About To Give Up On Real Plants Again!

[danski]

looks like you have all the makings of a nice tank there..what substrate are you using? did you say you had a fert routine?

 

[cabbie]

thats better, you actually have true aquatic plants in there now (greenline are brilliant aren't they), you may get the odd one that dies off (not all plants thrive in the same conditions) but give it a couple of weeks and you will be taking cuttings and splitting plants down where they have grown so well

 

[Dave Spencer]

Have you got around 40W in the tank at the moment? If so, that would make your tank something like a mid tech with medium light levels, a decent substrate and DIY CO2. Plant uptake of nutrients shouldn`t bee too great, so your substrate, plus what comes in your tap water may well support your plants without needing to fertilise the water column with N, K and P. Just make sure you continue with a decent trace regime.

You have what appears to be three good tubes in there for plant growth (I have an Interpet Triplus and it is excellent), but I would suggest that purely for aesthetic reasons, replace one or both of the 11W tubes with a daylight spectrum tube. It will give a better colour rendition ie the plant and fish colours will look better to your eyes, but will still benefit the plants. This isn`t essential, but if you ever come to replace the 11W tubes, give it some thought.

Your CO2 is going to be key for this system. With established plants and fertiliser regime, your biggest variable is going to be CO2 levels. Personally, I have no experience of DIY CO2, but make sure you always have a decent bubble rate and the mixture doesn`t become exhausted. Algae responds to instability much quicker than your plants, so it will take advantage of CO2 fluctuations.

If you find yourself getting brown diatom algae buy 3 Otos and they will get rid of it in no time. For thread algae, buy a small army of Amano Shrimp. There are lots of nice, fancy shrimp out there, but Amanos are the real workers.

Keeping a planted tank is more difficult than keeping a fish based tank, but is ultimately more rewarding, and healthier for your fish IMO. Don`t give up.

Dave.

 

[aibo210]

Im currently using the aquapro bag supplied with the plants that lasts for upto 3 months till I get some decent liquid fert I know it dont give me much controll over the amount of ferts in my tank but its better then none tillI get some proper stuff.

As for the lights yes I do have 40 watts output now and hopefully can come to work out a right photoperiod for my tank!

Im currently also using tetra compleate substrate and a nutrafin CO2 system with one n half teaspoons of yeast which is bubbling away nicely

I currently have the 2 11w's on for a solid 10 hour with the triplus kicking in 30 mins after and going out 30 mins befor I dont know weathe rthis is to long to start with and should reduce the photoperiod for now.


Looking alot better anyway