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Congrats man, your article hugely inspired a large portion and layout of my tanks. I still love the stuff but man its alot of work trimming and re netting down etc. Can't bring myself to remove it from my tanks though, its worth the work. I just wish I could find the dwarf species as well, I...

Oh and I forgot to mention, oddly this tank seems to be on par with my fully dosed tanks as far as growth and healthy looking plants, for the time being, much could change soon though.

Baically I started this test to get a better understanding of my plants and fish, and how codependant they could be in a closed enviroment. I have other tanks that I am still dosing normally and two that are slightly understocked, if this starts to fail that I could balance my fish to them and...

My tap water comes out at 6.8 ph with a kh of about .5 degrees, for some odd reason it buffers to about 7.4ph and about 2.8kh in my tank (not entirely sure why, the only thing I can think of is the snails due to their calcium carbonate shells, all my tanks do this raise in ph and kh), and I...

I am now 6 weeks into this with only dosing iron and trace, I have not put any npk etc in since aug 11. I have chopped down the riccia several times as its growing much faster then it ever has in the past. I decided to make a fan out of it and grow it vertically up behind the other patches...

Black vinyl from a sign shop, get it cut to size and ask them to use premask or application tape, it will make it easier for you to apply. Basically lay the sheet on the back with the paper side facing the glass, use masking tape to make a hinge of about 8 inches. Peel back the paper evenly to...

Off topic but that is a sweet looking piece of wood, I like it alot.

Its now 4 weeks since ending my fert routine and my plants have gone from. Aug,11 To here Sept,7 With several sizable trims along the way.

Basically test your ph and your kh and you can figure out your c02 levels. Here is a site that has a calculator just enter your values of ph and kh and it will tell you your c02 and it also has a cross reference chart. http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_co2chart.htm

you could take 3 buckets, one just tap water, one with the rock and tap water and one with some of the sand tap water, and test all three buckets right away then again after a day and see what one or ones rise to try to narrow down your rise.

Its been 3 weeks now (since last fert dosing) and things still seem to be going strong. I am going to do a pretty hard chop today, I wanted to wait a month but things are getting to the point of covering the light on certain areas to much.

Yes I used various objects to hardscape my tank to hold my substrates into there areas, I have large peices of wood holding some areas and in others little peices of slate that my riccia was once on. You can see some of them better in this pick before my plants started to grow in, in this pick...

I have never kept them, but gator stated in his last post for red bellies 3 to a 75g min.

But every planting substrate is somewhat different so you will have to dig and ask alot of questions, I personally can't help ya with em, as I have never tryed them (they are all differnt, some you rinse, some you don't etc). So I don't really have anything I could mention on them. This forums...

Well somewhat, in my florabase fertile soil I really only leave a fairly shallow layer of plain substrate with diverse texture to it. And the the only reason I do that is due to red sea flourabase's tendency to well shrink, it pancakes down as it ages, and I found having a more ridgid shape...

Not sure I have personally only ever used red sea flourabase, and it too says your suppost to use it on its own. But I like the look of various substrates that fit certain areas, so I use pockets in my tank, sand under my riccia and moss ( fertile soil would not benefit them any) flourabase...

There has only been 3 days since the last pic but things are still moving along well. Aug 11, Last day of ferts. One month of being planted Aug 26, 15 days later Aug 29, 3 more days Growth still going strong, no signs of old leaves dying to feed the new ones. 3 more days and a crap pic...

I have painted in the past and on my last 3 tanks I used vinyl as earlier posted and it looks just as crisp as paint and is not permanent at all :)

Oh yes what loach said, I wasn't trying to imply just dump a tank load at one dump, I was more talking a final stocked kinda answer sorry bout that. And yes I have had several neons that were head to end of body hit the 2" mark after they hit a few years old.

You could always split the difference and if you were 100% stocking neons go 12, I have safely kept 15 in a 20g before and they all grew to about 2 inches after a few years. They really do like a lot of their own species so the more you can stock the happier they seem to be. Hell I remember...

Oh and you can drop it on with the tank in full swing as long as its not right on the wall hehe. I would be hesitant of painting with a tank that was running ( but that is only common sense and I don't think anyone here would blast paint by there fishes hehe) Just thought I would add that plus...

With neon or cardinals, I personally find black backgrounds make them punch out the most, and they seem to give the plants nice contrast as well. Personally for tank backers, I use 2 mill 3m vinyl and apply it on with a squeegee. I like the gold 3m pa-1 squeegee's they apply with nice even...

Kinda curious, as to others thoughts, is this going to be a recipe for disaster. And if so, what would you suggest to as far as tweeking towards a low key approach to working off bio load to lesson my tanks dependence on ferts with its current level of light and c02 etc?

Very nice indeed :)

What I did on my very first planted tank was the following and it worked well. I always run two filters on my tanks. One of the left and one on the right (I left everything running while doing this, I then pulled all my plants and wood etc out of one side of my tank, all the fish naturally...

Well shouldn't my substrate be fine as the natural areas, meaning the unfertile areas all have plants that don't even go into the ground they all water feed. And any of my areas that have plants that root feed have redsea flourabase as nutrients (which draws nutrients into itself from the waste...

Thanks for the reply, I am using plant sand on the left side but its all moss and riccia on rocks. Floura base in the middle where my rooted plants are, and plain gravel and larger rocks on the right under my knotted wood section will all java based ferns tied high on them to leave a mangrovish...

I forgot to mention too, I don't if it makes a difference or not but I pretty much only feed my fish frozen foods as well, blood worms and brine shrimp etc.

Well my issue was a .4 swing nightly as my water is pretty soft. And I noticed my cardinals really came out in colour when I stopped this nightly swing. And it just seemed kinda high to me, so I figured if I could keep the swing from happing why not, as it in the end must be better for the...

Looking forward to seeing it go, I too love lace java and twiggy narred looking rooty wood. :)

Or you could build a hood I am assuming your 30g is 30" wide, get a t5ho ballast that will run 4 - 24" inch bulbs or 2 ballasts one for each bank of two so you could run 2 on all 4 on 2 on kind of lighting etc) and stager them in the hood to maximize side to side coverage. That would give you...

The 10,000 is bluer in light spectrum, I personally would use the 8,800k out of the two, I use mainly all 6,500k bulbs on my tanks with a single colourmax mixed in with em, basically just to bring out the colours on my cardinals etc. I am pretty green on algae vs k etc, green as in not really...

I am currently running a test on my 50g tank, I planted it July 11th with clipings from both my planted 29g tanks, and am doing the following and want to know if I am looking at a meltdown hehe. I started it out with co2 and 3.7 watts per gallon 10 hour light cycle and my normal routine of...

Hey hey I don't know where in BC you are, but if your in the lower mainland try KingEd Pets on Kingsway and edmonds. I have grabbed dwarf hairgrass from them in the past. They have a good selection of plants in the basement.

I have question, I have been running planted tanks for over a year and both seem to do really well, one is non c02 <2wpg and thrives pretty well, the other is mutli bottle c02 with a diy reactor and 3.5wpg ( I gave up on my pressurized was a very unstable unit had a few melt downs with it hehe)...

This is not really planted tank related really, but o man, I started taking my weekly water dump from my tank and watering my house plants and they are going nuts :) I can't believe I was always just dumping that water, my house plants are loving the nutrients from my tank water. Some of my...

Ahh thank you very much, I was under the impression that cherry reds prefered alkaline parameters and my crs shrimp in another tank preffered slightly acidic. I have been keeping both tanks about 6.8 just for ease as like you said I don't want to piss with levels to much, I was just worried...

Yes I must say that is a very cool shrimpy and a very nice tank, and its nice to see a nother nuck on here hehe. Or I should say I am the other nuck as you were here long before me hehe.

Well, my issue was more of a pH issue, but I have since solved it by running my co2 on a seperate timer, I have to run my co2 6 hours after lights down, and it starts up 1 hour before lights on and I am now holding a steady 6.8 But on your point maybe I am dead wrong but I though pH and kH were...

I need some advice that I can't seem to find a solid answer too. I have been planted and doing quite well via diy co2 for about 6 months now. I was running two 2L bottles to a 29G tank and changing one to a fresh bottle once a week. Here is my issue my tap water is very soft, kH is about...