates.

So did a quick water test with a test strip as I was literally leaving for work this morning. There is a reading there for Nitrite already within 12 hours so looks like the tank is at least partway into the cycle already. Will test everything properly later to see if I can figure out how far along the process we are.

Hopefully might be a nice short cycle.