Ishar's 20GH Planted tank

[jen0910]

It looks like you have a nice variety of colors in the tank.

[ishar]

Yeah, when everything grows in I should have a good variety of colours Thank you . I am glad you noticed in the crappy pics I put up lol

I have decided to spend a week dosing 1mL of Nitrogen, and 1mL of Flourish each day. I am going to buy bottles of the other macros- P and K- sometime this week, and I will start them after the next water change. at the same rate, 1mL per day. I mixed a new CO2 bottle but it is having bit of a hard time going. I am sure it will eventually though, so I am not worried or anything. I am not sure what I am going to do CO2-wise though. I might buy a T valve and hook up another bottle... but I am not sure if that would be worth the hassle. Might tick it out as is until the summer, and if I make enough money I might go pressurized if I can find a local place to refill the cylinders.

[ishar]

..... again... Oh wow...

So I guess perhaps forgetting to switch my lights from "ON" to "TIMER" could also cause a massive algae outbreak.....

Apparently I forgot to switch my lights from the always on position to the timer governed mode... my bad ... LOL well that was quite the experience lol. I am glad and surprised nothing in there died :s.

Lets see how turning the lights to 8 hours/day and fertilizing and having my CO2 up and running changes things.

[Lotus]

Yep, you definitely need to control that lighting! Lights on for 10 to 12 hours is usually OK. If you watch, you'll see some of the plants start to close up after about 10 hours (the rotala, probably).

A lot of welding supply places do refills. You may need to call around some of them to find out which do it. Even if the place you call doesn't, they probably know who in town does.

[ishar]

lol I know Lotus Idiot move, I know :P.

My rotala didn't really close up per say, its growth was very compact- short leaves and very short distance between them. Unless that's what you meant :P.


My BBA is dying off.... I dosed 1mL of N and 1mL of Flourish, after 8 hours of darkness (I turn on the lights for an hour or so in the morning to check on the fish and dose the tank). The BBA on my smaller piece of driftwood looks like it is dying... It used to sway in the current and it was about 1/4" long and thick, but now it is like someone took a lighter to it and melted the tips of the strands together. It doesn't sway anymore and it is less thick.

So I am thinking the dark mixed with a new CO2 bottle are the likely reason as to why it is dying. The fuzz algae all over the place hasn't made a change yet though :P.

EDIT: I am wrong about the BBA dying. Maybe it just shrivels up at night or something, but now, about 30 minutes after seeing it be 'dying' it is back to the state it was in yesterday.

[ishar]

Well just a small update.

Algae news: the green algae on the glass is disappearing quite well- especially for how much I had! The BBA is sort of dying of, but not by much.
Plants: the jungle vals are growing again , and the new vals are not melting too badly I don't think. There are a LOT of new runners down there though :P. The rotala is bouncing back from the uber light time lol. The java fern is bouncing back where it was looking dead form whatever algae was on it.
Moss: the moss I tied single layered is doing VERY well, goring quickly and quite fully. I like it . It is covered in BBA in some spots though- hopefully that won't do too much damage.
Rescape: Well I didn't like how the small piece of wood went right into the corner, so I mixed two jobs together and got 'er done. I spread out the dwarf hairgrass a bit by taking the big clumps and tearing them into smaller ones. I did the same for the glosso only on a much larger scale. I planted only pairs of leaves, or single nodes for the most part and when all the glosso was out of the tank I moved the wood to pull it out of the corner. IMO it looks better this way.



Let me know what you think!

[Big Vine]

I think it looks really good.
Your blue background has a nice rich color to it...
Works well as a backdrop to highlight the plants that are in front of it. Guess I never really noticed that before!

BV

[ishar]

Thanks BV. One problem. It is pure black hahhaha My laptop just skews the colours a bit in the pics (I am having trouble with my camera). Thank you though- it has the same effect in black so it is still a valid comment

[ishar]

Just a small update. Having the lights down to the regular 10hrs per day, and stickign with 1mL N and 1mL Flourish for the past week, the algae has been diminishing quickly. There is no longer much in the ways of green hair algae except on a select few val. leaves. There is still green on my glass, but it is no longer hairy, more flat and green... I kind of like the looks of it to be honest, but if it doesn't go away on its own in then next week or so I'll just scrub 'er down.
My CO2 mix is running at roughly 1 bubble per seconds and my BBA is still not totally dying off. There is less of it now at least, but it is not disappearing for me . Otherwise everything is going well. I am already seeing new shoots of glosso getting sent out. My vals are having no trouble at all sending out new runners... but they just aren't growing taller for me. I am going to start a new thread elsewhere on that though.
In other news, on Monday I fed my tank a slice of zucchini about 1/4" thick. The first day or two it wasn't touched by my shrimp or fish. Then I wake up the next morning and there was like half of it missing lol. I do not know if my shrimp at much of it but I know my fish did- they seemed to love it. I am going to drop one slice in a week for them since they liked it so much . Just thought I would share that

[iapetus]

Did you blanch the zucchini first?