40 Gallon- First High Tech

[Ghostie]

Hey all!
I am finally putting together a 40 gallon tank that I have had
sitting around several years. I was originally going to set up a low-tech aquarium, but have decided on a lowish-light injected CO2 planted aquarium. My goal is to have as low maintenance(for high tech) as possible.

What I have so far:

40 gallon acrylic aquarium
Coralife T5no 36" on top of aquarium
5 bags of Onyx sand over mineralized soil with dolomite and potash
Rena Filstar XP-L
Jager heater
Dual Stage Regulator(built by OldPunk!) with 5lb CO2 tank

For plants, I am thinking of glosso and dwarf hairgrass for foreground and midground and for the wide open are on the left. A few crypts and some fine leaved stem plants will go on the right.

For dosing and fertilization I will be going with the standard EI with pressurized CO2. NYC water is quite soft, with 1-1.5 kh, 1-2 gh out of the tap.
Water quality report: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/wsstate11.pdf . I am not sure about the Onyx with pressurized CO2 as it add slight buffering, any comments?

Right now I am working on the layout. The aquarium will be visible from three size, so I have to keep that in mind. I have some nice driftwood as seen in the picture. I need to find some nice rocks, which is proving difficult in Manhattan.

Any comments, ideas, criticisms would be welcome!
Thanks!
Rafael

[Ghostie]

So I went ahead and ordered the plants. Here is the list:

Baby Tears , Dwarf (Hemianthus callitrichoides)(potted)
Glossostigma (Glossostigma elatinoides)
Hairgrass, Dwarf (Eleocharis acicularis) "Mat" (3.5"x5") (Sizes Vary)
Heteranthera Stargrass (Heteranthera zosterfolia)
Hygrophila Pinnatifida
Cryptocoryne, wendtii 'Florida Sunset'
Limnophila hippuroides
Rotala Wallichii
Vesicularia montagnei 'Christmas moss'

I need to find some nice rocks for the hardscape, but not much luck locally.

I also have the dual stage regulator in hand made by OldPunk.

[Ghostie]

Hooked up the co2 yesterday and tested to see that everything is working.
Plants arrive today. Here is the updated hardscape.

[Ghostie]

Did all the planting yesterday. It went pretty smoothly.
Stats as of today:
dKH 3
Ph 6.6 @one bubble a second.
I will up the bubble count a bit to get the proper co2 concentration.

I don't quite like the rocks in the middle and the left, but I am going to wait for the plants to grow in a bit while I think about what to do with them.
Do you guys start dosing right away? How many water changes should I be doing(besides the weekly standard 50%.)

[Ghostie]

A week in update. No exploding growth yet! But the good news so far is there is no algae yet either.

The two happiest plants are the HC and Rotala Wallichii. The HC is growing and spreading and is nice and green. The Hygrophila Pinnatifida is slow growing, but the new growth looks good. The Stargrass looks happy.

For some reason the Limnophila hippuroides didn't like the aquarium and melted away, so it has all been removed. The glosso has new growth, but the leaves are fairly small and reaching up. Not much is happening with the hairgrass yet.

I increased the co2 pressure to 35 for the diffuser. I was having a hard time at 30 bar pushing enough co2 through. I also have a thread in the sediment area about the Onyx sand raising kH. So that is making it a little difficult to pin down the co2. Hopefully the Onyx sand will slow down raising the kH in a few weeks.

[Overgrowth]

Nice looking tank! Can you maybe add some more background plants to the left side to balance it with the right side?

[Ghostie]

I agree that the left side needs work. I think I am going to remove the rock. As for plants, I am not sure what I am going to put there.

[Ghostie]

So right now my KH is 5 with a ph of somewhere between 6.2-6.4 for 94 ppm of CO2. Since I have no fish, I assume this isn't a problem?

Also, some of the stargrass stems were dying from the bottom up, I trimmed and replanted the tops. Maybe the Coralife NO T5 36" PAR is too low? The stem plants aren't growing as fast as I thought they would!

I never seem to get any pearling, may that be because the filter is very efficient at moving water? When I change water, and turn off the filter, the plants pearl like crazy. When I turn the filter back on is seems to stop.

The HC seems to be the happiest plant so far with the Rotala W. coming in second. The Christmas moss hasn't done a thing yet and the Hygrophila Pinnatifida is very slow growing...

Still no algae...

[DCLyle]

Can wait to see how this one turns out. Good luck!

[HybridHerp]

nice start. be careful though with dhg, glosso, and hc....as the three will mix together over time if there is no barrier.

[Ghostie]

Thanks for looking! I don't mind if all 3 plants mix together.

So the new leaves of the Rotala Wallachi seem to be getting smaller and smaller. Also a few of the new stargrass leaves are transparent. Should I try to up my fertilizer dosing? I think My co2 is high enough at 60ppm. Maybe the 2 bulb T5no fixture isn't bright enough... What do you guys think?

I am still dosing 1/4 tsp KNO3 3x, 1/16 TSP KH2PO4 3x and trace 3x(amount suggested for 20-40 gal aquariums.) Do you guys think I should up the amount daily a bit?

kh 6
gh 13(Onyx sand sure raises these a lot!)

Still no algae.

Here is a picture of the dinky new rotala growth.