Designed By A 4 Year Old - 10 Gallon

[OldMan47]

The live plants are always going to look better than plastic, as you are seeing in your tank. The plastic mesh pots with stuff around the roots are just to allow the grower to grow plants partially emersed and easily lift them from the water to ship out. The usual practice is to remove the plastic mesh pot by cutting it off, then remove as much as you can of the material that is packed around the roots. Be careful with the anubias, they do not take well to having their rhizomes buried in the substrate, it kills the plant. Plants that have been growing emersed will become softer as they adapt to being fully submerged. In the case of Crypts, they often will lose all of their leaves in the process, then grow new ones that are better adapted to underwater growth.

 

[jmiller]

Thanks for the explanation. I currently have the anubias tied down to a rock setting behind the bigger rock. I'm not liking how it looks. When I remove all the packing I'm going to try and attach it to the bigger rock some how. On the Ludwiga Natans & Water Wisteria they came bunched with several stems (all having roots) so I just planted them bunched up, do I need to seperate them some of leave them bunched?

 

[waterdrop]

Hi John, That layout looks absolutely great! Don't you think its interesting how good the live plants can look immediately, despite all the re-arrangements we did on the plastic ones? Really like the little low carpet down front in the curve of the rock - looks great there. Like the vals being the whispy last thing as the bank of plants fades out to the black substrate. I think that looks very natural.

Agree with OM47 - the stuff around the roots needs to be taken off very gently as its easy to break roots doing it. I know that with bunch plants you do want to take the anchors off and they will indeed do well if each stem is separated but it would actually be a good question to the planted members as to how well variations of that will work. For example, would some/all stem plants do ok if still bunched together.. I just don't know the detailed answer. Also, as OM47 says, you need to be prepared that sometimes not all species make it when introduced and some may soften up and do poorly before a comeback, as mentioned. I sometimes find that frustrating.. just my experience. The fact that you are dosing right from the beginning though puts you in a better position than I was in some former trials though.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[jmiller]

Overall I'm real happy with the way it turned out. There are a few minor changes I'll make to it this weekend but other than that I'll just plan on watching it grow. I also plan on a major filter cleaning also. I got a lot of plant pieces sucked up in the filter.

I haven't started dosing yet. I wanted to see what they would look like first without doing anything to them. If things start going south I can always start, because I already have it.

Thank you for all your help.

 

[waterdrop]

Oh, I'd have done just the opposite. A new tank that's had no buildup of fertilizer-type nutrients is a death-trap for plants and so the only way to counter that a bit is actually to be dosing it some prior to them even going in. Again, I'm not an expert and there are a ton of variables but plant beginners like you and me who are not running CO2 tanks are already at a major disadvantage putting plants in, I feel.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[jmiller]

I never thought of it that way. I'm may start up this weekend then.

 

[jmiller]

Got the foam off the Dwarf Baby Tears & Anubias and made a few minor adjustments to some of the others. I also tried to seperate the stems plants but it just wasn't working. Every time I would get a few planted they would start to uproot when I was moving the gravel to plant another one. I finally just ended up bunching the Wisteria and putting the Ludwiga is smaller bunches. I'm still not satisfied with the Anubias placement but I'll just leave it for now.

Here is an overview of the layout:

 

[waterdrop]

Your open attitude and frequent pictures make for good learning and I'm hoping I may learn a few things too from your experience. I have only a couple of small comments I can add about the stem plants. One is just that what you're describing is just what I remember from years ago. It seemed important to unweight them but it was next to impossible sometimes to get them to stay down in the gravel. To that, I've added a couple of comments in my recent years, one coming from a plant expert I met at the Atlanta conference who said to just leave stem plants floating in the tank for a few days until they started to get some roots going down.. and a related comment here on TFF where a plant person warned that when you leave them floating there's the problem that they grow towards the light and you can end up with a stem that's bending ways you don't want it to. So I don't know.. perhaps turning or otherwise forcing them each day to lie in different floating positions while you wait for some roots.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[jmiller]

My understanding, from what I've read, is that one downside of bunching the stem plants together is that you will loose the lower leaves due to not enough light getting to them. If that's the only problem then I won't worry about it. In my tank I'm using them for cover toward the top of the tank anyway. Knowing what I know now if I had to do it over again I would have changed to balck sand or a much smaller gravel. Planting in regular gravel isn't easy.

 

[Dave Spencer]

If you intend to carry on with planted tanks, then the most useful single thing you will buy is a twelve inch pair of tweezers for planting. Why anybody tries any other method is a mystery.

Plants are definitely easy for planting in a finer substrate. As for how dense to bunch them, take a look at some aquascaping web sites. We get away with some pretty dense planting.

Dave.

 

[jmiller]

Here is a two week update. They are showing some growth even though I have started the fert yet. I'm still having problem with some of the stem plants lifting but nothing is floating.

Freshly planted:

A few minutes ago:

 

[waterdrop]

Looking really nice there!