25 Gallon Planted Community Journey V2

It happens for new plants to melt as probably the conditions in your tank are way different than the one they came from, possibly from a high CO2 tank, so adjusting period is needed in a low tech tank. Cut your light period down and turn off one of the bulbs if you have multiple ones. You need 6hrs a day light, low intensity in the next couple of months till the plants regrow.
 
What you need to do is cut the melting part of the stem each day if you have to, and replant. If you leave small portion rotting, it will affect the entire plant. Cut melting leaves too.
The same happened to me recently and from big bunches of some types of plants I was left with a stem each. The survivors grew back and multiplied happily.
 
The hydrophila you got is really a tough plant and will regrow even from a bit of stem with one leaf on it.
 
daizeUK said:
Some plants simply don't like high levels of ammonia.  That might explain the melting during cycling.  I'm not sure what they are, maybe a hygrophila?
 
Did you stick the leaves in the sand after the plants melted?  Aww bless!
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  There must be a good online plant retailer in Oz?  Wish I could recommend one for you.
 
When I saw the wood with the terracotta pot stuck on it... I thought it looked like a one-eyed spider, did make me laugh!
About the leaves, I thought it was worth a shot ;) haha and at that point I was so angry that I was ready to try anything ! 
 
for the last few days Ammonia has been 0 as I'm restarting the cycle, so I don't think that could be it, but maybe it is... hmmm
 
I can look around a bit more, the issue is that postage price is almost always more than what I would be spending on plants, say $20 to ship $15 worth of plants :/ so my thoughts were to just take that $20 I would have spent on postage, and use it to get say $35 of plants haha. (strong mathematicians only here :p )

TheStretchedElf said:
Dude, you need to call Lt. Ripley right now.
Is that the guy that makes the 'believe it or not' books? haha I'm so confused :p

snazy said:
It happens for new plants to melt as probably the conditions in your tank are way different than the one they came from, possibly from a high CO2 tank, so adjusting period is needed in a low tech tank. Cut your light period down and turn off one of the bulbs if you have multiple ones. You need 6hrs a day light, low intensity in the next couple of months till the plants regrow.
 
What you need to do is cut the melting part of the stem each day if you have to, and replant. If you leave small portion rotting, it will affect the entire plant. Cut melting leaves too.
The same happened to me recently and from big bunches of some types of plants I was left with a stem each. The survivors grew back and multiplied happily.
 
The hydrophila you got is really a tough plant and will regrow even from a bit of stem with one leaf on it.
Awesome thanks for that man, Ill give that a go. Unfortunately I do only have one bulb running, but I'll cut the photo period down to 6 hours.
 
I am seeing some new growth happening along the stems and I'll grab some photos of it soon, I assume this is a good sign?
 
Thanks again
 
Hi Robbo, sorry to hear about the problems your having with plants and sorry I can't have any input as to why they are melting (everything I thought has already been mentioned). But I can help out with an online plant retailer. These two places is where I get all my plants from, their shipping prices are decent and they do combined shipping as well. their plants are great quality and I've never had one melt on me.
 
http://stores.ebay.com.au/aquariumplantswholesale
http://stores.ebay.com.au/zaquatics
 
TaurineLittle said:
Hi Robbo, sorry to hear about the problems your having with plants and sorry I can't have any input as to why they are melting (everything I thought has already been mentioned). But I can help out with an online plant retailer. These two places is where I get all my plants from, their shipping prices are decent and they do combined shipping as well. their plants are great quality and I've never had one melt on me.
 
http://stores.ebay.com.au/aquariumplantswholesale
http://stores.ebay.com.au/zaquatics
That's brilliant thank you!!
 
I've just been looking through and saw this plant,
 
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/6-Stems-Ammannia-gracilis-Live-Aquarium-Aquatic-Plants-Fishfood-Pond-Fishtank-/151026004346?pt=AU_Pet_Supplies&hash=item2329d9f17a
 
I'm thinking it might look rather nice either instead of the corskrew val over to the right, or just to replace the hydrophillia I have on the left behind the driftwood. What do you reckon???
 
I personally prefer the Ammannia Gracilis and it depends on what you want to achieve, do you want to hide the filter intake pipe? I think having a tall background plant behind the pot on the left side would look good, but I would also try to hide as much of the hardware in the tank as possible (but thats just me).
 
TaurineLittle said:
I personally prefer the Ammannia Gracilis and it depends on what you want to achieve, do you want to hide the filter intake pipe? I think having a tall background plant behind the pot on the left side would look good, but I would also try to hide as much of the hardware in the tank as possible (but thats just me).
Yeah I my plan was to grow tall background plants to hide all the hardware. Sorry I mustn't have said this correctly, the setup with the pot on the left is only for a few more days while the driftwood I bought is soaking. Here is what the actual tank once the wood goes back in will look like.
 
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So my plan is either; drop the plant in that pic behind the wood, and replace it with once of those pink/red leafed varieties, then fill the right hand side with tall corkscrew val as a backdrop, and the small crypts in front of them as a midground plant. OR find something else completely and do it a different way. The other plant I dont mind is the green cabomba, I just really want something with a different texture/colour to the plants in there at the moment which are all long dark green leafed, hence why I jumped at those pink plants :p haha any suggestions would be sweet as, cheers.
 
Yeah, sounds good! I like the idea of the coconut shell surrounded by tall vals :) ever thought about Lugwigia? there are a lots of different types, quite a few of them don't require much in the way of ferts or/and co2 and are relatively easy to grow. There are quite a few on those ebay stores I linked before.
Haha well the cabomba is hardy and fast growing so I doubt you could kill it :p looks pretty decent too.
 
I've heard alot about it but never really looked into the Lugwigia, might give it a closer look. I think I will stick with the val on the right though, and try to grow that plant on the left back to full health as it does look quite nice behind that wood I think :)
I'm also going to be grabbing an Anubias Nana or too to superglue onto that driftwood piece later on down the track.
Any tips on keeping the plants healthier? I may give in and buy some sort of fert sooner rather than later, but very unlikely that I'll find the money for a co2 system. The little crypts in there have brown algea covering their leaves and they dont look too nice at all, but I was expecting them to bounce back in a few weeks, hopefully :p ahha
 
Yeah Anubias are a good hardly slow growing plant, I had one that I bought from the LFS on a piece of driftwood, I got it for half price because the owner thought the plant was dead, it's now healthy and got a whole bunch of leaves coming off it! With Co2, you could always go the DIY system (costs about $10-20 including a decent diffuser off ebay). I've had a DIY since I set my semi planted tank up about 4 - 6 months ago and have had great results. With healthy plants it depends on a few things.
First: how hardly the plant is.
Second: The nutrients in your water, ie. ferts and/or a dirted tank.
Third: the ammount of dissolved carbon in your tank (when your plants photosynthesize and grow they take in nitrates, nutrients and carbon and create oxygen) so increasing the ammount of available carbon (even if its a little bit) would help, either from a DIY co2 system or liquid carbon additives (beware high carbon contents in aquariums are harmful to fish so just be cautions).
Fourth: Lighting, you need to know how much light your plants need to optimally photosynthesize, wattage per gallon is usually the general guideline for measuring this. most plants require <2wpg, the more high-tech and colourful plants usually require more light up to >3wpg, you can still grow high-tech plants in lower light but they just wont grow as well and look as good as they would in higher light.
Fith: Water quality. In Australia our tap water has a few heavy metals and chlorine in it (depending on your area) so when you do water changes you may be putting heavy metals and ions into your tank, what I've done for future water changes is I've invested in a carbon block filter, the ones you hook up to your taps for drinking water and such. They filter out almost all heavy metals and chlorine.
 
I've most likely covered a lot of things you already knew and in no way are these in order of importance, it was just the easiest way for me to explain it haha, but thought I would say it anyway.
As for the brown algae you can just rub it off the leaves, try not to pull the leaves off while you do it though :p
 
Diatoms are normal in a new set-up especially with ammonia being dosed.  Just keep wiping the leaves off and the plants will be fine.
 
I like the idea of vallis around your coconut cave too :) The plants look good!!! :good:
 
Awesome thanks for all the feedback guys! Sorry I haven't given any updates in a while school assessment has been really hectic the last few days, had 2 hours sleep on friday night and 3 and a half last night :p So excuse me in advance if I write any sentences that don't really make octopus. ;)
 
Okay so, I visited a really old friend of mine, who knows more about aquariums than anyone I have ever met. He used to run a store but it closed a few years ago and by chance I ran into him while meeting with his son on the weekend, needless to say many smiles were had that day! Here's a list of the stuff I picked up from his son (who now runs the store as a private cichlid breeder from their garage).
 
- 20kg bag of gravel identical to the bag I bought off his father 5 years ago! :p pretty cool hey!
 
- Seachem Stability (see photo)
 
- More activated carbon for my external. Turns out the stuff in there is over 2 years old! Oops! :/ 
 
In addition to that, he told me the way he has always removed tannins from driftwood is by soaking the wood in a bucket of temp around 28C (82F) or really as high as you can get it, and by adding 1 tablespoon per 10 L of your average household bi-carbonate of soda, to raise the ph up. Because the tannic acid released from the wood has a ph of about 5-6, raising the ph in the soaking water helps to rapidly draw the tannins out as the ph attempts to stabilise.
 
So for the last 3 days I have had an incredibly bad smelling bucket of slimy wood sap, acid and hot water throughout my bedroom. 
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Hiro, the son of my friend told me this exact stuff was used to completely cycle 32 tanks in 24 hours when they had to move the store (and live fish) from one side of the city to the other. 
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Hey Eagle, found this lying around. Cyanoacrylate, means its all sweet, right?
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Here is the new look with the extra gravel, I had a bit of a debate with my dad about the depth of it :p. He insists it needs to be 2-3 inches deep in order for the roots to prosper, which I sort of agree with, but still plan on taking about a third of all that out , just looks out of proportion to me. :/ 
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I also set up my second 10 gal tank today as well, and filled it out with the same gravel. So it should soon be set up to be identical in water parameters to the larger tank. My question is, should I use this as a quarantine tank? I really only know the name and not how it works or how to do it so can anyone run me through how to use it as a quarantine tank and what to do with it? Thanks.
 
Once everything is fully settled in it will most likely become a cory panda breeding project, with a few red cherry shrimp. :)
 
Side note: I've discovered that my flow in my tank maybe isn't as great as it could be, the plants do gently sway but for an example, if a gourami made a bubble nest it certainly wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon. Are there any ways to increase this? Without buying a new filter as currently my external filter is worth more than the rest of my entire setup combined... 
 
Redirect the output if you can...
 
That glue looks good - and you are correct, the gravel looks very deep... I'd suggest you slope the gravel.  About 1.5" in the front and about 3" in the back.  This will give the tank dimension as well.  You could even do a "side slope" in addition to that and raise the level of one back corner to about 4.5" and slope down to 3" on the other side, and 1.5" in the front.
 
eaglesaquarium said:
Redirect the output if you can...
 
That glue looks good - and you are correct, the gravel looks very deep... I'd suggest you slope the gravel.  About 1.5" in the front and about 3" in the back.  This will give the tank dimension as well.  You could even do a "side slope" in addition to that and raise the level of one back corner to about 4.5" and slope down to 3" on the other side, and 1.5" in the front.
Sounds like a good plan, I'll do that in the morning then! :) The output spray bar is pointing straight down at the moment to get max flow onto the plants, would this provide the best circulation? 
This weekend I'll buy probably 3 bunches of corkscrew val for the right corner, and the first of the fish!! :D Very exciting, going to grab the 4 platies to start with as they will 1. hopefully graze on some of the lingering algae, 2. produce a fair bit of waste and 3. be able to survive the unestablished conditions that I wouldn't test the tetra in :) Only question is, do I go with 2 of 2 different variations (2 red wag 2 yellow wag) or all 4 of one variation (4 red wags). The only thing tempting me to go with different strains is that I want babies that don't just produce a colony of identical fish :p
 

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