Ishar's 20GH Planted tank

ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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Hamilton, ON.
Yeah, when everything grows in I should have a good variety of colours :D Thank you :D. 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.
 

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ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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..... 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

Ultimate Fish
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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

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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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.
 

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ishar

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Jul 27, 2007
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Update: February 27, '08

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 :D, 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! :D
 

Big Vine

Elite Fish
Feb 7, 2006
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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

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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Hamilton, ON.
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 ;) :)
 

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ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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Hamilton, ON.
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 :D. Just thought I would share that
 

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ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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Hamilton, ON.
Update: March 1, 2008

Well I went to the fish store today to pick up some potassium fertilizer for my tank. I ended up picking up both potassium and phosphorus, so now I have all of the macro nutrients to dose with. For the first week or so I will be dosing 1mL every other day of P, 1mL per day of flourish & K, and 2mL of N, and I will adjust these values depending on what I see at the end of each week. I also picked up an otto. I say them- small, young, and only $2. Hopefully this guys makes it through and survives, as I have heard they can have a hard time adjusting to new tanks, but I will drip acclimate him quite gradually then let him loose. There is a lot of algae for him to eat so I don't think that will be a problem :p.
 

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ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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Hamilton, ON.
Well the day has come :(.

I have come to the point that I feel my tank is overcrowded with little guppies. MissFishy warned me a long time ago that guppies would overrun my tank and I think they finally have. I have no friends to give them away to, but luckily my LFS will take them- for free, but at least I don't have to euthanize the adults. Many people are going to disagree with my choice here, and I am fine with that.

I am giving away my three adult females and two of the biggest of the fry of the female persuasion. The rest of the female fry I see (there are a few that I can 100% tell they are not males) are going to be given the ice water treatment- a very quick and hopefully relatively painless death. I do this because of several reasons, none of which are for aesthetics. The main reason is I have noticed that the growing fry are growing slower and slower- the size my first few fry achieved in a month is now taking almost 2 for new fry. Also I believe my neons to be stressing out, as they tend to hide more and more as the days go on and there colours are generally faded out. The colours fade out most when the guppies come out of hiding during feeding and when the cover is of of the tank. The tank is just pure chaos of activity.

So I am going to get rid of the females before I have any more fry. I am deeply grieved by this decision, but having thought about it for a long time I have made my own decision, so please don't try to convince me otherwise. I didn't post my thoughts on it here previously so I could decide for myself what is the right thing to do.

On another note, I will hopefully be bringing home a pot of java fern- the normal kind. I will be mixing it in with the Winelov variety on the big piece of driftwood, and hopefully my camera will cooperate for some pics.
 

ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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Hamilton, ON.
Update: March 4, 2008

Well I sent my adult females off and added some Microsorium pteropus (Java fern). I have not done any euthanizing yet, and may not for a while yet- we'll see. They took some of the smaller females so if I wait a few months I may be able to do it again. Anyways here are some more crappy laptop pics. I mixed this fern in with the Windelov version, and I rearranged the glosso and grass a bit- I let the grass go behind the small piece of wood and removed what glosso was there except for some I replanted in front of the little piece.

I also trimmed a lot of the brown dead leaves from my windelov after the algae attacked. It looks much better now- and it is amazing how thick it had grown! What looked like three or four stems was just one with a lot of tips splitting off at the end!

Now that I have done all of this my left side seems very much empty. I was hoping my anubias would grow a little faster and I am going to fill that piece of wood up with anubias, but I may have to rethink that plan. Any ideas for the LHS would be dandy and appreciated.

 

ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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36
36
Hamilton, ON.
I forgot to add that my green fuzzy algae has been coming back. I had it receding and fading out, and the otto I bought has done wonders with the BBA, but I believe in dosing 1mL/day of phosphorous I overdosed and algae broke out. I cut this amount back to 0.5mL/day, but I dose it at one milliliter every other day.

I am still very open to suggestions about the left hand side ;)

EDIT: Now I think I am going to cut the P dosing to .25mL/day, as I dosed 1mL today and then realized that my algae is still around.
 

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ishar

MFT Staff
Jul 27, 2007
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36
Hamilton, ON.
Well today I took my big chunk of windelov as well as one of the others and broke them up into a bunch of small pieces- some don't have leaves, some have no roots, some have neither, but they are all tied on on both pieces of wood- hopefully that will help my left side out a bit. This meant I had to remove the big mat of java moss on the small wood, but that is fine with me. I kept the other two still. I am getting sick of these crappy laptop pics, but here are a few just so you can see what I mean.