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Tank has cleared up a lot but the water still has a slight cloudiness but that is to be expected since I added the extra ADA Amamonia II substrate I had left over from when I got it and it'll be leaching ammonia into the water and causing cloudiness for a week or two. But here are those pictures I promised.



First here is the tank. I like the position of the driftwood and where I have my plants (for the moment). What you cannot see is there is a lot of empty space at the rear half of the tank for plants to go. So I'm going to be wanting some bigger plants to fill these spaces up and then some more stem plants to fill out the corners and rear of the tank.




Here is what the whole set up looks like. I'll be storing away the power board in the bottom of the cabinet later on. If I find I need a bit more light due to the light unit being about twice as high from the substrate compared to the old tank I have a spare 18" light which you can see sitting under the phone.

Any ideas of what plants I could get?

Because the LFS around my area have a terrible selection of plants I'm going to be ordering plants online again. Going to be trying a different store than what I used the first time because I'll be ordering some fish as well.

I was thinking of getting 1 bunch of the following plants:

Bacopa caroliniana
Hydrilla verticillata (Similar in appearance to Anacharis/Elodea but not illegal in my state)
Ludwigia repens "Narrow Lead"
Wisteria

When I get them I'll replant the Sunset Hygro in a tight bunch and plant each bunch along the rear of the tank. Hopefully I'll create a nice tall boarder along the back of the tank and the crypts and swords will fill out in the middle ground. I'm also looking to buy some Java Fern to attach to the driftwoods and also have some Anubias nana which is being posted to me from a member on a plant forum which I'll be attaching to the driftwood as well.

Oh and I've been dosing Flourish Excel for 4 days now and the Val is looking stronger than ever. I'm dosing full dosage as well. Appears this species of Val is not sensitive to excel!

Hi,
Wow! Looking Great

A suggestion, for later... With the all glass cube you
might want to think of switching to glass intake and
output tubes like those used in the tanks for contesting.
In a tank like this, the intake glares at the observer,
glass would disappear and blend in with the glass of the
tank.
It has the potential to be a stunning tank, I'd hide the
hardware or make it all blend in to the scene

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Agree with Frank on the tips, you're doing a great job.
Definatly a little show tank there Wait till the plants realize it's Amazonia (kills all the other substrates out there) and go ballistic, it'll happen !

The Amazon Nut...

Frank I would love a set of glass lily pipes for the intake and output of the filter. But with the height of the water in this tank and how its built it wouldn't work with a lily pipe output. The output cone would sit above the water level.

But I'm going to look into getting a lily intake and try and hide the heater. The I might even be able to track down a clear spraybar somewhere (haven't had any luck yet). Still I would like to buy a long lily pipe intake as the current ugly green intake was cut to fit my 10 gallon and doesn't reach deep as I'd like in my new tank.

I switched the intake and spraybar around as the spraybar was flattening the hairgrass on the other side a little. I'm ordering in a stack load of various stem plants for the back of the tank today and they should get here early next week. I'm going to have to throw out the Val as it has started to melt. Going to give it some time and see if it'll remover but I doubt it. Flourish excel and Vals just don't get along.




The tank is a little cloudy still as I had to attach the new Anubias nana to the driftwood and it stirred up the gravel again.

I'm not sure why my sunset hygro has lost all its pink (except for a slight pink colouration along the veins of the leaves). The tank has low nitrates of 5 - 10 ppm. Is it because I don't have bright enough lights?

When a plant is uprooted, trimmed then put into another tank, it needs a recovery as well as an adjustment period. It could be a couple months-ish. The reddish color is now coming back on the newer leaves in the middle of my sword. I'm sure your hygro will also recover

The Amazon Nut...

Okay thats good to know. Its growing and thats all I need. I don't mind if it doesn't regain its bright pink leaves as its nice how it is anyway.

I ordered a bunch of plants today from livefish.com.au along with 10 Glass Shrimp and 10 Cochu's Blue Tetras. I also bought some plants off a member on another forum.

Here is a list of the plants I'll be getting next week:

From LiveFish:
1 x Bacopa caroliniana bunch
1 x Hyrdrilla verticillata bunch
2 x Ludwigia repens bunches (1 regular & 1 narrow leaf)
1 x small Java Fern

From member of aquarium site:
6 x Rotala najas stems (Can't find any info on this plant but I'll link a picture they have)
6 x Rotala wallichii stems
4 x Staurogyne sp. 'Low Grow'

I'll be planting the Bacopa, Hyrdilla, Ludwigia and both Rotala sp. along the back and maybe a little down the sides of the tank. I'm going to hide the heater and intake behind plants. I'll also attaching the Java Fern to the left side driftwood somewhere. If its big enough I'll be cutting the rhizome up into two pieces (at least 4 leaves each) and attach them on different branches of the wood. I've been using rubber bands, which are ugly but they are very easy to use. The Staurogyne is a low growing carpet plant and I'll be using it to fill up spaces around the tank.

I might have to rescape the tank a little and move the driftwood, Crypts, Swords and some of the foreground plants around. But I'll try and keep anything where it is if I can. Can't wait for these to get here!!

Also planning on trying to track down some clear tubing to replace my eheim tubes in a few weeks. But I might not end up having to do this if I get thick enough growth along the back to hide the intake and the cords/piping along the back of the tank!

Let me just say I absolutely hate ADA Aquasoil! It terrible to work with! If you try and rearrange plants, driftwood or rocks it'll stir up dust and make your tank look like a dust storm hit it!

Three days ago I decided to rearrange the tank and add a couple of large rocks I dug up in the garden. Well lets just say it turned my tank into a brown soup. I've done probably 1000% waterchange over the last 3 days and my tank is still murky and I can't see the the plants at the back! I'm on the verge of pulling all the substrate out and throwing it away. If you pull a crypt/sword plant out or run your finger through the gravel it stirs up a heap of dust and makes the tank murky. If you move a bit of it around it makes the tank look like you dumped and stirred a handful or two of mud into the water!

Its giving me the s! I feel like I should remove all the gravel and wash it out thoroughly but doing this will remove a lot of the nutrients in it which is why its pricey to begin with!

To make matters worse I'm not happy with the position of the driftwood but if I rearrange them it'll make the tank even worse! Also it clogs up the fine filter pad in my eheim canister and I have to clean it every day!

Gomer,

I remember reading with aquasoil to plan the tank setup beforehand, so as to re-arrange things as little as possible after setup. It makes a mess, plus too much fuss will cause it to break down into mud. Still, it's an amazing substrate



The Amazon Nut...

Yeah I know that but it isn't meant to be this bad. I've read that there are some bad batches of ADA aquasoil floating around which either contain too much dust in them and they cloud up the water too easily.

It shouldn't be this bad. I performed two more 50% water changes this morning and cleaned out the filter again and its cleared up a little bit finally. I also ordered some eheim double taps for my canister as filter maintenance is too much of a hassle at the moment. Bought them from the UK for 40 aussie dollars which is pretty good considering the cheapest I've found them in Australia is $55 each and I got two for $40!

Also got those plants from someone on another forum this morning and I'm not very happy! I paid good money for these. $25 for 3 bunches of plants and I open the packet and find the cuttings are all 5cm long, the plants are unhealthy and some aren't even new growth cuts, they're old pieces which have the tops cut off with only tiny lateral new growth stems. Needless to say I sent the person a long and angry email. Especially since I could have bought 15 - 20cm bunches of these plants for a similar price! The Rotala wallichii only has 0.5 to 1cm of nice growth on them and the rest of the pieces are old leaves which are thinning.

I found I couldn't plant most of the Staurogyne 'low growth' stems which were 2 or 3 cm long, but I was expecting this and have most of them floating and hopefully they'll grow a little more then I can plant them. I have the R. wallichii floating and maybe these can recover. The Rotala najas looks nothing like the pictures of thick healthy stems. I was given only tiny side shoots which aren't looking very healthy.

Lets just hope the order from LiveFish gets here this week, otherwise I'm going to be very pissed off.

Sorry to hear you're having a rough time of it Gomer

It will get better, hang in there !
The forum you bought the plants, is there a feedback system ?



The Amazon Nut...

I'm not sure if there is a feedback system but I was going to leave a message in her thread but I don't have enough posts yet to access the trading forum.

I got a reply back from her and she apologised. Apparently she will send me new cuttings once her plants have grown out a bit.

Haven't heard anything from the store I bought my plants and fish from. So I'll have to wait another week for them I guess as they only ship them on Tuesday and Wednesdays. At least it'll give my tank time to settle down a bit and I'll hopefully have my double taps by then!

Update:

Just got an email from the store. They sent the order today, so hopefully I'll be getting my plants, fish and shrimp tomorrow.

Hi,
You might think about purchasing a diatom filter. With
a one micron system, that water would turn crystal clear
within an hour or two of turning it on. Then you could
disconnect it, clean it, and set it in the closet till the
next time. There really is nothing like using one of those
filters for polishing your water.

http://www.aquariumguys.com/diatomfilter.html

http://www.diatomfilter.com/products/diatom_d1_filter.htm

I think you would be absolutely amazed at what this type of
filter can do, there really is nothing else quite like it.
I've got one that is 20+ years old and I use it every once
in a while on my tank- the rest of the time it sits, broken
down, and dry on a shelf in the closet.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Got my order today. The plants for the most part were healthy and the fish and shrimp were fine. Took me 90 minutes to prepare and plant all the stem plants and during this time I was acclimatising the fish and shrimp.

I didn't have enough air tubing to use the drip method so I pegged the bags to the side of the tank and every 5 minutes added 5mL of tank water with my fert dosage syringe. Worked pretty well so far. As soon as the bags were pegged into place my Bolivian Ram was trying to eat the shrimp through the bag!

I fed my fish some bloodworms before I started planting to fill their bellies so they'll hopefully stay away from the shrimp. I have about 10 ghost shrimp and 1/3 to 1/2 of these are berried with lots of eggs. But they are quite small so hopefully they hide well enough and the ram leaves them alone.

I'll take some photos in a few hours when I turn my lights on.

Okay finally got round to taking a picture of the tank. I'm a lot happier with how it looks now than before, but I feel its too cluttered and has too much going on in there. I like how the rocks look on the left hand side but I feel I need to remove one of the pieces of wood. This would also give me some space to plant my swords better. They are currently in the middle behind the front piece of wood and are heavily shadowed by the background plants, which isn't good.

Anyway, here is how the tank looks.




The 9 Cochu's Blue Tetras are very active. I'm not going to be getting any more Rummys which is a shame. I would rather 6 Blues and 10 Rummys than the 9 Blues and 6 Rummys. The Blues don't school as well. They do however keep to the top region better than the Rummys, but the Rummys are now venturing higher because they feel safer with the Blues I suppose.

The stem plants were in okay condition when I got them. The only thing that ticked me off was the Ludwigia was all curled over and made it a pain in the behind to plant and the Bacopa! Wow... That was so buoyant it just kept on floating to the surface! Had to use a bunch of lead wire that came with the bunches to weigh down individual stems. I'm going to wait for the Ludwigia to straighten out a bit before I rearrange the stem plants. Need to separate up the Ludwigia and Bacopa as they look too similar and the whole right hand side looks the same.

@Frank - I looked into the prices of diatom filters and they're just too expensive at this point in time. They would definitely be worth the money for a display tank. Will look into saving up for one. Anyone know how long the diatom dust lasts for these diatom filters?


UPDATE: Pulled the plants off the smaller rear piece of driftwood and attached them to the other piece. Only using the larger, branched piece of driftwood now and moved it back a little and replanted most of my Echinodorus parviflorus and moved my Staurogyne cuttings behind the hair grass but in front of the driftwood. It looks alright. The tank still looks cramped and now I'm thinking it might be the rocks taking up so much space. But I'm not going to rescape now. Just going to let the plants settle.

Tank has cleared right up! Need to trim most of the plants at the back soon. There is a lot more Java Fern on the wood than you can see.

Hi,
A couple of things...
First, when planting stem plants, most will plant them
in groups of three in a hole rather than one stem/hole.
They don't work loose and float to the surface as readily
that way.

Second, the filter medium for the diatom filter is
Diatomaceous Earth. As the diatoms die, their skeletons
settle to the sea bottom where they form diatom ooze which
over time becomes massive deposits of diatomite. That is
mined and ground into a flour like consistency and marketed
as a filter medium for commercial uses, swimming pools, and
aquarium filters. The powder is available in packages
from a part of a pound to hundreds of pounds.

http://www.aquatichouse.com/FILTRATION%20MENU_files/diatompowder.asp

My filter takes one cup of the powder to coat the filter
bag. Depending upon the condition of the tank the filter
will strip and polish the water within a few hours to
crystal clarity. They are NOT designed to be run 24/7/365.
They clog easily, and will burn up the motor. When loading
the filter with the powder, you should wear a face mask
so you don't inhale it. You should also wipe off any
powder or dust that is spilled. The diatom's skeleton is
made of silica (glass) and has been tied to Silicosis of the Lungs.
Once the filter does it's task, you can back
flush it, or simply discard the dirty medium.

Frank

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--