40 gallon breeder journal

Thanks to both of you! The pearl weed grows like crazy but I'm excited to see the blyxa and ludwigias grow nice and thick.

I added a submersible pump on the opposite side of the aquaclear to try to avoid dead spots

Here are a few random pics of the tank. Sorry for the cell phone pics. Quality is rough. We haven't had an actual camera in years because we always use our phones.

Also notice my janky ass light setup. I "needed" to get this tank setup in place of my older 20long. I used wire hangers that I bent into place. The wire hangers surprisingly fit perfectly into the leg openings on the side of the light. I drilled small holes and used hook screws that have a rubber coating which grips the wire hanger really well. It's difficult to remove the light to wipe off the underside so I feel pretty confident it's not going anywhere. I know it's not the safest thing of course but I have dropped this light straight into the water before with amazingly no ill effects. This light of course makes things hard because of the spread. If you look at the long pic you'll see the spread. Makes stems in the back lean forward. It will be nice to eventually get this tank out from under the counter on a stand with 2x finnex 24/7's.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well seasons changed and the sun starting hitting my tank through a sliver of window and got me some green water
So I took it as an opportunity to completely redo the tank.
The plant bin I also put my fish in the bin and put in a small pump to circulate the water as this rescape took from 10pm to 3:30am. Long but fun as usual. I decided to use some drift wood this time. I boiled the wood as I find this is the quickest way to water log wood I also decided it was time to paint the background black which my son helped out with I wanted the wood to sit a little higher and hopefully focus the attention on the rule of 1/3's so I purchased some cheap gravel and used lava rock chunks to build a hill found an open box sun sun 304b cheap which I was stoked about. I will be adding a reactor soon for better co2 saturation and distribution. Here's finishing adding back the substrate which is a mix of ecocomplete, black sand and cheap gravel under the roots.

And now planted

I ended up tossing more than 50% of the original plant mass so it will take some time to fill back in. The focal point is hopefully going to be the ludwigia super red that is positioned in and right behind the roots but it will take a month or so to get bushy again. I may switch this plant out to a different red plant (suggestions welcome) as this plant has been causing me some headaches with poor leaf development. I'm thinking Monte Carlo for the foreground. The pearl weed got old for me pretty quick but I do have some growing nicely in my 15 gallon. Just grew very fast and gets tall as it spreads out. Want something that will stay lower.

Side note; the ludwigia repens deformed growth pretty much went away by me not dosing micros at all for the past ten days or so. I put dosing on hold when the green water came on.

Tell me what you think. Foreground ideas and possible replacement ideas for my lud super red mini.

Thanks for looking.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't have much of a clean up crew in this tank ( 3 ottos and snails) so I have decided to make some live stock changes. I am going to rehome the rams so I can keep Shrimp in this tank. I am going to get 10/15 amanos and some variant of neocaridinas. I am going to keep my current small schools of neons and white clouds but add more neons or cardinals to get better schooling. I have just added 2 black mollies, sex unknown. And they went to work quick on some fuzz/hair algae on the blyxa. hair algae is such a nuisance. Seems any little mistake can get it going quick.

I need some help with scaping ideas for the foreground. Here's what I'm working with
I was thinking crypt parva on the far left side, s repens on the far right side, downoi in between the lobelia and blyxa (in front of it middle) and Monte Carlo taking up all the space in between. Thoughts? And secondly if it was yours what would you put there?

Thanks for reading and any input.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The photo doesn't due it justice but the black algae looks a really cool red when dying