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Long time aquarium owner, planted tank newbie

416 views 0 replies 1 participant last post by  IntheBatCave 
#1 ·
I've had a fish tank continually since I was a teenager, I've gone full circle, starting with a 20 gallon tank, to a 40 gallon tall tank, to a standard 55 gallon and I've down sized again to a 20 gallon. I upgraded to the 55 I was moving into a new house and I took that time to have the new tank establish and ready for my fish to move into, another reason for the upgrade was to give my Pleco, Big Guy, a little more wiggle room since he was close to 15" long. Once Big Guy passed away at the ripe old age of 15, I decided I wanted to try a planted tank. I upgraded my light to a 48" dual T5 HO, got a few plants and my tank turned green over night. I then picked up a UV sterilizer which worked wonders, but I was constantly cleaning algae. Then a year or so ago, I downgraded to my current 20 gallon.

Currently my setup is a 20 gallon with a glass top, with a Finnex 24/7 LED light, a Magnum 350 canister filter with an inline UV sterilizer. The intake of the filter is a cheapo modified surface skimmer modified so it fits within a power head type quick filter to make up for the lack of strainer area on the skimmer that was causing it to constantly clog.

I redid my tank a few weeks back, I cut out about 80% of the sword plants I had in there and pulled out the decade plus old pieces of Malaysian drift wood that was well past it's prime and basically rotting. To fill in the empty space a pulled out and cleaned some artificial plants that I had in storage.

I started doing a little more research on planted tanks and I just picked up a CO2 monitor and started using API CO2 booster. The sword plants always grew but never really thrived, and I had a constant issue with green algae growing on everything, and I'm hoping the CO2 booster will give the plants the upper hand. My current substrate is CaribSea Eco-Complete with some 3/8" gravel on top. I don't have a ton of fish in the tank, a three mollys, eight neon tetras, one ram cichlid, and two panda cory catfish.

I'm hoping I can pick up a few things here and figure out which mistakes I'm making.
 

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