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They require a lot less maintenance, that's for sure haha. I've always wanted to have a bigger tank until I picture myself doing water changes and trimmings.
5 Gallons - Vertical Iwagumi + Dutch Mixture
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I can see less maintenance with easy water changes and small trims, however is your margin for error super small? I always figured a large tank give your more room for error and small tank if one little thing is off it would blow thing out of proportion. Curious to hear your experience with that.
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Yeah, what you say is true. I would say for a beginners is better to start with a medium sized tank for that same reason. But once you get the hang of it, and know how much to add of what and when to do it and so forth, there is no reason for your tank parameters to swing drastically. Once your tank reaches a good maturity and you have a high plant biomass and diversity, and good, healthy detritus, they will do the rest of the job in maintaining the parameters stable.
One issue I had was when I started to use a different dechlorinator for after water changes and I was putting the wrong amount and caused some shrimps to die, but that was several months ago and it was entirely my fault for misunderstanding the directions. Aside from that I haven't had any other serious issue with this tank.
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Week 43
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I decided to let this duckweed grow. I kind of like how it looks but it blocks a little light for the underwater plants, though not a lot. I will try to maintain this much duckweed for a while and keep an aye on the lower plants and see if they start to give any signs of lack of lighting, and if they do then I will reduce the amount of duckweed present. It also becomes a bit annoying when doing maintenance but I'm liking the looks of it and it is a good alternative for an aquarium lid I think.
I decided to let this duckweed grow. I kind of like how it looks but it blocks a little light for the underwater plants, though not a lot. I will try to maintain this much duckweed for a while and keep an aye on the lower plants and see if they start to give any signs of lack of lighting, and if they do then I will reduce the amount of duckweed present. It also becomes a bit annoying when doing maintenance but I'm liking the looks of it and it is a good alternative for an aquarium lid I think.
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Week 52 
bounce:1 Year:bounce
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bounce:1 Year:bounce 
It's been a while since my last post. Since then, these are the main things that have changed in the tank:
1- All the shrimps died. I am not sure why, they slowly started to decrease in numbers until all of them were gone. Maybe it was due to the accumulation of too much detritus in the substrate layer. Due to the small size of the aquarium and the heavy plant volume covering the soil suface, it is kind of difficult to clean the substrate, but I started to take some measures. I have started using a hose to suction all of this powdery dirt that has accumulated by pressing the hose against the HC foreground layer. This way, the HC acts as a filter, allowing the suction of the dusty dirt while preventing bigger pieces of substrate to pass through. This also helps the plants to root better since they can't root too much in that powdery dust. By extracting it, only the bigger rocks are left creating better anchoring for plants. However, after extracting the dust, many of the HC roots are now exposed and loose so it will take some days for the roots to find new anchoring.
2- I accidentally threw away all of the duckweed. I was doing some heavy HC trimming and then removed all the leaves from the water surface not noticing that I was also removing all of the duckweed along with it. The duckweed was getting a bit annoying anyways because it grew too fast. I kind of liked how it looked when it covered portion of the water surface though, so I might get some more in the future.
3- As you can see the middle size rock has been completely covered by the HC. I am not sure if I should leave it like that or if I should let some of the rock be visible. Let me know what you think looks best.
1- All the shrimps died. I am not sure why, they slowly started to decrease in numbers until all of them were gone. Maybe it was due to the accumulation of too much detritus in the substrate layer. Due to the small size of the aquarium and the heavy plant volume covering the soil suface, it is kind of difficult to clean the substrate, but I started to take some measures. I have started using a hose to suction all of this powdery dirt that has accumulated by pressing the hose against the HC foreground layer. This way, the HC acts as a filter, allowing the suction of the dusty dirt while preventing bigger pieces of substrate to pass through. This also helps the plants to root better since they can't root too much in that powdery dust. By extracting it, only the bigger rocks are left creating better anchoring for plants. However, after extracting the dust, many of the HC roots are now exposed and loose so it will take some days for the roots to find new anchoring.
2- I accidentally threw away all of the duckweed. I was doing some heavy HC trimming and then removed all the leaves from the water surface not noticing that I was also removing all of the duckweed along with it. The duckweed was getting a bit annoying anyways because it grew too fast. I kind of liked how it looked when it covered portion of the water surface though, so I might get some more in the future.
3- As you can see the middle size rock has been completely covered by the HC. I am not sure if I should leave it like that or if I should let some of the rock be visible. Let me know what you think looks best.
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Hello Rrny,
Sorry for the super late response. For the ferts I use Seachem products. My experience with them has been good so far. I use the chart below, you can find it in their website. Although I don't use all the products listed there. For my 5 gallon tank, I need to adapt the quantities based on the ratio of volume of ferts to volume of tank given there, so for example for Excel I doze 0.5 mL every day, though in reality I now use between 1ML to 1.5mL because the tank has a lot of plants in it.
Above are all the ferts that I use, I also use the Kordom amQuel dechlorinator
I hope this helps. I will be posting some more pictures of the tank soon.
Cheers.
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9/19/2018
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Here are a few more photos. I am still trying to get those background plants in the picture, literally. Since I replanted the top cuttings they have been growing very slowly, but are starting to gain a bit of speed now. The formidable HC mountain has covered the rock entirely. I will leave it like this for some time because I kind of like how it looks. Unfortunately the fish don't like swimming too much when the lights are on. This makes the tank look a bit empty of fauna. They do swim a lot when the lights are off. Is this normal for these tetras?
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This throw back picture of all the HC I once had. All HC I currently have came from this tiny bit of plant.
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I got some pearling going on. It's been more prominent in the past few days, maybe because I've been more consistent with the fertilizing regime.... Sometimes I slack off for a few days, but when I am consistent the plants really show it.
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Enjoy.
Here are a few more photos. I am still trying to get those background plants in the picture, literally. Since I replanted the top cuttings they have been growing very slowly, but are starting to gain a bit of speed now. The formidable HC mountain has covered the rock entirely. I will leave it like this for some time because I kind of like how it looks. Unfortunately the fish don't like swimming too much when the lights are on. This makes the tank look a bit empty of fauna. They do swim a lot when the lights are off. Is this normal for these tetras?
This throw back picture of all the HC I once had. All HC I currently have came from this tiny bit of plant.
I got some pearling going on. It's been more prominent in the past few days, maybe because I've been more consistent with the fertilizing regime.... Sometimes I slack off for a few days, but when I am consistent the plants really show it.
Enjoy.
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Yeah, some of the leaves have a bit of algae coating on them, though overall they are pretty healthy. One thing that I've noticed is that I barely get any algae on the glass, and when it grows there it does it very, very slowly so sometimes I can be several weeks without cleaning the glass. There is still algae there and you can notice it in certain areas, but that's ok, as long asit's not a lot and it doesn't overly interfere with the appearance.
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Thanks, the tank still needs more improvements, so I hope it will look even better in the coming weeks. The rotala indica 'bonsai' is sort of a slow grower, especially since I don't have CO2, but sure. I will let you know when I am about to do my next trimming for those.
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Do you still have this tank? How is it doing?
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Hey Ryan,
I have not been active in here for a while. I just logged in today and saw your comment. Yes, the tank is still going. It must be somewhere around 2.5 years old now, almost 3!!! Wow, time flies. However it has gone through some... let's say, periods of "slight abandonment..." followed by periods of "let me try to fix it again". Right now it's kind of in a in-between phase, sorta getting better.
Below are some pics so you have an Idea of the current situation.
The major changes have been that I had to end up removing all the HC that was growing on the rocks, because it was covering all of the beautiful hardscape textures, then the Fissidens moss started to creep in everywhere and cover the rock as just the same, or worse. I don't like the way it looks even less, but the problem is that this Fissidens has turned into sort of an infestation, growing everywhere. It does not grow as a pretty ball anymore, and it is very difficult to remove. I have to pull individual little clumps of it from the rock and it grows again all over. Thinking about replanting some HC on the rocks again, but to keep better controlled this time. I don't know, I am running out of ideas with this tank since it is so small and I am limited to what I can do to it without redoing the whole scape.
On other news, I've been considering buying a bigger aquarium for some time now, so that I can a create fuller scape and not be cramped by the tiny size. Actually, today I bought a new tank that I will be setting up soon. It is an ADA 90P!!! so it is about 10 times bigger in volume as my 5 gallons (plenty of room to get creative). I am super excited about it. I've been thinking about doing a real high tech aquarium this time with a nice CO2 system and all that, to see what comes out. I will be creating a new journal for that one. So stay tuned for it in about a month or so.
I might continue to post some updates on this tank if I can manage to get it looking a bit better again. But to be honest, I am a bit bored of this same scape by now.
Anyways,
Thanks for following along, Till next time.
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Update 4/11/2020
I removed some of the fissidens growing on the rock a bit. It's better, but I still might need to remove even more. In the following days I will be planting a bit of HC in between two rocks at the top. Need to add soil to that crevice. I trimmed the AR a bit last week and it's now small and compact, looking good. It starts to look bad when it grows its leaves too much and looks out of proportion for this scape.
I don't like that the outflow piece is sitting right in the middle of the focal point. It becomes too obvious. I've been thinking about moving it to one of the corners, but the problem is that the plants cover it and the leaves get stuck on the small openings of the tube, clugging it a bit. Maybe if I put some kind of metal mesh around the bottom part, covered by the plants...
HC will need trimming soon.
That's all for now, here're some pics
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Update: 4/19/2020
I already added some HC in between the two rocks (on top). I will post pictures of that once it takes off. For now, these shots are from before doing the HC trim. I was going to take pictures of the after, but now the water is cloudy, so next week I will.
Enjoy
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Playing with the selective focus tool on my phone, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Here it kind of did.
I already added some HC in between the two rocks (on top). I will post pictures of that once it takes off. For now, these shots are from before doing the HC trim. I was going to take pictures of the after, but now the water is cloudy, so next week I will.
Enjoy
Playing with the selective focus tool on my phone, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Here it kind of did.
Bump:
Thanks. Yeah I am doing another tank now with CO2, very excited about how it will look. Not very excited about the faster plant growth and more maintenance, but oh well...
Bump:
Yeah, looking forward to that one.:laugh2:
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Update 4/23/2020
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I added the soil in the crevice between the two rocks to plant HC. Still need to remove more fissidens from the rocks to make it contrast better. Also, that red AR in the center, I am planning to move it slightly more to the left. The SR on the left down corner takes ages to grow, there needs to be more growth there, but I think it might be because the water flow has a hard time reaching that area due to the rocks, same thing with Rotala indica 'bonsai', it's looking a bit ratty, and super slow growth...
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^^This is a closer shot of the HC planted between the rocks.^^
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^^I've noticed the Ludwigia repens has lost a bit of the deep red. Maybe because I've been dosing more Excel to fight some hair algae? Not sure, still lush though^^
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Some pearling going on
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I added the soil in the crevice between the two rocks to plant HC. Still need to remove more fissidens from the rocks to make it contrast better. Also, that red AR in the center, I am planning to move it slightly more to the left. The SR on the left down corner takes ages to grow, there needs to be more growth there, but I think it might be because the water flow has a hard time reaching that area due to the rocks, same thing with Rotala indica 'bonsai', it's looking a bit ratty, and super slow growth...
^^This is a closer shot of the HC planted between the rocks.^^
^^I've noticed the Ludwigia repens has lost a bit of the deep red. Maybe because I've been dosing more Excel to fight some hair algae? Not sure, still lush though^^
Some pearling going on
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