10 Gallon Planted Tank Journal

[OliveFish05]

I’m sorry for your loss.

Sorry for your loss. It’s always hard losing a fish

Thank you. It was so unexpected. He had ich, but he was acting normal. Nothing in the tank changed

You can leave her in there, or remove her if you feel uncomfortable with the idea.

Do you know if snails can spread ich? I will probably just leave her there

I do perform a 100% water change, just to get a fresh start. (Keep the media in your filter though)

Ok, I will do that! Thank you

 

[Slaphppy7]

Thank you! I will do that. It will definitely be a while before I add new fish. There is currently a little Nerite Snail in the tank, what should I do with her?

If you don't have another cycled tank, leave the snail in, should be fine

 

[PheonixKingZ]

Do you know if snails can spread ich? I will probably just leave her there

Snails can carry ich, as it can attach to any surface. I just figured you would perform the huge water change, and keep the temperature up for a week, to kill anything.

I don’t suggest you use any medication on the tank, because most meds contain ingredients that are deadly to snails.

 

[OliveFish05]

Snails can carry ich, as it can attach to any surface. I just figured you would perform the huge water change, and keep the temperature up for a week, to kill anything.

I don’t suggest you use any medication on the tank, because most meds contain ingredients that are deadly to snails.

Ok, thank you! I will leave the snail in the tank then! The temp is up and I’m going to do the water change tonight. I do have an ich medication, it said it was safe for snails and the employee who recommended it said she had used it in her tank which had snails and Cories, and I used it in my other tank, which had snails and ich, and it did not affect them, but I won’t be using it on this tank since I am in no rush to have the ich gone now that there are no fish

 

[OliveFish05]

An update on the 10 gallon! I rescaped it and have decided that once I have it more densely planted and get around to ordering some Indian Almond Leaves, I am going to be moving my Cory Hastatus into it and encouraging them to breed. Hopefully someday I will have some baby cory hastatus! I removed the rocks and put in a really awesome Manzanita driftwood branch, I messed around with it forever and love the way it looks now! The plants look awful right now, but I am ordering come Water Sprite, Red Ludwigia, and another plant I can’t remember the name of, to give it a denser planted look. I gave all my Java Fern to my sister, except one bigger plant, because I cannot stand it, I do not like Java Fern!

I am ordering a background too, probably just black. I used to have one, but it got all wrinkled and gross so I threw it away. I can maybe find a photo of when I first setup the tank and it had the background

 

[OliveFish05]

Ahah! Found it, a pic of the tank a few months ago, with its old light, which was AWFUL quality

That was when the tank was stocked with 5 neon tetras and 3 Dwarf Corydoras. It actually looked really good there, but the light couldn’t support the Ludwigia, the water sprite died for some reason, I buried the Amazon sword and dward sag too deep, and basically the only thing left is the Anubias and java fern, lol. Oh well, it was a good learning experience!

 

[UnknownFishies]

An update on the 10 gallon! I rescaped it and have decided that once I have it more densely planted and get around to ordering some Indian Almond Leaves, I am going to be moving my Cory Hastatus into it and encouraging them to breed. Hopefully someday I will have some baby cory hastatus! I removed the rocks and put in a really awesome Manzanita driftwood branch, I messed around with it forever and love the way it looks now! The plants look awful right now, but I am ordering come Water Sprite, Red Ludwigia, and another plant I can’t remember the name of, to give it a denser planted look. I gave all my Java Fern to my sister, except one bigger plant, because I cannot stand it, I do not like Java Fern!View attachment 135227


I am ordering a background too, probably just black. I used to have one, but it got all wrinkled and gross so I threw it away. I can maybe find a photo of when I first setup the tank and it had the background

Nice! Tank looks good!

 

[OliveFish05]

Thanks! I’m gonna work more on the plants, that is for sure!

Nice! Tank looks good!

 

[OliveFish05]

An update on my 10 gallon! Lots going on around here, I added bunches of new plants, including Water Sprite and Red Ludwigia, two of my favorites! And my Tail Spot Pygmy Cories (Corydoras Hastatus) are the proud parents of 40 fry!!! My little glass snail is present, as always.

 

[BluewaterBoof]

Looks awesome! For your first planted tank that looks really good!

Without much in the way of a bio load (fish waste) then your plants will be stunted from lack of nutrients. Your plants may show better coloration and stronger/healthier leaves if you supplement macros. I used to do planted tanks without fertilizer and when I finally started dosing my tanks the results were amazing. Just good for though if you’re not already dosing.

 

[BluewaterBoof]

Oh and I love that driftwood piece!

 

[UnknownFishies]

Tank looks great!!

 

[hansgruber7]

Beautiful tank. That driftwood is amazing.

 

[OliveFish05]

Looks awesome! For your first planted tank that looks really good!

Tank looks great!!

Thank you! It has been set up for 4 months, but after 3 months all my plants died due to poor lighting, so I got better letter when I could afford it, and just started planting it again, still waiting for it to fill in though! The red ludwigia is coloring up really nice, after adding it 3 days ago!

Oh and I love that driftwood piece!

Beautiful tank. That driftwood is amazing.

Thanks! It is a manzanita branch I ordered off Ebay

Without much in the way of a bio load (fish waste) then your plants will be stunted from lack of nutrients. Your plants may show better coloration and stronger/healthier leaves if you supplement macros. I used to do planted tanks without fertilizer and when I finally started dosing my tanks the results were amazing. Just good for though if you’re not already dosing.

I do dose Seachem Flourish occasionally, is this good or should I look into something else?

 

[BluewaterBoof]

Thank you! It has been set up for 4 months, but after 3 months all my plants died due to poor lighting, so I got better letter when I could afford it, and just started planting it again, still waiting for it to fill in though! The red ludwigia is coloring up really nice, after adding it 3 days ago!





Thanks! It is a manzanita branch I ordered off Ebay



I do dose Seachem Flourish occasionally, is this good or should I look into something else?

I get a little irritated with Seachem and retailers because they push Flourish so much and a lot of us get sucked into buying it without knowing it is just a micronutrient supplement. When someone sees “comprehensive” on the bottle they are led to believe it has everything needed. Sly marketing but misleading.

Plants need both macro (large) and micro (trace) nutrients for healthy growth. The more you play around with planted tanks you’ll hear things like “NPK,” which is short for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Carbon is also an important macro but because CO2 injection is a bit more expensive to do a lot of hobbyists don’t supplement that one, or they will dump toxic chemicals like Seachem Excel or Metricide into the tank because - again - clever but misleading marketing.

So you have your big three, NPK, and your micros. The Flourish you are dosing takes care of your micros and some of your potassium (K) requirements but doesn’t provide any meaningful nitrogen or phosphorus which are both extremely important. That’s why a lot of newer hobbyists don’t really see much improvement when they are dosing Flourish and nothing else. If you want strong plants with healthy leaves showing their best colors, you need to first take care of the macros. People with heavily-stocked tanks can get away with little to no fertilizer supplementation because the plants are using the nitrates and phosphates generated by the bio load. When the nutrient demand from the plants is higher than the supply from the bio load, that is when fertilizer supplementation becomes important to keep the plants healthy.

There are generally two ways for properly fertilizing a planted tank. DIY dry ferts (powders that you can order online) and liquid all-in-one fertilizer products. You will run into rabid fans of either method, I don’t really believe one is better than the other. What works better for one person may not work best for another. I personally mix my own dry ferts and have had amazing results but when I tried all-in-one products like NilocG Thrive I ran into issues even though countless others have amazing experiences with the stuff. Best advice I can give is to just pick one and see how it works for you. All-in-ones are simple quick options that take most of the calculations out of the task of fertilizing, but dosing dry ferts allows a person to micromanage how much they want of a specific compound in their tanks. There are several good online calculators like the one at RotalaButterfly that will tell you how much of each of your fertilizers to dose. All you have to do is enter in your tank size and what fertilizer you are using and it will tell you how many grams of that compound to add and how often.

One thing to be mindful of is that nuisance algae thrives off of nutrient imbalance within a tank. If you start dosing ferts and notice an algae problem developing you will need to either decrease the amount you are dosing or increase the other two points of the “triangle,” your lighting and carbon. If you want an easy to maintain low tech tank, stick with dosing just your macros and micros and keep a record of how much and how often you are dosing so you can adjust the dosage depending on when you start to see algae forming. If you want to experience explosive growth that will turn your tank into a jungle within a month or two you can crank the ferts way up but you will need to provide intense light and CO2 injection to allow the plants to use the increased fertilizers.

Start off small and work your way up. You won’t ruin anything. If you overdose your ferts and run into an algae problem just back off the ferts for a bit and do some large water changes to get the levels back down. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I’m no Tom Barr but I have a pretty decent amount of experience with both low and high tech planted tanks and will be happy to offer advice based on my experiences

Happy planting!