Planted Tank Progress

[Sime]

I realy like looking at everyone's progress so i thought i post my own....

Plants came from Greenline about three weeks ago - here they are when just unwrapped:

here they are untangled!

the vallis and swords were super quality:

and this is the finnished tank with the plants just planted:

... will post some more pictures when i've taken some over the weekend - it looks quite a lot different now

 

[Yenko]

Do you have enough light to grow those plants?

 

[Sime]

judging by the size of them now - yes! they've gone crazy - why d you ask?

 

[Iron Man]

Wow those look great! You'd think they were plastic!

And they arrived like that....good deal.

 

[George Farmer]

Looking good Sime. As Yenko mentions you may need good lighting for some of those species. I wouldn't worry though - see what grows well and concentrate on them. That's the great thing with big collections - you get a great variety and some plants will bound to do well. Just discard any plants that don't grow well. BTW the plant with white "veins" running through the leaves is non-aquatic so don't worry when it dies.

 

[Sime]

hi,
thanks for that - the one with the white veins is doing very well - i did notice it wasnt aquatic but it looks realy nice. i used to have one and it was the most tasty for the fish - only lasted about 4 days

they all seem to be doing well apart from that red on at the back - but it wasnt very nice anyway

i have just over 2 wpg of light in there - ive posted my self-made hood in the DIY section and they suggested painting the top white rather than use the arcadia reflectors i bought - any input on this? i dont want to have toxic fumes going into the water so im unsure what to do

ill get some pics of it hopefully today sometime. one or two plants died but it wasnt a great loss. the red cabomba is doing extreemly well suprisingly.

thanks again,
Simon.

 

[George Farmer]

Most of your plants should do fine with 2 WPG - do you CO2 as well? It might be an idea to have some if you are over 2 WPG or algae may become a problem. You may be ok without though if you stick to plenty of fast-growers.

I personally would use reflectors. In my experience they concentrate the light more for a better intensity and there is a little adjustment there too.

The red plant you didn't like was Rotala macandra I think - one of the most demanding plants there is. I would have trouble growing that too.

Good luck and keep us posted.

 

[Jen]

What is that gorgeous green and white leafy plant in the right foreground? It looks so different from any other plant I have seen!

 

[nitro]

BTW the plant with white "veins" running through the leaves is non-aquatic so don't worry when it dies.

the one with the white veins is doing very well - i did notice it wasnt aquatic but it looks realy nice

 

[Yenko]

judging by the size of them now - yes! they've gone crazy - why d you ask?

I was just making sure. It's hard to tell how much light you have from a picture; to me it looked like you had very little light.

Gf255 is right; you're probably lucky if more than four species coexist. Frequent water changes will increase this amount. The problem is allelochemicals, substances secreted by plants to kill other plants so they can take over. One important thing to remember when planning a planted tank is to not allow any one plant to have too much more space than the other plants; my tank was 70% hygrophilia at one point, and all the other plants were having trouble untill I removed almost all the hygrophila. Now the hygrophilia is still doing ok and the other plants are doing much better.

 

[Sime]

oh

i think thats my bad camera's fault!