What Do You Think, Give It A Second Go?

[wackystarfish]

After the disaster of my first attempt which looked rubbish, the plants were eaten and was a total waste of money; i moved on to marines which i am becoming quite successful with. I have been left with the remainder of the tropical stock in a ten gallon tank. Seeing everyones on here has rekindled my love for freshies' i was wondering if you think i should give it a second go - this time on a smaller scale.

Heres the specs;

Tank: 48 litre Aquartank
Plants: Basically what was left from the plec food fest, some Java fern, and some form of Cryptocrene
Fish: 5 Neon Tetras, One larger tetra, a taentius kribensis and an Algae shrimp
Lighting: It is a compact 11Watt light, giving me around 1.1WPG I think there is room to add a similar light so i could possibly increase that to 2.2 WPG.

Here is what it looks like at the moment:

I have really been taken aback by some scapes on here and would love to give this a go. The one thing that is putting me off is all the expensive scaping soils even thought they look fantastic. Can anyone offer me some advice on the way forward and some possible ideas??
Thankyou so much for taking the time to read this,
Finlay

 

[AdAndrews]

Looks great, What i'd try is some type of fertilisation, you have 2 choices IMO,

root tabs-so that the majority of the plants can feed from their roots.. tropica capsules are good, these turn an inert substrate, such as yours into one that has all the nutrients that an expensive planting substrate has..

or, start dosing daily TPN+, this, again, made by tropica is an "all in one solution" a concentrate of macro and micro elements that will help your plants flousish,

it all depends on how much money you wish to spend, but, its nice to keep a low tech tank, less maintenance that way!

i'd go with some root tabs, try that and see how it goes, with fairly heavy fish stocking, many nutrients can be derived from that,

and, if you wondered about co2, it isnt neccesary in such a tank, water changes will provide co2, do weekly 25%'s

Adam