I always wanted to build a high tech tank, I got my tax return money and here we go! Last week, I went to the local LFS and purchased most of the stuff I needed to setup one up and got the rest of here on the BST forum.

Day 0: Just waiting for some things to come in.


Day 1: Got Glosso and Rotala Nanjenshan in so I filled up the tank partially and started the planting process.


Day 2: Glosso pearling (will trim later once they start growing runners), but happy that they are already growing new leaves after just one day.


Did some re-aquascaping with the substrate (that's why the water is a little murky)...just need the glosso to grow. Also waiting for Eros to come in, which will be planted in front of the rotalas.

Day 3: Got Ero Parkeri in and added a rock for the center piece. Just purchased a few stems of Tonina fluviatilis Lotus Blossom from Crispino which should arrive on Saturday.
Seeking a red midground plant to give some color variety.

Day 10: Trimmed glosso, got in rotala colorata, syngonanthus belem, tonina fluviatilis.



Day 16: Rescaped added some more syngonathus belem and hydrothix gardneri

like the layout. good luck with the glosso, that plant is high maintenance to keep low growing.

youve got some algae on the rock, you may want to take care of the problem before it starts to germinate elsewhere.

the algae grew from day 10 to day 16 if you look

I've cut back on my lighting from 12h to 10h to deal with the algae on the rocks, there's also some spot algae on the bottom leaves of the tonina, upped my phosphate doses and it's going away slowly.

Hoping the rotala nanjenshan grows a bit quicker, so i can toss out those bare stems. There's about 9-10 more stems that are just sprouting, which might be enough. We'll see though.

Day 32:

Suffered a horrible diatom bloom around Day 20, everything was covered in diatoms, green spot algae and hair algae. On Day 29, I introduced amano shrimp and Day 30 yellow neocardinas. They've done a tremendous job getting the tank back to where it needs to be. The water is a little murky from the peat moss, so I'll live with that since I have to have it.



Amano Shrimp doing it's thing:



Yellow Neos:

Might want to cut back on the lighting abit more, are you dosing co2?

I've had co2 since day 1, the diatom and algae bloom was just due to new tank syndrome. Another day or two and all the algae will be completely gone. i kind of wished i took a before and after photo to see how much of a different the shrimp made on the diatoms. The only thing I'm considering doing with lighting is actually picking up a new system to increase light into the tank, because i'm not getting enough light to my rotala colorata. They should be growing red, but just getting green growth. Also, wished that the glosso would grow stems horizontally, but I think that's going to take along time, since they were tall stems which i first purchased them at ADA.

Nice tank! Which manufacturer makes this tank?

unfortunately i'm not sure who makes the tank, got it at the LFS for $25. It was a pretty killer deal so I picked it up. I was originally looking at like a 12g long, but I just couldn't resist lol.

Day 36:

I had to trim the toninas because they had funny growth on the stems, which was due to USPS's delayed shipping. Also, that i planted them in a bad spot where they didn't get good lighting, so the bottom of the stem was starting to die off. I still need to pickup another lighting fixture so that the rotala colorata will grow red, as opposed to green.

Glosso y u no grow faster...and horizontal

try upping your CO2 a little, the gloss will go horizontal easier with higher CO2, IME.
also, you need to train it. cut any verticle growth, and replant it but try and plant it diagonal, as flat as you can. eventually the plant will start producing only horizontal growth.

i'm very scared of turning up the co2, i don't want to gas the shrimp. i've been trimming the glosso every two weeks, just taking a lot longer than i expected.

Looking great so far, Im curious what kind of lighting is that? T5? How many bulbs?