My Fellow Aquarists,
I would like to share something with you, please feel free to comment or criticize as you wish I will not take any offence.
This is a picture of my aquarium in 2012, it stayed like this for about a year then things went down hill, to put it simply, I got lazy, I started to lapse in my plant trimming. And then my solenoid failed and I did not repair it the Spiral Val completely took over, there was an algae boom and I let it happen.
I kept the tank going, fed the fish etc, but stopped dosing, very soon I had a bog with some fish in it.
I looked exactly the opposite of what it does in the pictures. Only the Java Moss, Amazon Sword and A. Crispus survived.
Then about 4 months ago I decided to bring the tank back to life, without making any major changes to the equipment or structure of the tank.
I started by overdosing Excel to kill of the algae, a first water change of 50%, then regular weekly 30% water changes, resumed my dosing of Iron and Potassium ever 2 and 3 days respectively, using the tweezers to pick out algae. Tried to syphon out excess detritus from the bottom when ever I could, switched my second light fixture on. Changed my solenoid and injected CO2. Then I started to buy new plants and fish, I did not change the substrate and I am still using the old sand and substrate. And the tank has substantially recovered. What was very surprising was I noticed some green in the sand a few days ago what I thought was algae that I scrapped off the glass during my routine maintenance I tried to syphon it out and it would not come off, on looking closely it looks like HC, what is very surprising that it has been dormant for about 2 years in the tank only to sprout out again when the conditions turned favorable. Well it could also be regular baby tears I will know in a couple of weeks. Believe me the HC and baby tears were the first plants to die off.
I will post pictures of the recovered tank in another post on this string, please let me know what you think and which version of the tank looks better? The new version is still a work in progress.
I would like to share something with you, please feel free to comment or criticize as you wish I will not take any offence.
This is a picture of my aquarium in 2012, it stayed like this for about a year then things went down hill, to put it simply, I got lazy, I started to lapse in my plant trimming. And then my solenoid failed and I did not repair it the Spiral Val completely took over, there was an algae boom and I let it happen.
I kept the tank going, fed the fish etc, but stopped dosing, very soon I had a bog with some fish in it.
I looked exactly the opposite of what it does in the pictures. Only the Java Moss, Amazon Sword and A. Crispus survived.
Then about 4 months ago I decided to bring the tank back to life, without making any major changes to the equipment or structure of the tank.
I started by overdosing Excel to kill of the algae, a first water change of 50%, then regular weekly 30% water changes, resumed my dosing of Iron and Potassium ever 2 and 3 days respectively, using the tweezers to pick out algae. Tried to syphon out excess detritus from the bottom when ever I could, switched my second light fixture on. Changed my solenoid and injected CO2. Then I started to buy new plants and fish, I did not change the substrate and I am still using the old sand and substrate. And the tank has substantially recovered. What was very surprising was I noticed some green in the sand a few days ago what I thought was algae that I scrapped off the glass during my routine maintenance I tried to syphon it out and it would not come off, on looking closely it looks like HC, what is very surprising that it has been dormant for about 2 years in the tank only to sprout out again when the conditions turned favorable. Well it could also be regular baby tears I will know in a couple of weeks. Believe me the HC and baby tears were the first plants to die off.
I will post pictures of the recovered tank in another post on this string, please let me know what you think and which version of the tank looks better? The new version is still a work in progress.