thefirethief
Fish Crazy
HI folk, I enjoy reading everyone elses journals so just thought Id put a wee thread up about my new tank which Ive spent the last few months planning and slowly setting up. Its my first proper attempt at a planted tank. I planted it all just over a week ago and most things are going to plan, but as you can see from the photos, it still has it problems which I’m hoping will start to sort themselves out soon. Any comments at all are welcome!
Here are some very exciting specifications:
Tank:
24†x 16†x 15†24G/94L
PH 6.7/6.8 rising to 7 through the night.
KH 5.5/6.5
Temp 26 °C
Filtration:
Eheim 2213 External
Substrate:
Two 20lb bags of eco complete.
Lighting:
ASL compact T5 lighting unit fitted to the hood. 2x36W interpet daylight bulbs giving me over 3WPG on for 9 hours a day.
CO2:
My attempts at pressurized were a disaster from day one and ended up costing me a lot of money (see some of my other threads) so just now I have resorted to an old Nutrafin Yeast system I had lying around. CO2 levels sit at around 25ppm during the day, rising to around 33ppm through night. Yeast cylinder gets changed weekly.
Fertilisation:
Dry ferts made into solutions, basically using EI method. Try to keep everything at the recommended levels dosing trace in between days.
Plants.
Eleocharis Vivipara (tall hairgrass)
Eleocharis Acularis (small hairgrass)
Eleocharis Parvulus
Rotala Macandra
Eusteralis stellata
Rotala Sp Green
Micranthemum Umbrosum
Hemianthus Callitrichoides
Aquascaping:
I knew I wanted to try make it look like an overgrown garden so thought that various sized hairgrass would work well along the front and if I planted some of the eleocharis vivipara (tall hairgrass) through the stem plants in the background it would look wild, almost neglected, rather than meticulously pruned. Scale was a factor in deciding on the HC for a carpet as well as deciding on background plants. I didn’t want to have any large leaved plants in there as that would change the scale of the tank completely, so chose some smallish leaved stem plants I thought looked pretty interesting (rotala macandra and the Eusteralis Stellata) and tried to use the Micranthemum Umbrosum to blend in the background into the foreground, although I think that’s going to take a lot of trimming to stop it overshadowing the background plants. The tank was originally meant to be an Apistogramma / Pencilfish tank so I tried to create natural caves using the sandstone rocks which I had collected from my a local river. Ho hum, how exciting.
So heres my main problem so far which I might need help with. Both types of hairgrass had been sitting for around 4 days before being planted and I think that was a bad move. You’ll see in my photos that they look well and truly past it, do you think its beyond recovery? They are also the only plants which seem to be attracting hair algae.
Any comments, criticisms and advice are more than welcome! I'll upload more photos as things go on and once things have grown in a bit I'll try get some decent photos without equipment and (hopefully) without algae.
Here are some very exciting specifications:
Tank:
24†x 16†x 15†24G/94L
PH 6.7/6.8 rising to 7 through the night.
KH 5.5/6.5
Temp 26 °C
Filtration:
Eheim 2213 External
Substrate:
Two 20lb bags of eco complete.
Lighting:
ASL compact T5 lighting unit fitted to the hood. 2x36W interpet daylight bulbs giving me over 3WPG on for 9 hours a day.
CO2:
My attempts at pressurized were a disaster from day one and ended up costing me a lot of money (see some of my other threads) so just now I have resorted to an old Nutrafin Yeast system I had lying around. CO2 levels sit at around 25ppm during the day, rising to around 33ppm through night. Yeast cylinder gets changed weekly.
Fertilisation:
Dry ferts made into solutions, basically using EI method. Try to keep everything at the recommended levels dosing trace in between days.
Plants.
Eleocharis Vivipara (tall hairgrass)
Eleocharis Acularis (small hairgrass)
Eleocharis Parvulus
Rotala Macandra
Eusteralis stellata
Rotala Sp Green
Micranthemum Umbrosum
Hemianthus Callitrichoides
Aquascaping:
I knew I wanted to try make it look like an overgrown garden so thought that various sized hairgrass would work well along the front and if I planted some of the eleocharis vivipara (tall hairgrass) through the stem plants in the background it would look wild, almost neglected, rather than meticulously pruned. Scale was a factor in deciding on the HC for a carpet as well as deciding on background plants. I didn’t want to have any large leaved plants in there as that would change the scale of the tank completely, so chose some smallish leaved stem plants I thought looked pretty interesting (rotala macandra and the Eusteralis Stellata) and tried to use the Micranthemum Umbrosum to blend in the background into the foreground, although I think that’s going to take a lot of trimming to stop it overshadowing the background plants. The tank was originally meant to be an Apistogramma / Pencilfish tank so I tried to create natural caves using the sandstone rocks which I had collected from my a local river. Ho hum, how exciting.
So heres my main problem so far which I might need help with. Both types of hairgrass had been sitting for around 4 days before being planted and I think that was a bad move. You’ll see in my photos that they look well and truly past it, do you think its beyond recovery? They are also the only plants which seem to be attracting hair algae.
Any comments, criticisms and advice are more than welcome! I'll upload more photos as things go on and once things have grown in a bit I'll try get some decent photos without equipment and (hopefully) without algae.
