plants in sand

[boom-sage]

i am well on my way to a beautiful ten gallon tank, but my flourite substrate will not be in the tank until saturday or sunday. will my green wendeth, 2 micro swords, and ludwiga do ok in the sand from now until then. I also have 25 watt lightbulbs which i had much sucess growing plants with before in the same tank. thanx.

 

[guppygirl]

Yeah, I think they'll be fine. Don't worry about it. What size is your tank?
EDIT: Nevermind, I'm being blonde again! Good luck with your plants!!!
BTW, here's a link you could explore for more ideas for aquascaping...
AGA aquascaping contest(s)

 

[boom-sage]

oh, my tank is a ten gallon. i see your under renovation. so am I, i hate my 30g. im going to get a 40 gallon that fits my stand and renovate it with new sand getting rid of fish, and live plant and mangrove wood insert. what are you doing to your tank.

 

[guppygirl]

Ahhh, my renovation! Ok, I'll do a before and after.
To start off, this tank has had a fungus problem ever since I added some infected guppies from a friend of mine (yes she's still my friend, I forgave her. She's also on this forum, very active too.) . Yes, a big mistake I will forever pay for. The fungus lives in my gravel dormant until it's yearly cycle starts up again and it flares up. I just have to beat it down. So to make a long story short, I tried a few medicines and one of them destroyed all my plants.
here's a pic of my tank before the attack. (unfortunately I don't have any pics of the damage done, but I'll say it was awful. Everything was almost dead, except for the amazon sword. He's survived everything!)

 

[boom-sage]

WOW, thats wierd. i never heard of that happening before, well goodluck.

 

[guppygirl]

So, continuing the story...
I didn't have a lot of time for a few months after the attack, I had a bunch of horse shows, 4-h, etc. I was pretty busy!!!
So about september, I went to the last horse show of the season, and I decided to do a major renovation of the tank. So I did!!!

After that, I decided that I absolutely hated the ceramic fake bogwood ornament. I also got a new compact fluorescent light. So...

Unfortunately, my mom has banned me from using her camera, but I did add a whole lot more plants, it look a lot better now!!
So that's my renovation.
~Robin

 

[StarOrbs]

Nice 55 gallon guppygirl.

 

[Yenko]

Nice! I grow my plants in sand with a soil underlayer. I got the soil from my garden, but added a bit of Calcium Carbonate and Magnesium Sulfate. The sand is play sand, it looks great, and the Clown loaches love it. My Apistogramma dug himself a little hidy-hole in the sand next to a rock.

 

[tear-scar]

Get more plants guppygirl-- toss in as many fast-growing stems as you can! You got to try to stop algae outbreak this time with greater plant cometition-- from the looks of your first tank, it was to sparse to protect itself.

 

[guppygirl]

No worries tear-scar... I got tons of plants for my birthday, I might try using our other camera, it's pretty crappy, but at least it works.
One problem I could use some help with is a whitish-cloudiness. The tank is milky cloudy right now, I suspected it was a new food I added, so I stopped feeding it, but it's still cloudy. It may be the shrimp pellets I feed, I'll experiment with not feeding it... my Krib is going to be angry at me!
I added phosphate filter bags, so I'll see how that works out. It doesn't look extremely better though over a week or two. I did a 25% water change, but it doesn't look much better.
Anyone have any ideas??

 

[boom-sage]

Keep your lights on all day and try some clarifiers to get it to go away, but im sure it will go away after time. i got the flourite but the shipping says it will not be here until friday. that stinks, how much waws your compact flourecent setup guppygirl?

 

[Yenko]

Keeping your lights on 24/7 only causes problems.

 

[guppygirl]

I got my CF over ebay... it's a JBJ. I actually wouldn't recommend it, it has bad fans, so makes an awful noise at startup. The guy sent me the wrong bulbs (10,000 K) but my mom wouldn't send them back for different ones. He also promised 96W bulbs and sent me 65W. Shipping was ok.
I would try another brand! Try foster and smith, I've ordered from them numerous times and had no trouble at all with any orders. Their magazine is great too.
drs foster and smith

 

[tear-scar]

10000k is good for plants, so don't worry about that. Your should probably be glad that you have fans-- you don't want the lights/water to be over-heated. You'll get used to the noise. With less wattage, are you sure you have enough lighting for your tank?