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Why did the Rotala change color and become so green ?

I take it you've upped NO3 - what about micros ?

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Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

I am not running a spray bar on mine. Just having it come out at a right angle. Kind of makes a river system. If I do the spary bar I would have to find a way to hide it better than just having the 90 degree bar hanging there. Bensaf green is not quite might idea of a good time with a black background.

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

Yes, the unfortunate side effect of the upped NO3 has been the green rotala. I upped N to this level because I'm trying to get the plants going the best I can. I've been dosing micros as per the bottled instructions. Because the algae outbreak I've been having is a thread/ hair algae problem - see the pic above - I'm afraid to add extra iron. In addition to the extra N I've also been adding extra P. This has made the wisteria take-off pretty well, and since that's the outcompete the algae plant I'm looking to get going the most, I guess I'll keep this up... unless you suggest another course of action?

Wings - my spraybar runs flat across the top of the tank, paralell to the side, so it flows out across the top of the tank

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I guess I could probaby get mine up that high but I woud have to do some chopping of the pipes.

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

See here for new tank development - http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/28093.1.htm?0.5325311#

Hint: it has to do with these:

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Nice NowherMan6

I guess if you want to find out for sure then you will have to take a dive into your tank as well (in case you don't know what I mean, read my log again ).

Great news,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

No, I read your log, LF, I know exactly what you mean Funny that it happened at roughly the same time, though. Maybe it's something in the Jersey water, or a barametric pressure change in the area, or maybe they just know spring is in the air.

Either way, I think we both need a miniature version of ALVIN (ya know, that deep sea submersible they used to find Titanic ) to confirm.

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NowherMan6,



Yup, a mini sub - that is what we need, with lights of course. I checked some toy periscopes that we have at our company (give-aways) but they didn't turn out any good for the task at hand. I guess I at least will have to wait and see if anything will wiggle somewhere at some point.

Are you stocking up on baby food then very soon (just in case)?

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

I think we both need a miniature version of ALVIN

No you don't, you need the Fishgeek:



Attached Image:


My Scapes

OK, I'm looking for advice on how to proceed now.

As you know the tank is still suffering from algae problems. IN LFs log it was suggested that large amounts of turnover and redo's of the tank can lead to mulm and ammonia being stirred up into the water column, allowing different types of algae to appear.

My dilemma is this: many of my plants are affected with the brown algae described in another thread, mostly at the bottom of the stem. I'd like to go through and snip the bottoms off tonight and replant the healthy parts. Before replanting I plan on sucking up any mulm that gets churned up when the stems are pulled out.

In LFs thread, however, bensaf and tetra suggested doing work like this only a little bit at a time.

So my question is, is it better to do it as I originally planned it, or to do one plant group at a time per week?

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NowherMan6,

I thought I replied to your question above yesterday evening, but then we had a power failure and the modem went out

Anyway, what I said was that I am for sure not the right person to ask as I have the same problem. But as you can see from my tank, overhauls don't seem to help. As such, try the slow approach, trim off heavily affected leaves, add more weeds (aka Wisteria <- bracing for impact from tetratech) and see if this helps. If it does help then let me know so I can approach it the same way . No, actually this is what I am going to do this week (or weekend) anyway.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

D'oh! That response came one day too late. I already did the overhaul.

But here's the thing. I don't know what it is about my tank or the way I take care of it, but there was so much crap, organic gunk and who knows what under the wisteria pile that I finally understood why the algae was happening. Holy cow, I can't believe I got those gourami to breed under those conditions!

What I did was, I removed one plant group at a time, and when I removed that group I did a gravel vac of the area. So it worked out to three different gravel vacs, one for the wisteria, one for the rotala and one for the HM. Leaf litter under all of them.

I had to do a hack job on the wisteria though. You could tell the healthy parts and the unhealthy parts. Most of the main stems were covered in algae so I took them all off and saved the healthy parts. I meant to take a comparison shot of the old leaves and the new leaves, the old ones being an ugly dark green, the new healthy being a nice bright green.

All in all I took a lot of stuff out of that tank, both old algae covered stems and gunk from the bottom. I'm goign to continue with another WC some time this week to make sure I got as much gunk up as possible, then I'll get back to the once a week routine. The plants do look nice and clean though. And I also cleaned the diffuser. It's vitally important to keep that disc clean. if it clogs up you get bigger bubbles and less CO2 saturation. All clean it comes out in a fine mist, most bubbles don't even make it to the surface.

So I'm pretty happy with this, it gave me a chance to do a good amount of house keeping, hopefully I can maintain this. I plan on adding more weeds ASAP, maybe more wisteria, maybe some hygro or hornwort. My HC is coming in the next day or so, so that should be exciting to plant as well. We'll see how this goes in a few days.

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Sorry about that NowherMan6

Now on to this:

hygro or hornwort

What hygro other than Wisteria? And I personally "hate" hornwort. To me it is the most ugly plant I ever had, and really messy on top of it. Wherever it was shaded it would simply disintegrate and leave a big mess of needles everywhere.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

What hygro other than Wisteria

I forgot, wisteria is hygro difformis. I was refering to the weed of all weeds, hygro polysperma, even though I tossed a big batch of it a few months ago, it has great value as a nutrient sucker.

I have a love hate relationship with hornwort. I don't really care for the look of it either, just what it can do. I wouldn't place it in the aquascape, just let it float... but i find that it becomes a breeding gorund for green algae when it floats. I certainly share your dislike of its look though.

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just let it float...

I thought that this is what you would do with it, but even that, IMHO, creates a problem: shading of other plants. If the hornwort would continously cirle on the surface then this would not be an issue, but often the surface current pushes floaters in a particular spot and that this where the plant spends its day, shading all plants below it.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

It's not even just that. I've found that certain plants don't really do too well when left floating.

Pennywort, which I have as a floater now, does well because once at the surface the leaves adapt to surface life. They become a little thicker and more waxy, like a marsh plant.

Hornwort, on the other hand, just sits there and does not adapt. I've found that it collected a lot of junk in its branches. Plus you also raised an interesting point about its brittleness - with the new spraybar I have creating more current I'm sure the needles would break off easily in the current creating more mess.

Thanks LF for reminding me how much I dislike that plant!

I will think about other plants though.

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NowherMan6,

How about a trip to AF in two weeks? In case you don't know what I am talking about, Here is the thread that mentions a planted tank discussion.

I signed up over the phone yesterday

I don't think we would get tetratech to come though, he is too scared to venture into Jersey .

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

As for hygro's Maybe try some Sunset. It can be pretty pink!

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

I saw the thread about the meeting but unfortunetely I can't make it that night, have previous plans. Sounds like it could be cool though, nice to see that there are other people in the area that are into the planted scene.

Wings, I don't think hygro polysperma is available anymore. Last I heard it's classified as a federal noxious weed.

I'm currently looking into some other plants, maybe crypt balansae and some more stem plants to work with.

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Wings, I don't think hygro polysperma is available anymore. Last I heard it's classified as a federal noxious weed.

Hmm... Well I have quite a bit of it. We probably shouldn't talk about how much my store has right now... How do you find out whats ok and not ok?

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

NowherMan6,

Yeah, the fact that a plant is classified as a federal noxious weed doesn't seem to stop its distribution. Just look at Cabomba, same deal. Tetratech may know more about this particular "weed" as I have read that various water ways in Long Island have been heavily infested with it.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

My wife to be's mom was asking me all sorts of questions if I was part of that problem a while ago....

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

Well, in some cases I think it does, at least with hygro. AZgardens.com and now aquariumplants.com have stopped selling it. (speaking of aquariumplants.com, have you seen the new website? snazzy)

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The pic below shows a lake near my house. See how thick the water looks. It's completely choked with Cabomba

Attached Image:


My Scapes

Thanks tetratech for the picture

You could make a fortune selling this stuff from that lake illegally, although I am not recommending at all that you do that.

And yes, I have seen the new site of aquariumplants.com, and in fact I have ordered from them twice since the new site is up. There are still some areas that they have blank right now, but I am sure they will fill them in when they have the time to do so (hey, just like FP).

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

EPILOGUE:

It has been a few months since my last post in this log, and, since it went on pretty long and in terms of developing my aquascaping and knowledge of planted tanks was an undoubted success, I thought this log deserved a formal wrap up.

My last ditch attempt to save and redo the tank failed. I couldn't beat back the algae, and most importantly, the disease that was sweeping through my tank earlier continued to kill off most my livestock. When I saw the remaining fish were infected, and knowing I couldn't stop whatever it was, I put them down. Very hard, that was, but to me it was the humane thing to do.

So lately I've just been tearing down the tank. Now, where once stood a developing world of my own creation, there is just an empty tank in need of a cleaning. No longer is it a vibrant piece of living art, just an empty space.

Now it's just time to move forward. I plan on removing the DW and just throwing it out. I could clean and scrub it, but I wouldn't feel right about selling it to someone else in case whatever disease was in the tank still remains inside the wood somewhere. The tank will get a good hard cleaning - bleach it out and get in every crevice. I plan on selling it locally once I feel it's ready. I feel I can sufficiently clean and disinfect it so that it can safely be used by someone else - however, if anyone out there feels it'd be better to just not sell it then please let me know, I'd like to know all opinions on this. I'll sell off the stand and the light hood.

However, I will keep the CO2 set-up and the cannister filter because I will be using them again some time in the near future. Large-ish planted tanks are not out of my future, I know that for sure. I just need to properly plan and think etc and learn from my past mistakes and successes. That's the best I can do, I think.

And so, I thank all of you for your contributions over the past year. LF, tetra, bensaf and others have taught me a lot. It's been tons of fun, and I'll see you on the boards

- Rich

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Rich,

What a sad epilogue

I knew somewhat that your tank wasn't doing too well, but I didn't know that it was so bad, with regards to algae and in particular the fish killing illness. I can deal with algae, but when one fish after the other succumbs to an illness, that eats me up. So sorry for you.

Being a man of caution, I would throw out the wood. Others may recomment to boil it, which may be fine, but that is not my style. Disinfecting the tank and other equipment will work well though, IMHO.

And I find it a good idea that you keep the CO2 unit, an expensive piece of equipment that will remind you that you have to put it to use in a bigger and better tank in the very near future .

Now, don't you dare to dissapear into the nirwana of becoming a lurking reader of our logs, your input is not only a pleasure of communication but your knowledge and experience are valuable assets that I would hate to see lost. More than once has your opinion swayed me into a particular direction (may I say driftwood from EBay).

Last but not least, planning and setting up a new tank is a very exciting task, keep on working on it

Have fun,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Nowher,
Sorry to hear about taking your tank down and the loss of your fish. There are some fish in my tank I am going to cry the day they go because I have had them for about 5 years now.

Best wishes with the new set up soon to come. Keep us updated!

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

It's that @#$% Jersey water.

Nowher,

It wasn't too long ago that I had a tank literally blow-up after turning it into the latest L.I. Brewery. I lost about half my fish, including my favorite Snowball Pleco. That tank also had it's share of problems with a slimy coating that seemed to get on all my plants. I learned alot from that experience with the help of Bensaf, LF and you as well.

Sometimes things just happen and are beyond your control, bad piece of DW, corrupted eco-complete, diseased fish.
Even Amano talks about all the fish he killed along the way as he learned about the hobby.

This country is run by a cowboy, so get back on your horse.


My Scapes

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I've been keeping up with all of your logs and have found them inspiring, but when I ceased to be inspired by my own that's when I knew it was time to tear it down and start over again later.

I guess it's a case of the "46 bowfront curse" striking again. My next move I guess will be to clean everything out and sell it off, and then start planning another tank. I won some money while in AC two weeks ago (kids, don't gamble .... and don't drink ... and certainly don't do both at once ) so I may get a price quote on a custom type tank, or maybe go for an ADG type set-up, something smaller and rimless, we'll see.

And Wings, I hear ya on the fish part. The hardest ones for me were the loaches, they had more personality than any other fish in there. For a while the deaths stopped, then would come again, then stop again etc. This last wave is when I put them down.

Thanks again for th esupport all

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or maybe go for an ADG type set-up

Now that is pure evil

First making us all sad, and then telling us you go all out and get a super tank. You go, Man

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

The camera does not make the photo, nor does the tank make the aquascape. Just tools my friend, that's all they are.

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The camera does not make the photo, nor does the tank make the aquascape

Well Rich, not really

If it wouldn't be for you then I probably would make mostly mediocre pictures. Not because I learned so much about how to make pictures from you, but because you recommended the right lense.

And with regrads to the tank: I immediately noticed the silicone borders after I redid the 20G and wished for an ADA tank. It would have made a big difference.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club