Look at my aquascape

Just a quick question, I know nothing about plants - how do you gravel clean when you have a carpet of plants on the bottom?

Simple answer: You don't.

Carpet plants need a lot of nutrients. Fish are actually not very efficient at digesting nutrients from their food, even less efficient than we are. Thus, a lot of nutrients are in fish waste for plants, and it is an integral part of the planted tank's fertilization process. Thus, you don't gravel vac in areas of carpet, and let the plants absorb the nutrients. However, you don't want fish waste to clog your plants so they don't photosynthesize as well, thus the carpet must be disturbed by movement, from either fish or humans. Which is why fish like corydoras species, loaches, and algae eating fish like otocinclus and SAE are integral to a dense aquascape. They're constant motion helps to disturb waste from all the plants in the tank so it can become water-borne and be picked up by the filters. Human help should also be there; I use a long BBQ skewer to tap all my pants and disturb fish waste from their leaves and stems once a week.

Thanks for the complements everyone

Thanks for the advice tear-scar, it's good to hear comments from a fellow plant geek!!

If it was up to me I'd just have a shoal of 50 or so Cardinals, some Amano Shrimps and Otos to deal with algae. However, my wife, bless her, prefers a community and she won't be budged. I see her point do a degree, the fish we have are interesting and entertaining, I beleive they make more of a pet than an aquascape and that's what we started out to acheive, it's just slowly evolved into a lush, planted setup.

I'll bear your advice with the plant suggestions in mind, I just received my new Lobelia, Helsine and Java moss so look out for more pics soon.

Wow - what a lovely tank
Excellent use of plant colours there

Are they are real plants?

You are cheating. For once someone wants criticism and you post the one tank that doesnt need any?

But okay here's my criticism: It looks great, whatever you do keep doing it. That tank in your profile looks great and larger, wouldn't the angels be better of in that?

They are all real plants

Yeah, it's hard to make the sacrifice for competitiveness and just use cardinals. I've kind of forfeited that because I simply like having different fish too much. Plus my LFs never have cardinals and I'm not willing to order.

Gourami's have SO much personality . . .

I'm looking for to seeing how you place the new plants . . . especially the helsine . . . how short are you going to keep it?

What lighting are you using there?

Looks excellent! B)

I'm so very impressed. When this tank has matured a little more and you make the changes that you are already entertaining... I'm sure that you could be a contender!

ALASKA

Zaphan, my lighting consists of 2 x 24" 18W T8s; 1 x Interpet Daylight Plus and 1 x Arcadia Freshwater Lamp. I've also squeezed in a 30" 25W Dennerle Special-
Plant lamp (my Juwel Rio 125 comes with 2 standard 24" on an electronic ballast but this wasn't enough light for me). I used to have an additional 18" 15W Triton at the back too for the Amazon Swords but they started to get covered in hair algae so I removed it.

I cannot recomment the Dennerle lamp enough, it goes against common practice in planted setups because it has a colour temp. of 3000K (I beleive the standard is daylight i.e. 5000K to 7000K) but the plants love it. All my plants produce O2 bubbles after a couple of hours of lighting and the light produces a pleasant warm light, it's a little yellow/orange but when balanced by a higher colour temp. it works really well.

Tear-scar, I intend to keep the Helsine well trimmed and let it produce a low bush effect. It arrived the other day and I'm just letting it mature, the Lobelias are looking good too!!

Very nice tanK!!

What are the plants in front of your swords? Are they dwarf lilly?

If you mean the red lily it's NYMPHAEA JAPONICUS (THAILAND TROPICAL LOTUS LILY). Here's a close-up