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Johnson18's Dirted 55gal

38K views 229 replies 34 participants last post by  johnson18 
#1 · (Edited)
1/4/2017: This tank has changed a lot in the time since I first set it up in 2011. I will try to edit this first post to reflect the equipment used in the current iteration & keep it relatively up to date as changes are made.
My 55 gallon tank is currently set up with a MGOPM/black flourite mix capped with Black Diamond blasting sand as the substrate.
Eheim 2217 canister filter
Coralife Aqualight T5HO dual lamp 54W x 2: running Giesemann Midday x 1 & Aquaflora x 1.
The hardscape uses the same two original pieces of driftwood.
The plants are a mixture of your typical lowlight plants plus a variety of stems and a bunch of random Cryptocoryne species.
The stocking is currently Red Cherry Shrimp. The goal is to have a RCS colony, a few Amano shrimp, a Nerite snail or two and a huge school of Ember Tetras.

So feel free to sift through all the history or skip ahead to like page 9-10 when I moved cross country and swapped the substrate out to the current set up.






Original post from 8-21-2012:
So I haven't wanted to make a journal for this aquarium until just recently. I set this tank up in April of 2011, it was my first planted tank. I have definitely learned a ton about keeping plants happy and healthy. I am by no means a pro at this yet, or probably any time soon. I truly love it though. Since I started this tank I have kept as many as 3 other planted tanks going along with this one. I have recently moved to a different house and condensed down to only this 55 and a 20 long, leaving a 10, 20, 20L, & a 45-60 cube packed into my storage shed.

I purchased this 55 gallon with stand off CL for $80 after an extended(8 year) break from the hobby. As I started to set up everything up I realized I wanted to do a planted tank. Just a partially planted tank, right.... I didn't want to have to buy fancy substrate or lights or different filters, or fertilizers or etc. Well, that slowly turned into wanting more plants, so everything was slowly upgraded...$$$....ugh. If only I had done it correctly right off the bat! Oh well, you live and learn!. ;)

So here is what I've got!

Basics: 55 Gallon Aquarium & stand-boring!
W/ Fluval E300 heater, 2 x Fluval U4 filters
Substrate: 60lbs of gravel, dark natural & black. 15lbs of Red Flourite
Lights: Coralife Aqualight T5HO dual lamp 54w x2 & Deep Blue SolarMax T5HO dual lamp 54w x2 w/ 8 LED moon lights (2 x 6700k & 2 x 10000k)

I will have to go through and make an accurate list of plants in this tank as I move forward with this journal. I have tried all sorts of plants out, grown some and traded them for others with the LFS, some I really like, some I've murdered plain and simple. lol.

I've currently got:
tons of Java Fern, couple different types at least.
Anubias- one big ole Coffee, nana, nana petite
Dwarf Sag.-suffered big time during a recent period of neglect followed by a move and replant. slowing coming back.
Cryptocoryne Balansae- more on the way!
Cryptocoryne Wendtii- Green, bronze/red, and just recently added Florida sunset! more red on the way!
Cryptocoryne willisii x 'lucens
Swords- one reg. amazon sword and just added a Radican Marble Queen
Aponogeton longiplumulosus- I used to have several, down to just two that are slowly coming back

I also got on the way some Cryptocoryne Becktii

The current list of fish in the tank are as follows:
Cardinal Tetra x 8-maybe
Neon Tetra x 6 maybe
Black Neon Tetra x 6
Zebra Danios x idk a few? used to be more.
1 Pleco that I do not recall, size small-stays that way too... I'll get a pic!
Amano shrimp x 6-9 probably
Red Cherry Shrimp X unknown, probably just a few
Ghost Shrimp x 1


I am planning on getting rid of the danios, black neon tetras and neons if I can catch the damn things! I am going to add more Cardinals!!

My current goal with my aquarium is to get a small group of German Blue Rams and hopefully end up with 2 pair of breeding GBR's! To do this comfortably I am trying to add more areas to hide, hence the large sword I added today and the tall plants- C. balansae also on the way.


The first picture is pretty old- featuring Mondo grass and all... LOL

The second was taken today with only half my light on. My plants suffered a lot from a recent move that was preceded by a couple months of neglect!
 

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#145 ·
The new filter just arrived.

Everything looks great & I'm quite excited to get it installed. Due to the where the power strip is the filter will probably live on the right side of the tank when facing it. I need to go through and look at what will be the best as far as placement goes for the intake and spray bar. I think the current filter, that is staying will be in the back left corner of the tank, behind the tall Anubias covered dw.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions as to what locations create the best flow in a 55? Last time I had a canister filter on a tank it was a 29 many(12-16?) years ago. I'm definitely open for suggestions!

I've gotta run get a media bag to put the purigen in. Any suggestions on where place the purigen within the filter? Top? Bottom? Middle? I'm sure I can find it searching through the forums but my internet here is slow as hell & I've been blasting through data on my phone at an insane rate. LOL!!
 
#146 ·
Dog's going "whats this? doesn't look like a toy or food :c" btw glad to see an owner that keeps up on toenail clipping their dog!
I can't offer advice from experience on canister since mine is hooked up to an aquaponic system then is just spills straight down into the tank. I'm thinking of adding a diy baffle (or be lazy and slap an elbow on the end) to push the flow across the tank though to try to push all the pleco poo towards the intakes since right now its just straight down, great for aeration.. but not much flow (got a new filter for my 55 too.. it has 2 intakes I put on the opposite side of the tank from the output).
(from past reading..) I think most set up outflow either on the back wall at the opposite side of long tanks and have it push to the front of the tank and over to the intake side... or will set it up on the opposite side's side wall and just do spray bar straight across... from what I recall people use different methods depending on what scape/plants are in the way of affecting the flow.
When I looked into purgerion as an option a while back many people said it did not matter where in the filter you put it as long as its got flowing water going over it.
 
#147 ·
Johnson18's 55 Gallon II-Gettin Dirty

Haha, he was definitely interested in everything, always is! Oh yeah, all three of my dogs get regular nail maintenance! Although it's been much easier since the move. There's no grass, so everything they walk on is hard, like rock, cement, kool decking, it all helps keep their nails short.

I'd probably go for the elbow if I were you, but that's just personal choice!

I got the filter installed, I haven't figured out the end layout of the system. I want to play with a few different options. Overall, I like how the tank is looking. Most everything is growing well. I've gotta figure out something different for the back left side of the tank, next to the Anubias covered driftwood. I've got a couple marbled queen radican swords there that seem to want to stay low to the substrate. I don't think they like the low tech environment. I think I will pull them out and stick them in an emersed tank and find something else for that spot. There is also a C. affinis "Metallic Red" growing right in front of the swords. I think it was being shaded too much by the larger swords when I first planted the tank. I recently trimmed the sword leaves back some and the affinis has started growing more. I would like something in that spot that will grow taller but also add another color to the sea of greens. I'm probably going to take a look through my Cryptocoryne collection and see if there is anything that would work well to fill the spot, if not I will look around. If I do go with a Crypt I want something with a little different color and texture than the other plants in the area, probably something with heavily bullated leaves. I've not already got anything specific in mind. The right side of the tank has a nice patch of C. nurii that has been doing well. It's starting to get a little bigger. There is also, at the base of the right end of the driftwood, two Red Tiger Lotus plants. They are still fairly small but I doubt that will last a whole lot longer. When these plants get larger the tank won't seem like such a sea of green, which has been kind of bugging me lately. lol.



Here's a picture I took last night. It's overexposed but it's the best I've been able to do so far with my iPhone. I spoke to my dad this morning, who has been a hobbyist photographer for 40+ years(I grew up with a dark room set up in the bedroom next to mine!) he is going to help me get some better shots of the tank tonight. We will bust out the tripod and a real camera and see what we can do. Might try for some shots of the 20L too!
 
#148 ·
The growth of this tank has been incredible. It looks nothing like the above picture. I've had a little bit of an algae problem. I think I will have to split the photo-period, which is still only 4.5 hours. The water changes probably need to occur more often as well. Been pretty hard to do that with the back issues I've been dealing with. I see the surgeon to schedule a date for surgery this Friday. There's a little more about that in the 20L journal.
 
#150 ·
Here's a crappy one from about a month ago. You can see some of the algae in it. Most has been removed by hand since then. I think I might have some time to clean it up some this weekend and do a WC. I'll try to get some new pictures!

 
#152 ·
Johnson18's 55 Gallon II-Gettin Dirty

There's been a lot of growth since this picture. The Aponogeton in the middle has close to doubled in size. It's also got a shoot growing babies. A lot of other growth too. Like I said, I haven't had much time to pay attention to the tank, unfortunately. It's still only got a couple otos, like two black neon tetras and two clown plecos as it's inhabitants. I've would really like to add some more life to the tank. I've really been thinking about Rainbows lately. No, not just because of the article in the most recent edition of Amazonas, though it has made me think about adding them even more. My largest concern though is the amount of time I've had to do maintenance since school started. No point in adding more fish if I'm not gonna be able to keep up with the maintenance.
 
#153 ·
I'm finally going to get a little bit of time to focus on my tanks. This tank has seen months of neglect. I struggled with huge quantities of algae for months, it covered everything. I think it was a combo of unable to do water changes as often as it needed and the use of way too many root tabs with the brand new soil. even though I was getting some fantastic plant growth the amount of nutrients in the water was too high.

Unfortunately, I was unable to actually do much about it. I've got a bunch of back problems, so spending a lot of time bent over into the tank wasn't an option. I finally just shut off the lights, and left them off for about the last five months. Much of my house is windows, so the tank received some residual light but nothing else. The algae died along with a lot of the plants. I didn't originally set out to leave the lights off that long, but this fall semester kicked my ass. I was pretty much only home long enough on a daily basis, to sleep a little, shower and leave again. I finished my semester Friday, I spent several hours working on the tank Saturday but had to take a couple extra pain pills in order to do so.

I siphoned out more than 50% of the water, along with much of the degraded plant/algae material. I manually removed as much crap as possible. The tank looks better but still not decent. I plan on doing a water change at least weekly for the next month & sucking up as much junk as I can with it. I discovered part of the issue was that the filter out flow hose was kinked which reduced the flow to almost nothing. I have fixed that issue, hopefully in a permanent manner.

I added a few bunches of NL Java Fern & Windelov from the local petsmart. There are some remaining dwarf sag plants that I'm hoping will repopulate a new carpet. I also trimmed a bunch of the Hydrocotyle sp. 'Japan' out of one of my emersed tanks, and planted in as a carpet which should spread well.

I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the Crypts are pretty much all still there, though their growth has been limited. I have no doubts that they will quickly rebound with fresh water and the return of light. From my last picture of this tank, the amount of Anubias has at least doubled! Most of the Buce. is also still around with stunted growth.

The lights are currently set on a three hour photoperiod. I will see how that goes and adjust from there.

Trust me, you don't want to see a picture. I will update with one soon though.
 
#154 ·
I've done a bunch of work to this tank over the last month. A couple different deep cleanings. Added a bunch of new plants into it. There is still mulm on the substrate in places, which I've been unable to suck out during water changes. There's also a bit of hair/stringy algae in places. Most of it it left from when the tank was neglected & on slow growing plants like anubias. It seems to be slowly going away though.

Most recently (Monday) I removed the two pos fluval submersible filters that I'd been meaning to take out forever. I also replaced the Eheim 2215 with a new 2217. The 2215 got moved over to the 20L. I took about half of the media from the 2215 & swapped it for new media, placing the removed media into the 2217. I expected the tank to have some sort of cycle but I don't see much evidence of that after two days.
I tested the water today. The results are as follows:
pH 7.4ish
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm
Phosphate <0.5ppm
KH 6 drops ~107.4ppm
GH 5 drops ~89.5ppm
TDS is 158
I use ro water on the tank but this is Tucson, we've got liquid rock for water. Super high pH here too, the tap water is crazy.

I think I mostly just want to toss some red cherry shrimp & ember tetras in the tank.

Here is a picture from almost two weeks ago. The plants have been growing great since then.




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#155 ·
After a trip to ANA & a nice convo with Ben, I added 15 nice looking Red Cherry Shrimp to the tank this evening. I will be grabbing a few Amanos next week when he gets some more in. My current plan is to order more shrimp from one of the members here this week. This will let me get a little diversity into the gene pool. I'm thinking that I'll probably order some PFR shrimp. I don't plan on adding the ember tetras for a month or so to really let the shrimp colony get established. I've never successfully kept shrimp so any advice or tips would be welcome!


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#156 ·
Today I picked up two of the spotted nerite snails, and three horned. The spotted ones are about a half inch in diameter, I put one of them into my 20L. The horned are the smallest nerites I've ever seen! They might be a quarter of an inch, but that's probably on the large side! I placed all three into this tank. Twenty minutes after adding them I could only find one in the area I originally placed them. I located one like halfway across the tank!

All of the shrimp I added yesterday are looking happy and healthy today. I went ahead and ordered 25 PFRs from a forum member!! I'm looking forward to getting them into this tank. When these shrimp arrive, they will be the last livestock addition to this tank for a while.

I'm thinking about adding more Hydrocotyle sp. 'Japan' to the left side. I'm hoping to create a kind of carpet look with it. I've got more than I could ever use in my emersed 55. Seriously, it is at least 4" deep all over and some places is more than half of the overall depth of the tank! I can definitely spare some more for this tank! The Dwarf Sag. appears to have begun growing. The biggest surprise of all is that the MM which was formerly part of the carpet prior to the neglect, has started to pop up in places!! This is a surprise to me as there was absolutely none left!
 
#157 ·
Added two Amano shrimp and ten Otocinclus today!! The PFRs have finally shipped, the seller chose to wait until the nasty cold weather had passed in his area of the country. I totally respect and appreciate his decision to do so! If all goes as planned with the USPS the PFRs should be here Thursday!!

I planted a bunch of the Hydrocotyle sp. 'Japan' to the left side as mentioned in my previous post. The previously planted Hydrocotyle has switched to submersed growth and is growing well. I would guess it will need a trim within a couple weeks.

Today I also picked up some new Crypts that I planted in this tank. They were marked as C. willisii, but are quite obviously not such. They are a brownish red color with bullated leaves, possibly Crypt. beckettii but more heavily bullated. Once they grow out a bit, I will take one of the baby plants and toss it into the emersed tank to flower and properly identify.

I will try to get some pictures within the next few days. Maybe I will remember to snap some pics when the PFRs arrive!!
 
#159 ·
I'm planning on added quite a few more crypts to this tank. I would like to go for more of the rarer types. The plan is to get a couple of each for this tank and get a couple for the emersed set up. I miss having rare crypts around. This tank currently only has a few C. nurii and a C. affinis 'Metallic Red', the rest of the crypts are fairly basic & found almost anywhere. If anyone has some rare cryptocorynes they wanna get rid of let me know!
 
#160 ·
25 Painted Fire Red Shrimp arrived the middle of last week. They look amazing!

Added four more Amano shrimp on Sunday! This will be the last livestock added for a while!

The current stock list:
40 cherry shrimp, mostly PFR grade
6 Amano shrimp
3 nerite snails
Lots of ramshorn & pond snails(too many)

Out of all the shrimp there have been several recent molts and probably 10ish saddled females!

I planted a small portion of Marsilea minuta throughout the "carpet" area on the left. There was a small amount already there but I wanted to mix a bit more in!

Since I was home today(sick af) I sat in front on this tank and ate my lunch. It was so fun to watch all the otos swim around together or play in the outflow.

I dosed some macros today(on both tanks). I drastically reduce EI. I don't plan on dosing regularly but I wanted to see how things went. I'll dose micros later in the week.

So... if you made it this far, thank you! Please let me know what you think or ask any questions you may have. Now here are a few pictures! I've only got my iPhone for pics, so that's what you get.

Otos!!





A couple shrimp pics...





Plant pics! This group of Anubias has been growing well & the shrimp love it!



"Carpet" area. You can see all of the crypts surrounding this area.



The "carpet"mix!



I guess I didn't take a fts, just this one that was only on my SnapChat





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#161 ·



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UH OH!!!!! This Nymphaea rubra must've enjoyed the dose of macros a lot or finally hit an O+ root tab, or both. I came home this evening and these three leaves have easily DOUBLED in size AND there is a new surface leaf that is probably 6 inches BELOW the surface!! Damn!

I'll probably trim the surface leaf off tomorrow, if the lights are still on when I get home. I want to try to get it to produce more submerged growth.


The other SUPER exciting news of the day, I found a berried female! YAY for happy shrimp!
 
#162 · (Edited)
Johnson18's 55gal Dirted Shrimp Tank

Idk what I did to my original post of this, but I obviously deleted the majority of it....



Since the semester is underway and gonna be a busy one I think progress on the Mr. Aqua 17.4 is gonna be kinda slow. So.... I went ahead and threw the new CO2 system on this tank. Right now it's running < 0.5bps w/horrible dispersion throughout the water column. I had originally set the system up using an upaqua(?) glass diffuser. I decided I might as well go ahead and make a C02 reactor. So like halfway through building a cerges reactor I went to move the glass diffuser to a better location and broke it. I snagged an air stone from my supplies and tossed it in. I unfortunately haven't had the time to plumb in the reactor for the last week. Hopefully I will find some time this week.









The plants have responded surprisingly well to the CO2 even with the [censored][censored][censored][censored]ty set up. I added some different plants two weeks ago. The main one being a Lagenandra meeboldi 'red round'. It arrived in rough shape leaf wise, but seems like it will recover quickly. Everything else is looking good.



Last time I counted there were like 5-7 berried PFRs. I keep checking around for baby shrimp, but not super hard. Hell, half of this last week I wasn't home at all during the time lights are on.







I don't remember what else I'd posted.
 
#163 ·
Questions on the cerges reactor before I install it later today!!

Do I need some sort of media inside? Sponge? bioballs? etc?

I've also not installed a check valve where the CO2 line enters the reactor. I've done this under the assumption that the pressure from the tank will keep water from entering back up the line. The reactor will be about a foot below the outlet on the regulator, there's already a check valve at the regulator before the line outlet, and about 3 feet of hose. I was thinking I'd put a hook in the wall behind the tank to hold the CO2 line up to create an n shaped "loop" in between the reactor and the regulator.

Thoughts?? Thanks for any advice!
 
#165 ·
Thanks! I just surprised myself scrolling through the above pics on my laptop as I looked through a couple fts I took at the end of the photoperiod last night. The carpet looks so full compared to a couple weeks ago! The Hydrocotyle will probably need a trim whenever I get a chance this week. The MM I planted has settled in nicely.

Hair/thread algae continues to be an issue. I've been manually removing some of it on a weekly basis.


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#166 ·
I've lost a couple of my Otos, each several weeks apart. I'm guessing it's fairly random. I found the last one Friday. Parameters all look fine. I haven't been supplementing their food with veggies or anything. I have seen them eating some of the shrimp food that I've been feeding about once a week.

I did a huge trim and replanting Saturday along with a large (~18g) water change. Largest WC I've done since added the shrimp. I've been trying to keep my changes fairly small ~5 gallons at a time plus any that has been lost to evaporation. I'd just dirtied up the water with all my playing around that I wanted to get things cleaned up. I also gave the glass lids a good scrubbing. The plastic that holds the folding glass lids together has started to die. The right side, when facing the tank, has totally dried out and broken, I just took it off so the glass panels are separated.

I really hacked down the Hydrocotyle but replanted everything I cut out. I moved around a couple smaller crypts, this tank is seriously filled with them. I'm thinking about grabbing some more C. beckettii. I've been trying to just pack the area around & under the lily full of different species of crypts, mostly beckettii, pontederiifolia, and undulata. The C. pontederiifolia has been doing well in that space. I've been wanting a taller species to mix into the back left but I don't quite know what I want or if I just need to let the Lagenandra meeboldi 'red round' fill in as I've read those can be monsters.

I've added a couple new stem species, not sure I'm injecting enough co2/light/fertz to make them grow well. It's just two stems of each. One is Rotala macrandra mini pink & the other is Ammania gracilis. They've both been putting out new growth, but the rotala is losing some color. No surprise there. I put both of these in the 20L too. I guess I mostly just wanted to see what I could grow. These I grabbed at ANA for decent prices, I figured it was worth a shot. The AR stems have been doing well, still growing super slow but they look nice and healthy. I've read the super slow growth is the norm, which is fine which me! The Baby Tears was starting to look kinda [censored][censored][censored][censored]ty before I added the co2, getting a bit of algae on it. That all went away and its got nice bright green new growth. Everything else is doing well. Some of the random rhizomes that used to be nice looking Buce before the melt down have started to pop out new growth. The funny thing is that they have spread all over the tank. It's like as I cleaned and replanted the tank, the little bits of rhizome got spread around. I think it's kinda cool. I'm just leaving it alone unless it is in a location that it is likely to die.

I feel like the algae is slowly becoming less of an issue the longer the CO2 is running. I'm still running ~0.5bps. With the cerges reactor I've got no bubbles in the tank. The hair/string algae is still present but in smaller amounts all the time. Some of the big Anubias leaves have a few diatoms on them which I'm mostly ignoring to keep the inhabitants happy and fed! I suppose if it got worse I'd wipe it off. The other algae on the glass around the tank has mostly gone away or been greatly reduced to the point I'm wondering if I need to start adding food for the Otos and Nerites! [emoji23]

I've decided to start dosing a fairly light EI regime of fertz. We'll see how it goes. I'm mostly doing this because my 20L needs it because it's packed full of stems. I figured if I'm gonna take the time to get the fertilizers out daily I might as well add a little in here too! Any thoughts on fertilizers and shrimp that I need to keep an eye on?

I also threw some more root tabs around in certain areas. The new leaves on the sword right up front we're looking kinda funky so I wanted to get more nutrients to it! This same plant has a bloom stem shooting up which will hopefully be packed full of little baby plantlets soon! Gotta make sure those babies can grow!

The shrimp seem to be mostly doing well. I haven't seen any baby shrimp but I think a couple of the berried females are no longer berried. I saw one a couple days ago, who looked like a younger female, that had partially dropped her eggs. Her eggs were totally gone the next day. This was prior to working in the tank and the water change. I've been thinking about putting some IAL into the tank in the areas I've not got heavily planted.


I know this tank still has a long way to go but I feel like I've finally got things on the right track. Now to keep up the work!

Ok pics! From my iPhone of course....






















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#167 ·
Since my last big trim, I've pretty much just left this tank alone. Things have been filling in well.













I had started a modified EI dosing which I decided to stop. With my schedule I was unable to maintain an appropriate schedule. Not dosing was a better option for this tank than inconsistent dosing.

I bumped the CO2 from 0.5bps to right about 1.0bps. I've also reduced the photoperiod by 0.5hr.

So I believe that due to my inconsistency in the dosing BBA started popping up a little more on the older leaves, where it had already begun. I haven't had time to really clean it off the leaves but I will be hitting it directly with Excel & cleaning it off manually but not until next week during my spring break.





I'm hoping to spend some time next week working on this tank. I'll get into that once I actually get some time to take a close look at how everything it growing.




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#168 ·
Johnson18's 55gal Dirted Shrimp Tank-added pressurized CO2!

I believe that I messed up when I dropped the photoperiod at the same time I upped the CO2. Since I redid this tank in December, I've tried quite hard to never make more then one change at a time & give the tank a couple weeks to adjust in between these changes. Well, I failed to do that when I reduced the photoperiod by 0.5hr the same day I increased the gas from 0.5 to 1.0 bps about a week ago. The result was an almost immediate(within a couple days) appearance of green dust algae in the front glass. At this point it is a super light coating. I have gone ahead and bumped the photoperiod back up that 30min. I'm going to do a decent water change today, probably around 10 gallons. Since it is just a super light dusting, I doubt I'll even clean the GDA off the glass. I will wipe the bba off the Anubias leaves as I'm sucking water out.

Honestly, this is probably a combo of several different things that occurred around the same time period. When I did my huge trim three weeks ago I loaded the tank with a bunch of new O+ root tabs. There always seems to be a bit of new algae that pops up in the first few weeks after replacing all the root tabs in the tank. It doesn't help that I've not had a chance to do a water change since I stopped the fert dosing, so that definitely has helped create the imbalance! The last couple weeks have been nonstop midterm exams and such at school which leaves me with absolutely no time for anything besides school! I'm sure glad that's over with for a few weeks until the next round of exams! [emoji23]

You can see the dusting of gda just above the carpet.


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#169 ·
Wow! tank is looking very very nice! At first it was so/so had potential, now you have really taken that potential and kicked its butt! Let that lily get some height in the back right corner I'd say, let that ar mini / the crypt (I cant tell if that's ar. mini or a crypt of some kind? either way looks redish brown lol) spread a bit more in that location its in to look slightly bushier. will look fantastic! is looking fantastic! Very good job! haven't seen this thread since the huge anubias was just sitting on a log in the middle. I think im getting to excited for your tank lol! good job :)
 
#172 ·
Thanks @BettaBettas! I appreciate your comments. It's nice to have the view point of another hobbyist. This tank definitely still has a long way to go! Things are getting there slowly though.

I'm really hoping that the lily will continue to grow and fill in the full height of the tank. I've tried hard to pack the whole area around and under the lily full of plants, mostly random Crypts. Toward the back there are some C. balansae, C. undulata, the front has C. beckettii, C. x willisii 'lucens', some random stem, baby tears... I don't remember the rest. I've just been trying to trim and replant all the stems to get thinks thicker. Plus I've moved some Crypts around in order to have more under the lily!





The AR that is behind the short end of the wood is Alternanthera reineckii 'cardinalis', it has been a slow grower but should eventually get pretty tall. These stems took a super long time to transition from the tissue culture to the submersed growth. Over the last few weeks these stems have really started growing well.



As far as more red in that area, I'm hoping the Lagenandra meeboldi 'red round' will fill out and provide a different texture above the carpet & a nice pink color! You can see the plant in the picture above

Also in this picture you can see a line of brownish Crypts running from front to back splitting the carpet off from the rest of the tank. This row is a combo of C. nurii & C. beckettii! I'm really hoping they will gain some height! I replanted this whole row about a month ago. All of the plants have at least one or two new leaves!





I added a couple stems of Ammania gracilis almost a month ago which have been growing slow but well. I'm hoping to use this to fill in the background of the left most portion of the carpet, just in front of the Crypts that are stuffed against the back wall.

Overall, I've just tried to add a couple different colors and textures that I plan on expanding into larger groupings of the same things. I know this is probably WAY more of a response then you excepted or wanted! Haha. Oh well, this is all gonna be going happening within the tank quite slowly due to the speed things are growing in the tank!

Thanks again for the comments and critiques!! I welcome them from pretty much anyone! I'd love to hear from more members on the forums!

Here's a random pfr!






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#170 ·
Well, [censored][censored][censored][censored]! Turned on the lights early to do a little maintenance and I noticed two dead shrimp! My immediate reaction was to do a water change. I have set aside a glass of the water to test later this evening. When I got most of the way through the WC I realized my filter, an Eheim 2217, had barely any flow. So I finished filling the tank & started looking at the filter. I mostly just expected there to be a kinked hose as I've had that issue in the past with my 2215, but nope. I took apart the filter & cleaned everything up, nothing inside looked too bad. The filter has only been installed since the second week of January, when I purchased it new. The impeller looks fine. Not really sure wtf is going on. I'm headed to ANA with the top of the filter & impeller. Maybe Ben can help me out. Luckily I had a brand new 2215 in my closet that I got for my Mr. Aqua build. I tossed that together and threw it into the tank. I think I'm gonna lose at least one oto. Hopefully not much else, but we'll see..... ugh.

Betta, Thanks! I'll fully respond to your post as soon as I get this crap under control!


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#171 ·
After an extremely stressful 24 hours, I got the 2217 back to working at full flow! The problem was the coarse "sponge" media I have shoved in the bottom of the cerges co2 reactor. When I cut the tube for the inside of the reactor I was about an inch from the bottom of the filter canister. I took a course filter pad, cut it into a round piece the diameter of the bottom of the housing. My thought was that it would help diffuse any left over co2 bubbles. Well, where it met the hose was packed full of dead pond snails! Ugh. I've been trying to reduce the number of those damn things in the tank but killing them inside my co2 reactor wasn't my plan! So All of the media within the reactor has been removed and flow has been restored!







This highlights the huge problem with not being able to check out how your tank is functioning on a daily basis! Who knows how long the flow had been reduced! It was enough time that the water parameters took a hit & started killing livestock! Might be part of reason that I've had some new types of algae pop up this week! Ugh. Sucks but I've resolved the issue...

Currently I'm still running both filters. I left them both just in case this was the only reason for the reduced flow. Plus, I figured it was an easier way to get the 2215 seeded. I've started the shelving build for the stand that will hold my Mr. Aqua 60p. That way the filter will already have some beneficial bacteria built up. Well, my water break is over, back to the wood shop!


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