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20L rise and fall and rebirth - My journal.

13K views 47 replies 17 participants last post by  Inzeos 
#1 ·
Hello! So this is my first post here. I heard about this place thru one of the members here that I met last night. Since I joined up with the GSAS I figured I should stop thru and say hello and post my journal.
Time reffs are messed up since I originally posted this journal a month back. And I'm just feeling too lazy to retype it all again. So bear with me..
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Ok. So I have grown bored with my 75 gal. Its established and all I have to do now is feed the fish and drop some ferts in there. minimal maintenance.
So being the addictive hobby this is. I decided that I needed another tank Specifically for aqua scaping.
Hard to do in a cichlid tank ya know..
So I went out and grabbed a 20L from a LFS that was having a sale. I also dropped some coin on a bunch of plants since they were on sale I got ALOT.


so I got to scaping.


and filled her up


I had a bag of some Eco complete and added this horrible stuff called Ironite.And this is what I used for substrate. Altho it has everything you want for your planted tank it has a little something you DONT. Ammonia. Too much actually. You can see the white grains in the eco. Theres alot more under the eco.


Now for a couple days I thought this might be ok and help the tank cycle faster. Well I let a few days go by and plants started dieing off. BAD LIKE. So I had to pull everything. And this was my task last night.



So I took all the plants out. Removed all the tainted substrate. And started draining the tank.



Now in the planning (key word here is planning. Its more important then you think) of this tank I did some research (another key word here) and seen what others were doing in the proper setups of their planted tanks.
You see for a planted tank to thrive it really should be set up from step 1 with the idea of planting in mind. SO that being said When I was at the fred meyer returning the ironite I picked up some Peat moss and some sand. Since I had destroyed my Eco-complete and not wanting to drop another 25 bucks for a new bag I went to Home Depot and got some Schultz Aquatic soil.

I layed out the peat moss (aka Sphangium moss) In the area that I had planned on having


And above the peat I placed the schultz. In the open area I added white sand. for a beach effect.




Now this time I took a hour REALLY seperating the clumps of Dwarf Hairgrass into small bushes. And I lined the "beach front" with the Dwarf hair and made a small trail that leads down the center of the tank.


Behind the DH I planted some Money wort that I expect wil probably die off and get replaced. To keep the MW down I had to place a rock on top of it. And to the left of the DH I took my micro swords and made a grassy area there. and behind that I have a rock with some Java moss tied to it.


With everything I had to use at this point in the tank I decided it was time to fill er up.

Since I have everything in place I didn't wanna mess taht up so I had the water on low.


As you can see I'm an idiot and I forgot to wash the sand. (I assumed it was prewashed. NEVER ASSUME) And the water got kinda cloudy not too bad tho.




So I plugged in the Emp280 and let it get to work. I have a bunch of poly fill in it to help polish that crap out of the water.
After a couple hours it was looking alot better.


So sadly I lost most of my plants that were in the tank. I assume it is because of amonia burn. possibly the water was too cold because theres no heater on it. At any rate that will all get corrected.
I guess i'm clairvoiant because yesterday even before I knew my plants were all hosed I ordered some off our own Dippy Eggs. So that will replace what I lost. And infact I think it will work out for the better because the plants that I had goten were kinda random. and didn't really have a theme. This tank will be much better off once the new plants get in there. And I have a feeling the plants Dip's is sending are going to be a lot better quality then the doomed to die ones I got from the pet store. Thanks again Joe!

Now as far as the details of my little tank here they are.
Its a 20L
I have a single PC 36w fixture on it.
substrate is a layer of Peatmoss covered by Schultz aquatic and sprinkled with a small amount of eco-complete. And a sand trap of white beach sand.
Ferts will be Flourish line of ferts. Comp,Excell and Phosphate. I will be adding some GW Macro ferts to the mix too. But am looking for other alternitives.

Plants are
Dwarf Hairgrass
Micro swords
Saggatira Stabula (sp,sorry)
Java moss
Moneywort

I'm wanting to add a Moss covered rock wall to conceal the intake of the filter. As it detracts from the overall look of the tank and I feel that it will give the illiusion that the tank is larger.
I am just trying to figure out what moss I can use for that as Java moss tends to be too stringy and likes to travel alot. I'm thinking about getting some Riccia. Not totally sure yet.

The 75 will also be in for a major overhaul soon too.
 
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#2 ·
I have received new plants from the Man. and We have an official planted tank now. I've added he CO2 and the results are AMAZING! now my Java moss was semi pearling before but now EVERYTHING is pumping air into the water like you wouldn't belive. Seriously it looks like theres a air leak in my tank because I have bubbles comming up everywhere! It was actually an amazing site and was quite exciting to have a real visual cue that the plants are not only looking great but they are doing great as well.

So let me share with you all the updated pics of the tank. And a pic of the worlds happyist betta.



Here you can also see the biggest of the ghost shrimp that are in the tank swimming around with the betta.





Sorry for the crap quality. But you can kinda see my Moneywort pearling also!


*******************1 month passes.....***************
And here we are today. I have done some minor rearranging and added some stuff. Sadly my Betta died due to a BGA bout that I went thru half way thru the month. But I replaced him with a sweet Green Dwarf Pike.
Also replaced the 36w light with a 65w Coralife Aqualight.
 
#5 ·
I don't see a bong
 
#7 ·
no that is what yoink made it sound like you had in the pic....ahhh nevermind.
 
#9 · (Edited)
hahaha. Nahh there was one pic there with one of my pipes. that was hanging around for the intermissions between planting. :)
 
#12 ·
Did my first trim. and a little movin around.
Did some trimming. So hell why not time for an update.

Some pics of the tank









And some of the pike.

 
#13 ·
OOOOhhhhhh, that crenicicla compressiceps is EXACTLY like the one I had. Sweet fish! They are funny, but I think mine went blind! As he got older, he would sense food in the tank, and stab at it, but always miss. Think he starved to death :icon_redf

I really like your thread.....nice progression and sorry about the bad ECO. I see what you are doing with that peice of driftwood on the sand/gravel border....but I think it draws too much attention right now. I would move it slightly back, and point the skinny end towards the front of the tank. Then line the sand/soil interface with plants .... microsword or something.

Looks good :)

I missed the tobacco waterpipe pic...awwwwww :icon_frow
 
#15 ·
thanks for the complements guys!
If you look closely at the original pics you will notice some cool things.

If you look at the last pic before these new ones you will notice that the beach area was much larger. I actually moved it forward and added some more schultz. So that open area next to the wood is going to fill in partially with Microswords and partially with hairgrass. in addition to the crypts that are already there. Oh yeah and its hard to see and its not all in yet but there should hopefully fill in a part with some micranthemum umbrosum. I think I can keep it at ground level. not sure cause I've never grown it before.

I'm also planning on doing a little rearranging on the right side. I was actually already thinking about moving the log back some but t hen theres alot of plnts already in that area that I will have to rearrange. So I will have to do some major rescaping in that area. Always in the works. maybe that will be next weeks refinement.
 
#16 ·
I see that your brown substrate has mixed into the white sand area. Maybe you might want to do something about it? Because the tank has lost it's beauty this way. The piece of driftwood also looks out of place.
 
#17 ·
yes. the beach is much harder to move over then one would hope. so some of the sand that was there got moved under the substrate. I will be attempting to vaccum the white sand from out of there.I just have to build a screen attachment for my vaccum so I don't suck up the substrate as well.
I also did some more rescaping last night so the wood that was up front is now moved to the back. opens that area up much more. Also waiting for one more plant to arrive before Its done.
 
#19 ·
nahh he's a dwarf. He is too small to gobble up any of his tank mates. except probably the ghost shrimp that have gone missing. If he does wind up getting big enough to eat the fish... *shrug* I'm not all that attached.
 
#21 ·
Ah,thats really beautiful now. A pity though that the area for the while sand is rather small.I'd love to see more of it.
 
#22 ·
yeah. I felt I needed more planting area so I moved the "beach" over. It will look better once the forground plants fill in again.
 
#23 ·
I see,i'll be looking forward to when things fill in. Would love to see the end product of such a nice tank=)
 
#25 ·
New updates.


So. Been a while. and here we are today. New plants, retuned scaping, horrible failure and success.
All have been terms that could have been applied to this tank since the last update.
After I finally got everything setup well. I noticed the water one day get a little cloudy. I thought. humm strange, and let it go. the next day I could see the tank was getting a tint of green. I knew what was happening. So kicked down the light and turned off bank 2. back down to 3wpg. added some ferts and hoped for the best.
Couple days later and this is what I had.


This is after a waterchange.

So. I think to myself. what do to.....
Well obviously I've been lucky to get this much from my tank with my setup. No CO2 ****ty DIY setup. Lots of plants and way too much light. Yes.. It was a timebomb.
And it blew.

So now faced with a need for a decision I made two.
1st was to get a UV filter and take care of the issue at hand. So I did so. In addition to the addition of the UV I turned the lights out for a couple days and closed up the room.
And in a couple days I had this.

Crystal clear. nicest the water has ever been. I'm sold on UV's.
But now altho this took care of the immediate need. I knew this was only a temp bandaid. So in comes decision #2. I started looking for parts. found some for cheap. slapped it toghether and now today I finally have it complete. Finally I am fininshing off this tank with pressurized CO2. If only I knew I could slap something like this toghether so easily before. ahh well..











the pike




 
#27 ·
Its matured. :)

Here are some updated pics of the tank.









And a much needed clean up crew


Already Hard at work. hopefully they are all there tomorrow.
 
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