5g journal

[Adorkable]

Nice tank. It'll look great once things start to fill in. I love the Ram!

[dbleoh7]

Originally Posted by joy613

You said you scratched the plastic trying to get the algae off your tank, I have found one of those exfoliating gloves from the dollar store takes off a lot of my green spot algae. The new fish you have now looks like a white cloud to me.

It's the outside that's scratched from moving it around place to place. I use this one scrub pad for the algae that works well and doesn't scratch the acrylic. The fish are whiteclouds, i just forgot the name of them.

and thanks adorkable, it's a little tight quarters for the ram in a 5G, but he seems to do well...

[Sticky Fish]

what's the substrate? moon sand?

[crimsontsavo]

I like how you keep changing things, makes me feel better about my own constantly changing aquascapes lol.
Looking great man!

[dbleoh7]

the substrate is just some cheap fine gravel from a LFS. I added some seachem root tabs in there also to supply some nutrients to the microsword.

the microsword is finally starting to grow a bit now with the proper photoperiod and diy co2. (light is on from 11am-10pm every day). looking back i think i might need to replace the light bulb; it doesn't look nearly as bright as it did a year ago. that will probably be about another month though since i procrastinate so much

[money-pit!]

Wow, tank looks good. I love the microsword. BTW, what is that magnet looking thing on the left side of the tank? You have it on both the outside and inside of the tank on the side.

[dbleoh7]

the microsword is starting to take off. it's funny because it grows in really thick where i put the root tabs and sparsely where the root tabs are not. does anyone know of a good substrate with nutrients that you can get in small amounts?(preferably black, although that's not a big deal) i think most of them come in like 20 lb bags which is about 4X more than i need.

the magnet-looking thing you see is a magnet! it's one of those magnets to clean the tank. I trimmed my java moss a couple of weeks ago and had literally a baseball sized clump. i figured i might as well try to tie some onto the magnet and see if it attaches. it hasn't attached yet and it probably won't, but i though i would give it a try.

[FishGeek]

Looking Good. As for the back ground plant you could always make a wall of Java Moss.

[dbleoh7]

May 28, 2008

The foreground is starting to fill in a bit, but there is a little bit of algae starting to build up on the microsword. I am going to lower the photoperiod and see how that works out.

The algae building up(and a ghost shrimp):

Right side angle:

Full tank shot:

[dbleoh7]

June 17, 2008

I added two otos about a week ago to try and get the algae problem under control, but it is getting out of hand. my filter on there does not have much water flow so there are dead spots in the tank where the algae takes over. i will be getting a new filter in the next couple of days. i also got some mondo grass. it's kind of ugly; i'm not really sure why i got it. any suggestions/criticism?

Full tank shot:


algae on microsword:


the algae is everywhere!: