[Pork Pie]

Hey guys I started this tank about a month ago as a dry start after about a year of researching and acquiring all of the equipment.

Hard to tell the growth from the pictures, but first one is right after I planted on March 2nd. Second one is March 20, and the third is from today. I've been taking a picture a day on my GoPro, hence the wide angle on the second 2.

Had some die off right away in the higher spots of the scape, still thinking about what to replace it with.

This week i've started noticing a good amount of gnats flying around in there. Some get stuck in water pools on the saran wrap and end up getting roasted from the light. How bad is this? What should I do to get rid of them? Right now I spray about once every 3 days with a mix of RO water and Excel and air the tank out at the same time. I have also started noticing some of the leaves are dying off. Too much light? Its on for about 10 hours now.

Any advice would be great! This is my first tank, and I don't know why I chose to do HC!


Bonus of where the tank is located!

 

[JoseRivera]

Is there a reason you're using ro and excel? The reason you do a dry start is because the air is rich in co2 so you dont need the excel. I would just used water from the tap thats declorinated, if you want to mix tap and ro that would work too. I had good success with a daily spraying, i even had a very elevated slope and the plants up there still rooted. Just make sure u leave a hole on top so gas exchange can occur

 

[ShrimpCardinum]

Wow how long is that tank? It looks like it's more than 12 gallons and it looks awesome!

 

[Pork Pie]

Is there a reason you're using ro and excel? The reason you do a dry start is because the air is rich in co2 so you dont need the excel. I would just used water from the tap thats declorinated, if you want to mix tap and ro that would work too. I had good success with a daily spraying, i even had a very elevated slope and the plants up there still rooted. Just make sure u leave a hole on top so gas exchange can occur

I've only mixed with RO and Excel for the past 2 weeks. I did it because I noticed the gnats and figured it might help with that problem, might of made it worse? Because there's more gnats now haha.

I used RO cause I have no idea what our tap water has in it, and the LFS is only down the street. I typically spray the whole tank, and once I notice there's not as many water droplets on the leaves I spray again. I can see some of the roots against the glass and they're deep, so they're for sure rooted, just wanted to get them to grow at much before I flood it.

Maybe the gnats are from the plants that died off? I made sure to remove as much dead material as possible.

As far as the plants that have some leaves turning yellow...suggestions? Light too high?

The tank dimensions are 35.4" x 8.3" x 9.4"