Hi all, I'm hoping you plantbrains can chuck me some advice.
Long story short, I've recently reclaimed my old tank that someone else had been looking after for the last 18 months whilst I was away. It was a low-tech planted setup and basically it's had no maintenance except water changes for the last year and a half. The guy looking after it had kept it in a window so it was pretty heavily infested with hair algae when I collected it, which is slowly diminishing through culling and being kept out of sunlight now.
Tank stats:
ViaAqua AR620 with lighting and filter built into hood
90 litres
24"l X 15"d X 17"h
2 x 20 watts T8s (8000k and 15000k)
Stocking:
Java fern, java moss, anubias nana, amazon sword, a couple of crypts.
6 Dwarf puffers, assorted cherry and tiger shrimps.
The lights are a pain as they're non-standard sizes (23"). The 15000k bulb seems extremely dim, I'm going to try and source another 8000k or lower bulb but they're hard to get hold of.
I've just ordered a cheap and cheerful Nutrafin CO2 fermentor and some Tetra Plantamin to dose with, in the hope of increasing the extremely slow plant growth and introducing some more varieties.
Given my lighting limitations, is there a risk of encouraging algae when I move over to CO2 and ferts? Whats the best way of minimising this? Do you think I'll be able to get reasonable growth out of HC Cuba, riccia or some other carpeting plant? Anything else I'm going to need to bear in mind?
Finally, as you can see in the pic below, one of my Java ferns has got huge and is causing shadowing problems due to it's position at the top of some bogwood, do you think it'd be a good idea to give this a really heavy prune? A lot of the larger leaves are pretty unattractive anyway, lots of black spots. Alternatively I might just saw the top off the wood and find it a spot lower down!
Recent tank shot (not very pretty!). The plec has been rehomed and the algae has subsided somewhat since then, although still somewhat present. Needs a full rescape on top of everything else:
Long story short, I've recently reclaimed my old tank that someone else had been looking after for the last 18 months whilst I was away. It was a low-tech planted setup and basically it's had no maintenance except water changes for the last year and a half. The guy looking after it had kept it in a window so it was pretty heavily infested with hair algae when I collected it, which is slowly diminishing through culling and being kept out of sunlight now.
Tank stats:
ViaAqua AR620 with lighting and filter built into hood
90 litres
24"l X 15"d X 17"h
2 x 20 watts T8s (8000k and 15000k)
Stocking:
Java fern, java moss, anubias nana, amazon sword, a couple of crypts.
6 Dwarf puffers, assorted cherry and tiger shrimps.
The lights are a pain as they're non-standard sizes (23"). The 15000k bulb seems extremely dim, I'm going to try and source another 8000k or lower bulb but they're hard to get hold of.
I've just ordered a cheap and cheerful Nutrafin CO2 fermentor and some Tetra Plantamin to dose with, in the hope of increasing the extremely slow plant growth and introducing some more varieties.
Given my lighting limitations, is there a risk of encouraging algae when I move over to CO2 and ferts? Whats the best way of minimising this? Do you think I'll be able to get reasonable growth out of HC Cuba, riccia or some other carpeting plant? Anything else I'm going to need to bear in mind?
Finally, as you can see in the pic below, one of my Java ferns has got huge and is causing shadowing problems due to it's position at the top of some bogwood, do you think it'd be a good idea to give this a really heavy prune? A lot of the larger leaves are pretty unattractive anyway, lots of black spots. Alternatively I might just saw the top off the wood and find it a spot lower down!
Recent tank shot (not very pretty!). The plec has been rehomed and the algae has subsided somewhat since then, although still somewhat present. Needs a full rescape on top of everything else:
/www.theplantedtank.co.uk/lighting.htm
